Search results for: "Attention"

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2. Play AudioFull, Focused Attention
    … Where do you feel the breath? Where do you feel the process of breathing? Pay attention right there. Try to develop a quality of intentness in what you’re doing, giving it your full attention. Be very careful to keep this in mind, each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out, that this is where you want to stay—with the sensation … 
3. Play AudioAdmirable Friendship
    … The most important internal factor is appropriate attention. The question is, which comes first? In the texts, they talk about having admirable friends first, because it’s through having admirable friends that you learn about appropriate attention to begin with. But then, of course, admirable friendship is something you seek when you start to develop appropriate attention. So the two help each other along … 
4. Play AudioAppropriate Attention
    … Come to them with appropriate attention and you’ll begin to learn from them. Appropriate attention is basically applying right view, and right view is the beginning of the path. Use the path to see that the cravings are not worth the effort that goes into them. In the beginning, the Buddha has you focus your craving on the path itself, so that you … 
5. Play AudioA Touchstone at the Breath
   The Buddha never taught bare attention. The only types of attention he talked about were two: appropriate and inappropriate. In other words, even the way you pay attention falls under the categories of skillful and unskillful karma. You can pay attention in a way that causes suffering, or you can pay attention in a way that helps alleviate suffering. So you want to know … 
6. Play AudioRandom Word Generators
    … When they keep coming back during that period, they’ll whine and they’ll scratch and whatever, but you have to be firm in paying them no attention. If that analogy seems too harsh, think about a crazy person coming to talk to you. The crazy person wants your attention, but you realize that even if you give the crazy person enough attention just … 
7. Play AudioRight View, Right Attention
    … You’re applying the quality that the Buddha calls “appropriate attention.” Yesterday we talked about the frameworks of right view. But it’s one thing to have right view, and it’s another thing to actually apply it. Appropriate attention is the quality of mind that takes what you’ve learned from right view about what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, what … 
8. Play AudioTurn Off the Automatic Pilot
    … But we’re not paying careful attention. If you really start paying careful attention, you start seeing that there are areas where you’re adding a lot of stress where you don’t have to. It may not seem like much stress from moment to moment, but it builds up. Try to catch these habits of the mind where you’re applying too much … 
9. Play AudioArdency
    … Lying behind all this is a quality called appropriate attention. This is what defines what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. Appropriate attention means seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. You see that there is stress, there is a cause for stress—something arises along with it, something you’re doing right now that creates the stress. There’s the … 
10. Play AudioA Special Time
    When you sit down to meditate, keep reminding yourself that this is a special time for giving full attention to the training of the mind. Now, it is important that you regard the whole rest of the day as an opportunity to train the mind as well. In other words, try to keep the mind centered, keep watch over the mind in the midst … 
11. Play AudioWrite It Down in Your Heart
     … It means thinking about the talk in terms of, “How does this apply to me, especially my problem of suffering?” The person of lap discernment listens to the talk, pays attention, asks those questions, but then, when he gets up from the talk, doesn’t pay attention to it anymore. He just drops it, like a person who has a lap full of seeds … 
12. Play AudioTaming the Elephant
    We’ve lived with our breath all our life, but we haven’t paid much attention to it. Now that we’re going to pay attention to it, it’s like trying to establish a friendship with someone that you’ve lived with but you never really paid attention to. You’ve neglected them, sometimes mistreated them without realizing it. So, sometimes the period … 
13. Play AudioAppropriate Attention
     … When we’re sitting and meditating, we focus more of our attention on the four noble truths, which means focusing appropriate attention on the duties of the truths. Like right now, we’re trying to get the mind to settle down, create a state of right concentration, which is something we should develop. As for anything that would come up and interfere with the … 
14. Play AudioAnchored in the Present
     … The activity of staying focused on the breath contains the activity of attention. The act of attention to the breath, the Buddha says, counts as a kind of feeling, which is kind of a strange statement, but apparently it relates to the fact that every feeling has an element of fabrication. In this case, the attention is the fabrication. As you’re staying with … 
15. Play AudioPast & Future in the Present
     … Or you don’t want to pay attention to how you gain them. In cases like that, the desire actually becomes an obstacle. But if you really pay attention to the present moment, you’ve got things to play with here. You can play with the length of the breath, how deep it goes, how heavy or light it is. These are things you … 
16. Play AudioAction & the End of Action
     … So pay attention to the little details, because your actions are there in the details. If you can’t pay attention to the little details of what you’re doing physically, it’s going to be impossible to notice what you’re doing mentally, in the mind. After all, that’s where all the training is aimed: at purifying the mind. The mind isn … 
17. Play AudioAlighting on the Dhamma
     … So, you’re single-minded and you’re single-hearted in giving yourself to the concentration, giving it your full attention. Then you apply appropriate attention. Start asking the right questions. The Buddha defines appropriate attention in two different contexts. One is in terms of mundane right view, or the mundane level of categorical teachings, which is that skillful qualities should be developed, and … 
18. Play AudioPrerequisites for the Practice
     … This ties into appropriate attention, because that’s precisely one of the issues that appropriate attention looks at. The word “attention” in the Buddha’s teachings means basically which questions you pay attention to, the ones you try to answer. He never taught bare attention, because there are no bare questions. There are appropriate questions and inappropriate questions, based on whether they help or … 
19. Play AudioThe Importance of Being Focused
     … what’s important in life, what things deserve attention, what things don’t deserve attention. If you really believe that the training of the mind is important, that’s your main argument against going off with these other thoughts. After all, it is the mind that shapes your experience, first in the sense of choosing what you’re going to pay attention to, because … 
20. Play AudioThe Wisdom of Wising Up
    The Wisdom of Wising Up February 15, 2011 When you meditate during a Dhamma talk, pay very little attention to the talk. Give your primary attention to the meditation, to what you’re doing right now: focusing on the breath. If you find the mind wandering off, bring it back. The talk helps you realize when you’ve wandered off. It acts like a … 
21. Play AudioStrength for Stillness
     … Alertness is the attention you’re paying to see what you’re doing in the present moment, seeing what’s actually going on. Is the breath coming in? Is it going out? How is it going in? How is it going out? Does it feel good? If it doesn’t feel good, then you can bring in some more ardency to pay careful attention … 
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