Search results for: "Focusing"
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- You’re Doing Something Wrong… either specific perceptions and feelings that you’re focusing on, or the way you’re focusing. That’s where you’re doing something wrong. Which is why you want to evaluate what you’re doing as you’re sitting here watching your breath. When you can admit your mistakes, that, the Buddha said, is a cause for growth in the Dhamma and Vinaya. The …
- UnattractiveAs Ajaan Fuang used to say, the breath is the basis of our skill here, and concentration focused on the breath is the safest of all the concentration practices. It’s the one where you can see most clearly the stages of jhana as the mind settles down. You can see the different kinds of fabrication: bodily, verbal, mental. Bodily, being the breath itself …
- Stick to Your Duties… We’re focusing on developing right concentration through right mindfulness and right effort—all of the concentration factors of the path. Make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath and put aside any other thoughts that have to do with the world. Whatever the world is doing out there right now, that’s not your business. Your business is the …
- Meditation as Play… In his instructions on how to focus on the mind while you’re focusing on the breath, there’s nothing that says, “I’ll now breathe in, making the mind grim. I’ll breathe out, making the mind grim.” The instructions are, “I’ll breathe in and out, gladdening the mind.” And how do you gladden the mind? You approach the meditation with an …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… Because he offers different views, different ways for doing things, a different sense of self, but focused on the doing: practicing generosity, practicing virtue, developing concentration, developing your discernment. He gives very clear instructions on how to do these things. So you want to clear away all the encumbrances that get in the way of really focusing where the problem is: your own clinging …
- The Four Noble Truths from Within… As you’re focusing on the breath, it’s good to remember that we’re not here worried about the air that scientists might be able to measure coming in and out through the nose. We’re concerned with the flow of energy in the body that we feel directly, because it’s something we can adjust. This process of adjusting our experience, having …
- Adjusting the Flame… So you get focused on one thing, get interested in it, and then do your best to make sure that the mind doesn’t drift off either into excess energy or deficient energy. If you have too much energy, the mind is going to want to leave. One of the ways of dealing with that is to focus on the sense of ease that …
- Breath Meditation: The Second Tetrad… If you’re focusing on your hands, allow it to spread up the arms. If you’re focusing on your feet, of course, allow it to spread up the legs. Let the breath find whatever rhythm allows that sense of fullness to spread up from those parts. Other people find that a sense of fullness starts in the middle of the chest. Again, allow …
- Strength of Discernment… I was talking with someone this morning who was concerned that she was too focused on her work. She has a job where she actually can continue working, and she wasn’t thinking too much about all the people out there in the world who are suffering from the quarantine right now, so she wondered if she was in denial. So I asked her …
- Giving Weight… You try to be very clear about where your awareness is focused. You make that focal point the really important issue. Normally, you focus on one thing but then something pulls you away, and you run after it. Your mind becomes a slave, like a dog running after whatever captures its attention. It’s under the power of all the things around you. As …
- Karma-ism… What does it mean for things to be *going on? *How do things *go on? *And in particular, what are we contributing to the going on of things? This is why meditation focuses on the mind. Not just to get the mind into pleasant states: You attain the pleasant states so that you can understand, “Exactly what is the mind doing? How does it …
- The World Does Not Endure… One is to keep focused on what he calls the body in and of itself: the body as you have it right here, and not the body in the world. You’re not concerned with how it looks. You’re not concerned with how strong it is, how young it is. You’re concerned just with, “What is it like having a body right …
- The Forerunner of All Things… This is why we’re focused on the breath, because the breath is right near the mind. I’ve heard sometimes people say “What are you going to do when you die? You’ve been focusing on your breath all your whole life, but the breath is going to leave you.” The reason we focus on the breath is not to get the breath …
- Rhythms of the Mind… keep focused on the body in and of itself—in this case, the breath—ardent, alert, mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Just do that again and again and again. And focus on two things. One, try to be as sensitive as you can to what you’re doing and the results you’re getting. And two, try to …
- Evaluation… That’s when you have real singleness of preoccupation, where the one thing you’re focused on fills your awareness. And your awareness is broad. All the analogies the Buddha gives for right concentration have to do with full-body awareness: the bathman kneading water into his entire lump of bath dough; the spring filling the all waters of the lake with cool water …
- Scribe Knowledge, Warrior Knowledge… In breath meditation, you’re focusing on the breath element, which is one of those elements. So what’s going on here? If it’s not your self, then why focus on it?” You’re focusing on it because simply being told that it’s not your self is not enough to make you get rid of your attachments to it. You’ve got …
- Nuclear Thinking… Get used to having this enlarged frame, for otherwise, if your mind is totally one-pointed, focused on being aware of only one little point of the body, it gets easily knocked over. One thought can come in and totally overwhelm that one little point without much effort at all. You suddenly find yourself with your concentration destroyed, and your mind splashing all over …
- Respect Your Center… the place in the body where the breath feels good, and the mind feels at home when it’s focused there. You want to know that spot and learn how to work with it, learn how to come back to it as quickly as you can if you’ve lost it. This will take some exploration, experimenting with different spots and noticing where your …
- The Big Picture… You realize that even though you’re going to be focusing on the present moment, it’s not just for the sake of the present moment. It’s also for the sake of the future. We hear so much about the wisdom of just being in the present, but the Buddha didn’t define wisdom or discernment that way. He said that wisdom or …
- Respect for Tranquility & Insight… We hear so much about putting what’s in the Pali Canon aside and just focusing on your practice. It also means putting what we’ve learned from the different ajaans aside as well and just focusing on what we’re doing right now. Have some basic concepts of what has to be done and then just do it. Then learn from what you …
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