Search results for: "Focusing"
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- The Brightness of Life… He doesn’t spend a lot of time focusing on issues that are beside the point. His very first sermon went straight to the point: “This is going to all be about suffering and the end of suffering.” His first noble truth, which is often misrepresented as, “Life is suffering,” actually says simply, “There is suffering” and identifies what it is: the act of …
- The Return of Chickens from Hell… Because we’re focused so much on anticipating the food we want, we’re not paying very careful attention as to what the raw material is and sometimes we’re not paying careful attention to how we fashion things. So the food we end up with can make us sick. And on top of that, as I’ve said before, these chickens are the …
- Single-minded… As long as you stay focused on the post and hold on tight, you don’t get dizzy, you don’t lose your balance. In the same way, when you’re focused on the breath, you’ve simply got two activities centered on one object. And the activities are an essential part of getting the mind to even deeper states of oneness, more solid …
- The Power of Intention… All the qualities that are to be brought to bear on getting the mind into concentration—mindfulness, alertness, ardency—are focused on your actions, your intentional actions. Mindfulness keeps things in mind so that you can recognize when something comes up: Is this something to be developed or something to be abandoned? Alertness watches what’s actually coming up—again not just what’s …
- Blessings… He found it by beginning with right concentration, getting the mind still, getting it focused on one thing. You begin by talking to yourself about what would be a good topic to focus on. He recommended the breath. That was the topic on which he was focused the night of his awakening. When he taught meditation, this was the topic he taught more than …
- Good at Thinking… In other words, you really are focused on what you’re doing. All your thinking relates to the breath, and then you evaluate with more and more skill what really feels best right now—not only in terms of the breath, but also in terms of the pressure of your focus. Ssometimes you can bear down too heavily on the breath, so that everything …
- The Right Touch… When you’re focused on stopping the cause, that’s how you give rise to the cessation of suffering. That’s the positive part. That’s the brightness. But the brightness isn’t only in the third noble truth; it’s also in the fourth, that the way to put an end to suffering involves nothing but good activities. We chant that again and …
- Samsara… In other words, when the mind gets focused in on the body like this, it wakes up the nerves of the body. As you’re aware of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out, allowing all the sense of tension to relax, the energy starts flowing. Ajaan Lee compares it to putting an electric current through a wire, through the wires …
- A Good Place to Stay… Are you ready to settle down? Try focusing on the breath for a while as it comes in and goes out, and see if you find it easy to stay here. If there’s some discomfort in the body, there are two ways you can treat it. One is to think of the breath energy going through that part of the body and loosening …
- Only One Person… Alertness focuses not just on anything coming up in the present moment. It focuses on your actions and the results you’re getting from your actions. And then ardency is what wants to get good results out of your actions, which means that if you’re doing something that’s not getting good results, you turn around and look very carefully at what you …
- Four Bases of Success… It’s simply a matter of, one, focusing the desire properly on the right goal; and then two, after you’ve chosen the goal, focusing on the path that leads there. If you spend all your time thinking about the goal, you’re never going to get there. You need to have a desire to follow the path: developing right view, right resolve, all …
- Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength… You stay consistently focused with the breath. To define concentration, the Buddha uses the word ekaggata, which can be translated as being one-pointed, but also can mean having one gathering place. In other places, he describes concentration as whole body awareness, so it’s more likely that in this case it means that everything in the mind is gathered around one topic—the …
- Metta Meditation… One of the things that you have to watch out for is the mind’s tendency to tense up the spot where it’s focused. So find a spot that feels good and think about keeping it relaxed, keeping it relaxed, keeping it relaxed as you keep tabs on it. If you slip off, be good-natured about coming back. As with any skill …
- An Admirable Friend — In Memory of Luang Loong… There are all kinds of things we could be doing on a Friday night, but we’re here focusing on our breath. Learn to squeeze some concentration, squeeze some mindfulness, squeeze some discernment out of the fact that we have a body that can breathe and a mind that can think and be aware: taking these very basic qualities and gaining the most from …
- A Strong Mind… When you’re developing the mind, you’re not sitting here focusing directly on the mind. You’re focusing on the breath. Or you can focus on the meditation word, buddho. You give the mind something to work with, to come back to repeatedly, because in the course of sticking with that one object, you’ve got to develop certain qualities. You don’t …
- Protection, Inside & Out… Appropriate attention focuses attention on questions of: What is skillful? What is not skillful? If something unskillful comes up, how do you get rid of it in an effective way? This you learn from listening to others and also from observing yourself. In fact, as the Buddha said, right view—appropriate attention—can come from two things. One is from outside influences. Someone else …
- The Problem of Suffering… You’re focusing on the breath coming in, going out. The teachings on the four noble truths, all the various ways of expressing the path, relate to what you’re doing right now. The important thing is what you’re doing. You pick up the Buddha’s teachings as they become necessary, as they become useful. But the first thing is to get the …
- Expanding Your Skill Set… And keep it focused in a way that feels just right, not putting too much pressure on it, but also not being so light that you easily slip away. The traditional image is of holding a baby chick in your hand. If you squeeze the chick, you kill it. If you hold it too loosely, it flies away. So you’ve got to hold …
- Capable… You keep focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. So you stay with the breath. That’s part of the body and it’s already there. What’s going to make a difference is developing those three qualities of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. Mindfulness is the ability to keep …
- How the Tree Leans… You can be sitting here very still with the mind focused on the present moment. But the present moment keeps changing. The present moment you were focused on just a few seconds ago is gone. The mind is leaning in different directions. As the Buddha said, based on the thoughts that you encourage in your mind, it’s going to lean in that direction …
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