Search results for: "Focus"
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- Do, Maintain, Use… You made a choice about what to focus on, what not to focus on. When you can be clear about what you’re doing, and you see that you made the wrong choice, you can undo that choice and come right back. You begin to realize that you’re more involved in this than you thought. There’s so much going on in the …
- All Eye… But any spot in the body where there seems to be a center of energy, focus your attention there. Think of the breath radiating from that spot as you breathe in. If there are any obstructions to its spreading out to fill the whole body, think of those obstructions dissolving away. Then move up to the next center of energy, and then the next …
- Protecting Yourself Against Yourself… You notice, as you focus on the breath, that you’ve got all three of those right here. There’s directed thought and evaluation aimed at the breath, and the perception of breath that you hold in mind. This afternoon, I had to explain—for the umpteenth the time—that “breath” here is not just the air coming in and out of the lungs …
- Four Bases of Success… It’s the same with choosing where exactly in the body you’re going to focus. If you focus on the head, sometimes it may give you a headache, so you focus further down. Some people find that if they focus down around the stomach they start getting sleepy, so you have to notice what effect your choices are having on your ability to …
- Behind the Scenes… You want a harmless happiness, so you focus on the source of harmless happiness: your mind. You realize that everything depends on actions, so you want to focus your attention on areas where you can make a difference. Well, this is the big place where you can make a difference: your own mind right here in the present moment. And as for the issues …
- Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength… This is a strength because it keeps you from wandering off and losing your focus. And as you focus in on the breath, you find that your steady focus does change the quality of the breath along with the quality of your experience of the body. If it’s skillful, it gives rise to a greater sense of well-being. This is how mindfulness …
- Relationships… You focus on your breath and that’s your only responsibility. Be with the breath. The breath is already happening. There’s nothing much you have to do. You don’t have to breathe the body. The body will breathe on its own. All you have to do is tend it, nudge it a little bit in the right direction, so that the breath …
- Capable… The important thing about desire is that you focus it on the causes, and not so much on the results. The desire for results is there in the back of your mind, of course, but you realize if you just focus on the results, it’s a floating desire that doesn’t accomplish anything and actually gets in the way. If you focus your …
- How to Feed Mindfulness… When you focus the mind in a certain way, what are the results over time? If you’re mindful of your actions, you can really see this for yourself. If you change the way you focus, if you change the way you breathe, what effect does that have over time? Sometimes the effects are immediate; sometimes they take a while to seep in. Only …
- A Sense of Yourself… Or you may focus on more time to meditate: more walking meditation, more sitting meditation. Or you may make up your mind you want to do more Dhamma reading. But whatever your choice, you want to push things. Three months is not going to break you. It gives you a chance to build up a momentum. At the end of the three months, if …
- Skillful Desire… But we take that desire, we focus it properly, and that’s how we give rise to the path. As when you’re getting the mind concentrated right now: There has to be the desire to do it. It’s not going to happen on its own. But simply wanting it to happen is not going to make it happen, either. You have to …
- Lift Your Mind… The Buddha doesn’t say that you focus on any particular part of the body. But wherever the breath is obvious—wherever you have sensations that tell you, “now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out”—stay with those sensations. Again, there’s no narrative here. There’s no other context, just being with the breath. Then you’re alert …
- Concentration: A Balancing Act… So that’s one way of inducing the mind to really want to focus here: to say, “There’s got to be a way out.” The other way is to give rise to a sense of joy. The Buddha talks about seeing your mind as it develops. You begin to see that as you’ve been practicing, unskillful habits have fallen away. You are …
- Changing Your Default Settings… For the sake of the meditation, the questions are: “Where are you focused? How is the focus going? Could it be stronger? Is it too strong? How is the breath? Is it a good place to stay? What adjustments would be useful to get it to be nicer? What’s the feeling tone you’re getting out of this? And how about your perceptions …
- Categorical Truths… There are other topics you can choose, but the breath is the topic that’s most universally accessible, so we’ll focus on that for right now. You try to focus on the breath in a way that works—in other words, gets the mind into concentration, where you feel centered, clear, alert, and your different thinkings don’t lead you around by the …
- Owning Your Actions… But we don’t want to focus on that. We want to focus on the power we have to change things now with our actions. This is why, of the ajaans’ Dhamma talks, I’d say eighty percent are basically pep talks. The people they were teaching in Thailand, especially back in the time of Ajaan Mun, were all children of peasants. They were …
- The Power of Human Effort… You focus on one aspect of the breath and then you evaluate how things are going. Is the breath comfortable? Is it not? Is your focus solid, or is it not? Is it too light? Too heavy? Could you be focusing some place else? Could the breath be doing something else, going in a different direction? These are things you have some control over …
- Appropriate Attention… For the Buddha, attention is a matter of which questions you focus on trying to answer. Here the questions you want to answer are: “What is suffering? Why is there suffering? What can I do to put an end to it?” Those questions are worth answering. As for other questions, the Buddha said, don’t worry. They’re not important. Most people believe, with …
- Peace of Mind… When you’re meditating, you really want to focus on this issue: What kind of breathing feels good, what kind of breathing is soothing to a tired mind, a tired body, what kind of breathing is energizing when you need energy, what kind of breathing is healing when the mind and the body need to be healed? The breath energy has lots of facets …
- Expand Your Expectations… It’s very easy to focus on the breath for a while and then go off for a bit then come back for a while and then go off for a bit. There are these little bumps in the breath that tend to knock us off. See if you can ride right through the bumps. Some people, when they start watching the mind, realize …
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