Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Equanimity as a Skill
     … But you have the choice of where you’re going to focus your attention right now and what you’re going to do with what you’re finding in the here and now. So when we think of equanimity in terms of kamma, it doesn’t just leave you there where you are. It focuses your attention on what you can do. When I … 
  3. Rehab Work
     … If your attention skips off someplace else, you miss a lot of the signals. You’re trying to stay with the breath, but don’t stay just through force of will. Try to stay with a sense of curiosity. You’re exploring and learning new habits. You may discover that the way you’ve been breathing has not been good for the body. Some … 
  4. The Buddha’s Map
     … His sketch directs your attention right there. Our problem is that we want to go off and sketch other things. Pay attention to the Buddha’s sketches, and then look inside to see what those sketches are pointing to. Sketch a path for yourself. Think of his teachings as a map, and then look at what you have inside yourself that corresponds to the … 
  5. Cooking Skills
     … So why choose the constricted ways? Usually, it’s because we’re not paying attention. We’re thinking about something else. So here we’re going to think solely about the breath. That’s where we bring the verbal fabrication. Keep your attention directed to the breath, and then comment on it. Does it feel good? If it doesn’t feel good, what would … 
  6. How Completion is Found
     … What heedfulness means is that you have to focus your attention on what you’re doing right now and try to do it well. That’s where and that’s how the goal is going to be attained. Now, you have no idea how long it’s going to take, whether you’re going to make it in this lifetime or some later lifetime … 
  7. May I Look After Myself with Ease
     … When you pay attention to them: That’s when you feed them, you keep them going. But as you decide, “I don’t need to pay attention to these things,” they’re like stray dogs and cats that you used to feed all the time. Of course, they come and swarm all over your yard. But when there’s no more food, after a … 
  8. Cleaning up Your Personal Environment
     … The problem with social-grease speech, if you’re really not paying attention to what you’re saying, is that you end up falling into other forms of wrong speech. With idle chatter, by definition, you’re not really paying much attention to your intention as to why you’re speaking. But if the intention is to put the other person at ease, to … 
  9. A Home for the Mind
     … The more you pay attention to what’s going on, the more you pay attention to this principle of cause and effect, then the more you begin to discern suffering and its cause. The chant we had just now, about discerning suffering, sounds a little strange. You might think, “Of course we discern suffering. I can tell when I’m suffering.” Well, it’s … 
  10. Inner Baggage
     … There’s also the way you focus your attention on the breath and how you evaluate it. That has an impact as well. This is called verbal fabrication. You learn how to ask the right questions of the breath. Focus on it in such a way that you’re not putting too much weight on it, you’re not putting too little pressure on … 
  11. What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now
     … Thinking about it requires appropriate attention—in other words, making sure that you take these teachings and apply them to the real issue, which is why is it that you’re causing suffering all the time, even when you’re hoping—in fact, we’re always hoping through our actions—to bring about well-being. But why is it we create suffering? What’s … 
  12. The Equanimity that Doesn’t Give Up
     … He said to think in terms of appropriate attention, to think in terms of the four noble truths. Ask yourself questions as to what’s skillful and what’s not. Put things to the test, evaluate them. There’s a lot of thinking in following the path. So we’re not trying to cut off our brains and just say, “Okay, well I’ll … 
  13. Developing Absorption
     … Protect any thoughts that help direct your attention to the breath. Those are things to develop. So you have to pass judgment as to which things you should let go, which things you should develop. To do that, you develop three qualities of mind. One is mindfulness, just remembering why you’re here, what you’re trying to do. And also remembering to recognize … 
  14. A Concentration Checklist
     … In other words, you’re paying attention to the breath and all of a sudden your mind slips off to something else. All you have to do is just reestablish attention at the breath. But then to maintain it, you may have to deal with other issues. The Buddha mentions boredom as a possible problem: You’re sitting here and nothing seems to be … 
  15. Discernment: Commit & Reflect
     … Yet the mind’s constantly flowing out, paying attention to things outside, and paying very little attention to itself. So we’ve got to turn that around. Of course, simply looking at the mind can get pretty depressing. This is why you also commit yourself to the practice. This is a quality of truthfulness. If you’re going to know the truth—as Ajaan … 
  16. Behind the Scenes
     … You realize that everything depends on actions, so you want to focus your attention on areas where you can make a difference. Well, this is the big place where you can make a difference: your own mind right here in the present moment. And as for the issues that would pull you away, you want to see them as small so that you really … 
  17. Close to the Heart
     … We let go of the outside distractions, and ultimately turn our attention to the other part of the one-on-one, which is the mind aware of what’s going on in here. Back when I was first ordained, Ajaan Fuang had me memorize the Divine Mantra, which, I must admit, struck me as kind of strange, as it centered on the six elements … 
  18. Impatience
     … the line between just right and too little effort or too little attention. That way, you get a better and better sense of “just rightness.” So you want to maintain this steadiness of your gaze. The steadier it is, the more clearly you can see when things are going well in the practice, when things are not going well—and you have a sense … 
  19. Patience & Endurance
     … The purpose of that acceptance, of course, is to get us to pay more careful attention to what we’re doing. This is one of the reasons why we meditate. Actions come out of the mind. If the mind is well trained, then it’s going to do things skillfully, to have more skillful intentions—to at least be able to hold its unskillful … 
  20. For a Routine That Isn’t Routine
     … We go through the motions, stop paying attention, which means we miss out on a lot of the opportunities that come from meditating. So we have to learn how to make it special every night. Part of that we do—which is part of the routine—with the chants we have in the beginning. We think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha … 
  21. When Nothing’s Happening
     … Maybe you haven’t been paying careful attention.” That’s what is going to be to pull you up, makes you go further: Your insights get more refined because your attention has become more refined. So start with the breath. Is the breath as totally comfortable as it could be? Is it a comfortable breath filling the whole body, every little square centimeter? Look … 
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