Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Always Observe Your Mind
     … So if you really have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, it means you have to focus on your mind, because the mind in the present moment has a lot of power. The same with the principle of virtue: When you take the precepts, you’re basically setting up an intention, and your intention is what’s going to make all the difference. If … 
  3. The Buddha’s Protection
     … To maintain your focus here and to put aside all unskillful thoughts, the Buddha recommends developing three qualities. The first is mindfulness itself—the ability to keep something in mind. Once you’ve made up your mind to stay with the breath, you remember that, you hold on to that. At the same time, you remember from your past experiences, when disturbances come up … 
  4. Keeping Your Head
     … In other words, you need to have your priorities as to what’s important, what’s not important, and focus on what’s important. As the Buddha said, the sign of a wise person is realizing the duties that fall to you and focusing on those duties, and not taking on duties that don’t really fall to you. And one of your main … 
  5. Hindrances
     … So when you meditate and focus on the breath, it’s not as if you’re running away from potential future dangers. You’re actually preparing for them. As for doubt—doubt about yourself, doubt about the Dhamma—the best way to deal with that is to test the teachings. The Buddha says that if you focus on the breath, you can give rise … 
  6. Listening to the Body
     … If you lose your focus, come back to that one spot. And tell yourself: If all you had to do in this world was to breathe in a way that felt nice in the navel, what would that be like? If you can’t focus on the navel or if that’s too precise a spot, well, just say, the general center of the … 
  7. Virtuous Beginnings
     … When you look at something, do you let your eyes focus on things that give rise to greed? Or do you hold them in check? Do you let them focus on things that give rise to anger? Delusion? Any of the defilements? Or do you hold them in check? Holding them in check doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t look at anything … 
  8. Metta Meditation
     … It hurts here, it’s tight there, it’s tense here, and if you focus on those areas, they become the little monster in the hall of mirrors. Try to find the spaces between the pains and the parts of the body that feel okay. They don’t have to be great. They just have to be relatively pleasant. Focus on them and allow … 
  9. One Person
     … You have to focus on where you still are in control, the choices you’re making right now, and try to make them as skillful as possible. This is why we come to meditate, because we focus on the mind, we focus on our intentions. The Thai translation for samadhi means a firm intention: You make up your mind to stay with the breath … 
  10. Work on Your Mind
     … Ask yourself, “Where do you feel the breath most clearly right now?” Focus your attention there, and then ask yourself, “What would feel really good right there?” The word “feeling good” here can mean anything from energizing to soothing to relaxing. In other words, what would you like right now, given the state of your body? What would bring things into balance? What would … 
  11. Mindfulness Gets Intimate
    We focus our attention on the present moment because of the way the Buddha taught karma. He said that our actions influence the future, and they also influence the present moment. In fact, it’s our present actions that will determine whether we’re going to suffer in the present or not. So we want to look into the present moment to see exactly … 
  12. Start Out Small
    Start Out Small September 22, 2003 Focus on your breath. And as for what’s going to happen when you focus on the breath, put that thought aside. And where the meditation is going to take you and how it’s going to take you there: Put those thoughts aside as well. Be careful not to anticipate too much, because when you know too … 
  13. The Problem of Suffering
     … All the teachings in the Canon, all 84,000 sections of the Dhamma, focus on this one problem and its solution. You don’t have to do the problem. The problem is already there, already happening. The solution, though is something you have to do. As the phrase in the chant just now said, antakiriya, to make an end: It’s to make an … 
  14. A Heart & Mind of Goodwill
    Close your eyes and focus your attention on the breath. It’s good to start with a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths to make very clear the sensation of breathing in the body, because the breathing in the body is what we’ll focusing on—not so much the air coming in and out of the nose, but the energy … 
  15. Choices that Matter
     … You can decide where you want to focus in the body. You can choose what kinds of perceptions you hold in mind about the breath. You can perceive the breath as the air coming in and out through the nose, or you can perceive it as the energy flow that goes through the body that allows the air to come in and out. The … 
  16. Imperturbable
     … This is where you have to clean things out in the body a bit, because when you start focusing in on the body, the power of your focus tends to push the blood around, interrupting the flow of energy and getting very restrictive. It can be very uncomfortable. So the natural reaction is to run away, to leave the focus. You find yourself bouncing … 
  17. Unattractiveness
     … You focus on the breath, creating a sense of well-being in the body that creates a good foundation for the mind. That’s something good you can do with it. So knowing that we’re going to have to leave the body but we have this body here right now, we can get some good out of it. That contemplation makes you more … 
  18. Full-Body Breath
     … You seclude the mind from sensuality, you pull it away from your desire for sensual pleasures, you seclude it from unskillful mental qualities, and you focus it on one of the four establishings of mindfulness. Those, the Canon says, are the proper topics of concentration, right concentration. You can focus on the body in and of itself, like the breath, or feelings in and … 
  19. Defabricating Anger
     … Don’t focus on their bad side. Focus on their good side.” You say, “That’s beneath me. That’s an insult to my dignity.” But then if you maintain your dignity, what’s going to happen to your goodness? Your goodness is going to die. Your heedfulness is going to die. When that dies, you’re dead. So you do what needs to … 
  20. Achieving Balance
     … Where are those bones? In other words, when you think about the bones in the toe, focus on the feeling in the toe. With the bones in your feet, focus on the feelings in your feet; and so on, up through the body. This way you give the mind work to do. If your mind won’t settle down with the bones, survey the … 
  21. A Connoisseur of the Breath
     … As you stay with the breath, you focus on the breath in ways that deal with feelings, that deal with the mind, that deal with mental qualities, but you never really leave the breath. You simply train yourself to observe things in conjunction with the breath. So of all the various places you could establish mindfulness, the breath is the most important. It’s … 
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