Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Sowing Good Seeds
    Focus your attention on the breath. Ask yourself: Where do you feel the breath in the body? Where do you feel the energy of the breathing? Sometimes it’s at the nose, but sometimes it’s not. It’s more down in the chest and the abdomen. And if the diaphragm expands, it’s not just the diaphragm. Other parts of the body move … 
  3. A Sense of Space Inside
    Allow your attention to settle on the breath. And hold in mind the perception that the whole body is breathing: all the nerves, all the blood vessels, all the cells. That creates a nice spacious sense here in the present. See how long you can maintain that perception—and what happens to your sense of the body, your sense of yourself sitting here as … 
  4. The Six Properties
     … Which spot in the body is the warmest? Focus your attention there, in the same way that you would focus your attention on the most comfortable spot in the body when you breathe. Then think of the warmth spreading from that spot to fill the whole body until you’re sitting there very still, very warm. Sometimes the warmth gets too much. I know … 
  5. How to Feed Mindfulness
     … You might want to focus your attention there and maximize that particular sensation, which means that the breath will get shorter and shorter, more and more subtle as it hovers around that point of balance. If that’s too subtle to notice, simply be aware of when the breath is too long, when it’s too short, too shallow, too deep, which parts of … 
  6. Doing
     … This is why the Buddha focuses so much attention on the issue of skillful and unskillful action. He wants you to explore how much control you actually ga as you try to develop more and more skill. He doesn’t tell you at the very beginning, “Well, just give up.” We know that ultimately you can’t control your body because some day it … 
  7. Questioning Your Way to Certainty
     … Instead, you come to the meditation armed with the right questions, questions that focus your attention on what you can actually see happening right here and now in terms of cause and effect. That’s how you overcome your uncertainty. You know from experience that this works, that that doesn’t work. You learn to evaluate things on your own. In this way, the … 
  8. Fighting off Ignorance
     … Are you going to focus at the tip of the nose, middle of the chest, the abdomen, the middle of the head, the base of the throat? There are lots of places you can focus your attention. Each of them will have a different effect. So check to see for yourself which is the best place to stay right now. As you develop your … 
  9. Asalha Puja – Completeness
     … It’s a good place to bring your attention, because the breath is very sensitive to what’s going on in the mind. Fear arises in the mind and it’s going to affect the breath. Anger arises, lust arises, and there’s going to be a change in your breathing. So try to get sensitive to this level of your awareness. The way … 
  10. Concentration: A Balancing Act
     … All your thoughts, all your directed thoughts, your evaluation, your perceptions, your attention, your intentions: Bring them all right here. You might think of them as concentric circles all centered on one place. Ajaan Lee does talk about focusing on one spot in the body first, on what he calls a resting spot of the breath. It can be just above the naval, at … 
  11. To Know the Buddha
     … All too often it’s easy to focus so much on what we want out of this that we forget to pay careful attention to really wanting to do it right. It’s a meticulous job, like those movies of prison breaks: You have to be very careful, step by step. You can’t rush the steps, but of course you don’t want … 
  12. Freedom, Conditioned & Not
     … If you do it right, there’s going to be a sense of ease that comes with the act of paying attention to the breath. The important thing in all of this is that your current actions don’t have to be influenced by your past ones. There is some freedom of choice here. How that happens, the Buddha doesn’t explain; where it … 
  13. A World Apart
     … Everything in the recipe points right here, so point your attention right here. When this world inside gets straightened out, then worlds outside are not going to be a problem for the mind at all—because the happiness that comes from curing the problem within in is so solid that nothing else can efface it. So give this happiness some priority in your life … 
  14. A Home of Your Own
     … Try to get as sensitive as possible to this area of your awareness, an area that we tend to squeeze out because we’re paying attention to things outside. It’s time to move back in, to reclaim this area as your home. Because, basically, it is yours more than anything else out there in the world. You probably remember that time when you … 
  15. Five Strengths
     … But if you pay attention to it, you’ll find that it’s a lot more helpful than you might have imagined. If you breathe in a comfortable way, it helps to erase stress diseases and it’s calming to the mind. More importantly, staying with the breath develops a lot of good and very useful qualities in the mind. And this is important … 
  16. Part III : Daily Life
     … Now, there are times when the simple sense of well-being from the breath isn’t enough, because there are bits and pieces of your attention that keep slipping off. In other words, you’ve got outside concerns that don’t allow you to stay here really 100%. Sometimes it’s useful then, at the beginning of the meditation, to remind yourself of the … 
  17. Categorical Truths
     … In fact, one of the best ways of putting them aside is simply not paying attention to them. If you pay attention to them, they pull you away. So, you’re here to hold on to the breath in the midst of these other things that are happening in the mind right now. Remember: If you try to chase them away, they’ve got … 
  18. Training Heart & Mind
     … In what areas of the body do you put unnecessary pressure on the breath? In what ways do you squeeze the breath out when it goes out—which is not necessary? Or in what ways do you make the breath either too short or too long? Pay some careful attention to the breath. Give it your whole mind; give it your whole heart. Make … 
  19. Right Questions in the Right Order
     … The Buddha teaches something very similar, what he calls appropriate attention. It’s a matter of focusing on the questions that are most useful for putting an end to suffering. Some questions are worth attending to; others are not worth attending to. And even with those that are worth attending to, you have to ask in the right order. There are a number of … 
  20. Owning Your Actions
    Ajaan Suwat liked to call attention to a contrast in two points in the Buddha’s teachings. On the one hand, the teaching about anatta: that the aggregates are not you. But then the passage on karma: We’re the owners of our actions. That’s something we’re responsible for: what we choose to do. And it’s good to make a distinction … 
  21. Conserving Your Strength
     … Even though your ears don’t fall deaf, you don’t have to pay attention to anything you hear, even this Dhamma talk. Let it be in the background. Give the mind something to do that’s really good for the mind: Stay with the breath. When the breath comes in, know it’s coming in. When it goes out, know it’s going … 
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