Search results for: "Focusing"
- Page 32
- Fear of Death… They will manifest themselves outside — in your thoughts, words, and deeds — but they come from within, so that’s where the main effort is focused. This is why the section of the noble eightfold path that deals with concentration starts with right effort: the effort to give rise to skillful qualities, like mindfulness, alertness, discernment. These are the things that are really going to …
- Riding an Elephant to Catch Grasshoppers… What you do is what you know best, and all too often for us that’s an area totally obscured because we’re focused someplace else. We clean out the mind so that we can watch it. Nothing much may be happening, but that means that when something little does happen, you’re going to see it, if you keep your proper frame of …
- The Skills of Stillness… Then, having gained that larger perspective, he then focused on his intentions in the present moment. That’s where he found awakening. So you can focus on the present moment here. Focus on your intentions right here. Set up the intention that you want to stay right here with the breath, all the way in, all the way out—each breath as it comes …
- Guardian Meditations… They’re focused mainly on bodily fabrication, how you breathe, giving you different ideas about breathing long or short, training yourself to breathe aware of the whole body, training yourself to calm bodily fabrication. How do you do that without stifling the breath? How do you get the mind quiet? That involves mental fabrication, your perceptions and feelings. How do you perceive the breath …
- Drowsiness… Or you can think about the Buddha—anything that helps keep the mind focused on a Dhamma topic that energizes you. These are the things you do in preparation. There are also things you can do when you find yourself drifting off in spite of your first efforts. This is where you have to be firmly on the side of not drifting off and …
- Unlearning Unskillful Behavior… If you know you have certain problems focusing on the breath, focusing on getting the breath to be comfortable, ask yourself, “In what ways am my conceiving this problem in a way that’s keeping me trapped?” I was talking recently to someone who was of the opinion that you had to get the breath energy really nice all the way throughout the body …
- Get Out of Yourself… So as you’re sitting here with the meditation, focusing on the breath, if these narratives do come up about how you’re not making progress as fast as you’d like, about how the goal seems far away: Get out of yourself. Think of all the beings in the world and where they’re heading. You, at least, are heading in the right …
- Take Care of Your Tools… That’s one of the reasons why Ajaan Lee focused on the breath in all his books, because it’s the safest object of meditation you can find. It keeps you centered in the body with a balanced sense of ease and well-being. And that ease and well-being are your measuring stick. If things start feeling really strange and weird, or very …
- Enjoying the Path… It’s focusing its interest here, focusing its interest there, and it blocks out other things in doing so. You begin to see that there are certain ways of breathing that are associated with skillful states of mind, and others that are associated with unskillful states of mind. The relationship goes back and forth. Sometimes it’s the breath that encourages the skillful or …
- Homage Through the Practice… This is why he focuses his teaching on the issue of suffering and stress. He said that if you solve this one problem, you’ve solved all of the mind’s problems. Some people complain that the teaching sounds very narrow—just focusing on suffering when there are so many other bigger issues in life—but the question is, are the big issues really …
- The Strength of Conviction… Sometimes you find yourself suddenly focused on the earth element in the body. Everything gets very solid. And depending on how you feel about it, it can be either very pleasant or very unpleasant. It’s unpleasant when you want it to be something else. It can be pleasant when you want it to be that way. If you find it unpleasant, ask yourself …
- Right View Tells You What to Do… We’re working on the one hand trying to stay focused with the breath in and of itself—in other words, the breath totally on its own terms, without any reference to the world outside. Of course there will be thoughts that go to the world outside: Those you put aside. And all too often what you find is that you’ve left your …
- Wearing the Breath… So, if you’re focused at one point—say, the tip of the nose—and you’re trying to block out everything else, you’re going to miss where those patterns of tension are. You’re going to miss an important step in the meditation, which is to see thoughts as they arise and catch them when they’re still in the process of …
- The Raft of Jhana… This is more directly focused inside, but the way you deal with other people is going to have an impact on how you talk to yourself. The way you talk to them, the kinds of things you think about, the ways you comment on things, is going to have an impact on the way you talk to yourself, the way you direct your thoughts …
- Proactive Mindfulness… So whatever spot in your body you’re focused on, think of the breath energy flowing in, flowing out naturally, with nothing to obstruct it. At the same time, don’t let your focus be so weak that you keep slipping off. You want to maintain continual focus. In Pali this is called anupassana, sticking with something, keeping track of something, continuing all the …
- A Touchstone at the Breath… Stay focused on your breath while you’re listening, because right here is where everything is happening. The breath is your anchor in the present moment. It gets you in touch with how you experience the body, how you experience the mind. It’s in this direct experience where you have to comprehend suffering. You don’t comprehend it by theorizing about it, or …
- Think Your Way to Stillness… And a lot of that has to do with not focusing so much on the issue of self, but more focusing on the skill that you’re working on here. As the skill gets better, your sense of self gets more confident, and you begin to sort out all the different selves you’ve had: the ones you’ve been keeping in the back …
- False Friends… Get involved with them only enough to get them to go away, whether that involves simply focusing on noticing that you’ve slipped off and coming back to the breath or, if you have to, focusing on the drawbacks of following those trains of thought until you really decide you don’t want to go there. Or simply ignore the thought if it’s …
- Mindfulness of Death & the Deathless… Every time he talks about the importance of focusing on the present moment, it’s always in the context of mindfulness of death and the work that needs to be done. As he says, do your duty right now, right now. You’re not hankering after the future, you’re not dwelling on the past. You’re focusing on what’s appearing right now …
- The Path is Fabricated… You have to be focused very intently on that bowl of oil. That, the Buddha said, is a symbol for mindfulness—in this case, mindfulness of the body. So there’s a lot in the Canon to show that mindfulness is not necessarily an open, receptive mind state. Sometimes you are mindful to be open and receptive, but other times, you’re mindful to …
- Load next page...
