Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have
     … It’s simply that we’re not paying attention. Thoughts go flitting through the mind and then leave an imprint on the body. Or events in the body can have an impact on the mind. All too often, if we’re not aware of this, the tension builds up and results in a sense of being burdened, being weighed down. The Buddha’s essential … 
  3. What Is One
     … So pay attention to what it needs. And then, when you’ve satisfied that part of the body, look for other parts of the body that are especially sensitive, and see if you can satisfy them, too. The more you can hit your sensitivities like this, the more satisfying the food of concentration will be. Then you can use it to deal with other … 
  4. High Level Metta
     … Even the way we breathe sometimes contributes to our suffering if we don’t pay attention to it. So you’ve got this time now. Pay attention to these things. What are you doing right now? How are you breathing? What are you thinking about? What are the perceptions that shape both how you breathe and how you think? What can you do to … 
  5. A Doctor’s Strategies
     … And in the beginning, it’s best to focus your attention on the shortest, simplest statements. Gradually, you begin to learn how to read your own mind and see what it needs, realizing like any good doctor that sometimes you have to use strategies. For instance, with the breath: You want the mind to stay with the breath so that it can settle down … 
  6. All Dhamma, All the Time
     … Because if you’re running around, not paying attention to things, or running around paying attention to things to the exclusion of what’s actually going on, you’re not going to be able to remember what happened because you saw it just in passing—if you saw it at all. So you make the mind still. That’s the first condition for listening … 
  7. Mind Your Own Business
     … This is where the Buddha pays careful attention to what he calls directed thought and evaluation: This is how you talk to yourself. Sometimes you break into speech based on your directed thought and evaluation. In fact, without directed thought and evaluation, there wouldn’t be any speech at all. Our problem is that often there’s not much of a filter. We have … 
  8. Restraint
     … What are you doing with them? Are you paying attention or are you not? If you are paying attention, why? And when you do, what are the results when you bring these things into the mind? In other words, take some responsibility for how you use your senses. They’re not just a playground. They’re openings out into a dangerous world—a world … 
  9. Contemplating the World You Create
    We focus the mind first at the breath because as you get to know the breath, you begin to realize that the mind opens itself up there, right at its attention to the breath. And that’s what we’re trying to understand. Our primary task here is not trying to understand the world outside. It’s trying to understand the worlds of our … 
  10. Training Your Minds
     … The crazy person will start saying things that are crazier and crazier to get your attention. You have to be resolved that you’re not going to get involved. If you’re patient enough, resilient enough, then after a while that other thinking will fall away. The fourth technique is to recognize that when a thought comes up, there’s going to be tension … 
  11. Grounded in the Elements
     … It’s just that there’s part of your awareness that tends to be the focal part, the part where you’re paying closest attention. That tends to be in one spot or you can make it in several spots at once or you can train it to be fully throughout the body—which is one of the things we’re trying to do … 
  12. But Not Sick in Mind
     … One is intentness, that you give it your full intention and your full attention. As the Thais say, you put your heart into it. When you’re watching the breath, you’re not just counting how many more hours, how many more minutes before the session is over. You’re thinking: “How can I really see this breath, how can I really see this … 
  13. Ignorance
     … You’re practicing what’s called appropriate attention: looking at the really important issues of what’s happening in the present moment and what you need to do in response. It’s not the case that you see suffering once and comprehend it and that’s all you need to do. Your powers of comprehension grow stronger as you develop the path, and you … 
  14. 1. The Entertaining Breath
     … You can give your full attention to the breath, total attention to the way the mind relates to the breath, and then you can play. And through playing around like this, you learn important lessons. So it’s not just idle play. It’s an exercise in developing intelligence—in particular, the intelligence that can see the connections between your intentions and the pleasure … 
  15. Unfabricated Happiness
     … Why let yourself breathe in a way that’s creating unnecessary stress? The usual reason is because you’re not paying attention. You think other things are more important. But here again, the Buddha’s pointing your attention to how the way you breathe is going to have an impact on your mood. Your mood, of course, is going to have an impact on … 
  16. Bring the Right Attitude
     … So try to bring as much attention as possible to it, as much calm attention, and you’ll find that the calmness of your attitude starts a feedback loop as the breath calms down. As the breath calms down, the mind can calm down. Stick with that sense of being nourished by the breath. This is what keeps the concentration work from getting too … 
  17. Contentment
     … He’s teaching us to learn how to focus our attention where it really matters, where it really will make a difference. When you think about relationships, think about the comment he made one time that it’s hard to meet anyone who has never been your mother or your father or your brother or your sister or your son or your daughter. Our … 
  18. Do You Want to Stop Suffering?
     … What you’re learning is that the mind can play a role in shaping its experience right now, and if it pays careful attention to what it’s doing, it can make a really nice experience. As the Buddha says, if you stay with this one object and evaluate it with more and more attention and more and more care so that you can … 
  19. Feelings of Pain
     … Then you pay close attention to what’s actually happening, because you want to understand: If the mind leaves its object, why did it leave? When you bring it back, what’s the best way to bring it back? When you bring it back, how do you reward it? If you’re focused on the breath, give it an especially satisfying breath as a … 
  20. Why Now
     … Place your attention there, and try to keep it there so you can observe: Does long breathing feel good? If it doesn’t feel good, you can change. You can try shorter breathing, deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels best right now. You can either try specific kinds of breathing, or you can simply pose … 
  21. Samvega
     … In cases like that, simply the fact that you pay attention to it is feeding it. So, starve it of attention. Like a dog that keeps coming around to your house, hoping for some food from you: You know that if you give it food, it’s going to hang around, and you don’t want the dog hanging around. So you just don … 
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