Search results for: "Attention"

  1. Page 34
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. Today Is Better than Yesterday
     … Everything seems to be kind of old, and you’re not expecting too much anymore, so you don’t feel all that encouraged to put in much effort or to pay a lot of attention. That cynical attitude is one you’ve got to put aside. You’ve got this breath right here, right now: How can you make the most of it? And … 
  9. Peace of Mind
     … If you look for fulfillment outside, things outside are so dependent on factors that are beyond your control, that if you make that the sole focus of your attention, the sole basis for your happiness, you’re bound to end up in disappointment. This is why fulfillment in life has to come from within, developing good qualities in the mind, because these things stick … 
  10. True Honesty
     … The way we act lies in the way of that happiness—which is why we have to pay extra special careful attention to how we act. What does it mean to act? Where does the intention form? How does the intention move the body? How does it move speech? How does it move our thoughts? This is where we have to look. This is … 
  11. When the Mind Is Still
     … If he gets bored, he starts fidgeting around, thinking about this, thinking about that, not paying attention to what’s going on. Then, not paying attention, he’s going to miss the signs that there’s game. And the fidgeting around is going to scare the game away. So learn to be still. Learn how to take an interest in being still—and in … 
  12. It’s All in What You’re Doing
     … Give your full attention to the breath. But as things are getting more solid inside, you can reflect, and it’s in reflecting on what you’re doing that you can learn some important lessons. When you hear about the Buddha saying that insight comes from contemplating the five aggregates or contemplating the six sense media, where are you going to find them? You … 
  13. Two Kinds of Cross-Questioning
     … We’re not here to pay attention to memories. We’re here to pay attention to what we’re doing right now. How are you focusing on the breath? How it’s working? If it’s not working, what can you do to make it work better? The same principle of looking at your actions applies all throughout the practice. In fact, the Buddha … 
  14. The Skill of Stillness
     … Either your attention gets a little wobbly and the breath starts getting uncomfortable again, or the needs of the body change. The kind of breathing that felt good for a while is no longer necessary, so you have to adjust it, keep tabs on things. Bit by bit by bit, you get more centered, more settled. Then you can think of that comfortable breath … 
  15. Time to Heal
     … If it doesn’t feel good coming in and coming out, you can ask yourself, “Well, why?” You’ve got the time and the opportunity to give total attention to your breathing. After all, the breath is the force of life, and if this force of life feels constricted, tight, strangled, it’s going to have an impact on other areas of your life … 
  16. Imagine
     … Then you’re intent to pay careful attention to what you’re doing. Then you use your powers of evaluation, your powers of analysis to figure out if what you did got good results—and if it didn’t, what could you do to get better results? The Buddha relates these four qualities to how you get the mind into concentration. Sometimes you emphasize … 
  17. Feeding on the Breath
     … There’s just the subtle sound of the drizzle outside, the dripping off the roof, not much to hold your attention. As soon as the Dhamma talk is over, there won’t be much else to listen to. And so the mind’s first response is to churn out thoughts. So you have to learn how to think about the breath in a way … 
  18. Duties
     … To do this is what the Buddha called fostering appropriate attention: using the questions he asked, the teachings he gave, in a way that fits into this frame. Anything that didn’t fit into this frame, he’d just put it aside. The truths are not just lists to read about or think about. They’re categories for looking at your life, so that … 
  19. Strength of Mind
     … But this is the kind of work that requires your full attention. Because if you don’t train your mind, who’s going to train it for you? And if you don’t train it now, when is it going to get trained? It doesn’t get easier as you get older. So if you find the mind slipping off from the breath, you … 
  20. Your Secret Foundation
     … It’s through our own lack of attention, our own lack of understanding of the process, that we find ourselves caught up in uncomfortable ways of breathing. So now we can develop our understanding by looking directly at the flow of energy in the body. When you breathe in, does the energy flow up to the head, or does it flow down to the … 
  21. Evaluation
     … It’s just that you weren’t paying attention. But if you do pay attention—you have this ability to reflect on what you’re doing while you’re doing it—then you can see, “Oh, here’s a little stirring.” You can zap it, breathe right through it, and that disperses the energy that would have turned into a thought. So watch over … 
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