Search results for: "Focusing"
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- The Desire to Be Free from Desire… You’re going to stay focused on the breath. The thinking of the mind doesn’t destroy the breath. It’s still here. All you have to do is remember to stay focused here. You begin to notice, when you’re really sensitive to the breath energy in the body, that when a thought comes into the mind, there will be a little pattern …
- Determination… Patience means realizing that it’s going to take a while sometimes, especially if you’ve got a large object or a large goal, and so the secret to patience is not focusing on how difficult things are, but focusing on where your strengths are. You rely on those strengths to keep going. As for equanimity, it realizes that there are a lot of …
- A Frame for the Day… And if it turns out that by focusing on the breath, you’re keeping yourself awake a little bit longer, that’s perfectly fine, because the rest that comes from concentration, especially when the breath is comfortable, can often be a lot more refreshing and reinvigorating than the rest that comes from plain old sleep. By thinking thoughts of goodwill and working with the …
- At Home in Your Own Skin… After you’ve done this many times, you begin to get a sense of your own idiosyncrasies in how you breathe, which parts need to be focused on, as when there may be tension in the hip, or tension in your shoulders. And then you learn: Can you focus on those spots first, or do you have to wait until you’ve negotiated other …
- Firm in Your Intent… So you want to stay focused on this one path and the duties that are appropriate to it. So this practice we have here of choosing a foundation—a frame of reference—and then staying with it: That’s a necessary part of all of the strengths we’re trying to develop, all the protections we’re trying to develop. One of the points …
- All-around Alertness… But when they get blocked half-way up, you have to wonder: “Is there a good reason for blocking them, or is there a bad reason for blocking them?” If you’re too focused on keeping one thing in mind and not paying attention to anything else inside the body, inside your mind, then you’re going to miss this. That’s how mindfulness …
- Write It Down in Your Heart… Otherwise, stay focused inside. So, the question is, Why the difference? Part of the difference, of course, is that the ajaans would be giving talks to large groups of people, and if they had a topic where they knew that some people should listen to the topic and other people shouldn’t, then they would say before the talk, “Don’t send your attention …
- Perfect Breathing Isn’t the Goal… You try to create that well-being by focusing on the breath, by adjusting the way you breathe, by adjusting your perceptions of the breath, and adjusting the ways you talk to yourself about the breath. You can try different rhythms of breathing. You can try different images in the mind of how the breath comes into the body, how it goes out, and …
- Joy & Discontent… Part of it is just staying focused on the breath, having a sense of being with that sensation and not wandering off. But an important part of the meditation is also how you talk to yourself. It’s called directed thought and evaluation. That’s part of right concentration. And even before right concentration, it’s how you talk to yourself throughout the path …
- Discipline… You keep focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—subduing greed and distress with reference to the world. In other words, whatever the affairs of the world right now, you just put them aside. Don’t let them take over. Don’t let them invade. Of course, the world isn’t invading you. Your thoughts of the world are …
- Balancing the Bases for Concentration… You just maintain your focus, maintain that sense of ease right at the spot where you’re focused. Make you don’t try to build a shell around it. If you do, you’re going to get in the way of the smooth functioning of the body, and that’s going to make it difficult to meditate for long periods of time. So have …
- Building on Certainty… What this requires is focusing on something that’s immediately apparent and really paying close attention to it, and then experimenting with it. You use your imagination to think of new ways of breathing, new ways of conceiving of the breath. But then you’ve got to test whatever your imagination comes up with. And over time it becomes a skill. You establish a …
- Lifting the Mind… This is one of the reasons why we have these chants every evening, to get you focused the themes of what the chants say. You start thinking about larger concerns than just what happened at work, what happened at home, who said what to whom, who did what to whom. You start thinking about life as a whole and the life of all beings …
- A Seeker’s Habits… Then you find it a lot easier to settle down and get good results out of the action of sitting here focusing on your breath, keeping the mind with the breath. Because the habits you develop outside are present right here. We’re developing habits of mindfulness, alertness, and what the Buddha called ardency. In other words, you really are intent on to improving …
- Doubting the Buddha… The causes are simply focusing on one object and evaluating it, looking at it again and again, getting more and more sensitive to how you relate to it. As when you focus on the breath: Try to be very sensitive to how the breathing feels, figuring out which way of breathing feels right coming in, feels right going out, and then try to maintain …
- Large-hearted Equanimity… Here I was, focusing on my breath, not helping anybody else, and all this insanity was going on in the world. Why wasn’t I out there doing something about it? I mentioned this to Ajaan Fuang. He said that if you go out and try to straighten out the world, you find out that your goodness breaks, because the world resists being straightened …
- Acceptance Isn’t the Issue… He had found the way to true happiness and he wanted other people to know and follow that way as well, so he focused on their intentions. Those were the people he could teach, the ones who had the intention to really be serious about finding happiness in a way that’s harmless, a happiness that is harmless and will be long-lasting. Those …
- How We Cling… That’s where the real cure has to be focused. The mind has its addictions. It’s addicted to these activities. All too often, our ideas of the world and ourselves in the world and how things should be done aren’t providing us with very much pleasure, but we can’t think of anything better. So we keep going back, going back, repeating …
- Choose Your Battles… He said, “Oh, you’re focusing on the earth element. Focus on space.” As he said that, as I focused on space, and that sense of oppression immediately lifted. In that case, the problem was something that I was doing. The problem was also my inability to think outside the box, to look for areas where there was some strength that I could fall …
- Determination… So determination, even though it focuses primarily on getting the mind to settle down, involves discernment as well. And it develops your discernment, too. Your willingness to stick with things is what enables you to see them from the beginning to the end. That’s how you come to understand cause and effect. The Buddha offers these tools for dealing with all kinds of …
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