Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Chronic Pain
     … If, say, the pain is in the left side of the body, focus on the right. If it’s in the back, focus in the front, or anyplace in the body where you can have a sense of well-being as the breath energy flows, anyplace that can be nurtured by the in-and-out breath. For the time being, resist any temptation to … 
  3. Concentration
    Concentration September 12, 2011 Focus your attention right here. The mind will be creating other “heres” to carry you away from right here. But you don’t have to go with them. Ajaan Lee’s image is of a post at the edge of the sea. The sea rises, but the post doesn’t rise with the sea. The sea ebbs away, but the … 
  4. Love for the Dhamma
     … When things aren’t going well outside, where are you going to focus your attention? Well, you could focus outside and just get upset about things outside, but that doesn’t accomplish anything. If you’re wise, you learn from the hardships the lesson that you’ve got to focus your attention more and more inwardly. If you’re going to find happiness, you … 
  5. Own Your Actions
     … But focus very carefully on what you are doing right now. Because that’s where you get to see things in action, to see your mind in action and understand what it’s doing that’s leading to happiness, what it’s doing that’s leading to pain. And you can do something about it. If you applied not-self, not-self, not-self … 
  6. Comfortable With the Truth
     … Our eyes point out, and we tend to focus our mind on things outside as well. Especially when things are not going well: We look outside for somebody, something to blame for the problem. And yet if you had to have the whole world straightened out in order to be happy, it’d never happen. You’d die first. And as it turns out … 
  7. Dwelling in Emptiness
     … So really focus in here. After a while, the issues of the world begin to go far away. Learn how to appreciate that: the fact that there’s even less disturbance in the mind. But there is still some disturbance. There’s the directed thought, the evaluation of the first jhana. For a while, you can’t let them go. You have to put … 
  8. Truths of the Will
     … This is an area where your will has a lot to say, has a lot of impact if you focus it properly. Putting an end to suffering is a big job, but it is humanly possible. And because it is possible, it’s really worthwhile to focus your energies in that direction. That really does give a worthwhile direction to your life. Some people … 
  9. The Power of Truth
     … So, the question is then, which truth are you going to focus on? And that’s answered by asking what the result is going to be. What is it going to get you to do? If you focus on how pleasant the aggregates are, you’re going to hold onto them. If you focus on their stressful side, then you’re going to do … 
  10. Getting Your Head Around the Goal
     … So we focus on following the path. We don’t try to turn the path into the goal. That would be like wanting to go to the Grand Canyon when you’ve heard that the Grand Canyon is like a big trench in the earth, and you dig a big trench across your path: your own personal Grand Canyon. That makes it impossible to … 
  11. Training the Mind
     … Just focus on your breath—nothing elaborate, nothing abstract, just the sensation of breathing in the present moment. You can focus on any spot in the body where there’s a sensation that lets you know: Now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out. It may be the movement of the air in the nose, the rising and falling of … 
  12. Learning by Doing
     … Is there a part of the body you can focus on and not tense it up? I knew someone once who found that the only place she could focus in the body without tensing up was down at the base of the spine, so she had to start there. The point is, though, that as you create the state of concentration, you’re creating … 
  13. Respect for Concentration
     … Sometimes it seems like we’re going against the Buddha’s teachings on inconstancy, stress, and not self when we focus on putting the mind in a state that’s constant, easeful, and ours. We get really absorbed in this sense of oneness and we come to identify with it, both with the stillness and with the object of the stillness as well. It … 
  14. Sending Happiness
     … the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself in directed thought and evaluation, the feelings you focus on, the perceptions you focus on. What needs to be changed? You can change the way you breathe. How do you direct your thoughts to the breath? How do you evaluate the breath? Or if you find that the mind isn’t willing to settle … 
  15. Virtue, Concentration, Discernment
     … What are its values? And how harmless is the commentator? The commentator will learn how to focus on other parts of the mind—as you’re going through the day, as you’re sitting in meditating—but also, it has to learn how to focus on itself, it has to train itself. For instance, it may be focusing on the fact that the pressure … 
  16. The Perception of Space
     … She tried to focus here, and couldn’t stay here; tried to focus there, and couldn’t stay there. There was no place in the body at all where she could find any comfortable focus. Then, she said, she thought of space—the space around the body; the space permeating through the body. So she focused totally on the perception of space and let … 
  17. Protecting Your Space
     … It’s just a matter of noticing—when you see that focusing on certain things gives more energy to your greed or more energy to your anger—that you learn not to focus on those things. You focus on other things. Or you look at the same thing in a different way. Say there’s a picture that gives rise to lust. Think about … 
  18. On the Path of the Breath
     … And to help yourself along, you might try making the breath more comfortable wherever you focus. For example, as you focus on the back of the neck, notice: Is there tension there? When you breathe in do you build up tension there? When you breathe out are you holding on to tension? What can you do to relax it? This is actually moving into … 
  19. Quiet in Every Way
     … There has to be a focus—the focus of a hunter. Anthropologists say that when they try to pick up the skills of primitive tribes, these are the hardest of all—the skills of a hunter—because being a hunter requires so much mind/body discipline. So we need to be disciplined, even though it takes effort, for we’re here hunting the deathless … 
  20. Timeless Practice
     … That’s where we focus our attention: on the path. It starts with right view and goes to right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. These are things we try to develop. In the course of developing them, we learn how to comprehend suffering and we learn how to abandon craving, so the focus is on the … 
  21. Levels of the Breath
     … What you’re going to notice depends on which one you focus on; and which one you focus on is going to determine how strong and steady and precise your concentration can be. First you work with the in-and-out breath, which is the easiest to observe and can get the mind to a certain level of concentration, but the in-and-out … 
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