Search results for: "Attention"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- The Value of Effort… Try not to have one eye on the path and another eye on the goal, because that way your attention is split. Give all your attention to what you’re doing right now. This is another aspect of the Buddha’s teachings. He says that what you’re doing has value. What you’re doing is important. The idea of just letting things arise …
- Secluded from Sensuality… To focus attention on the mind state, we first have to take apart the object: Is it really worth it? This is where they talk about taking off the skin, putting it in a pile and seeing what you have left. It’s not much. There’s a very thin layer of skin around the body that makes it something you can actually look …
- How to Be an Admirable Friend… Give it your full attention and see what you can learn about the mind by staying right here. The first thing you’re going to learn, of course, is that the mind doesn’t want to stay. It wants to think about other things. So you have to remind yourself: You’ve been thinking about other things for who knows how long; and you …
- No Foolproofing… And the development of discernment—of appropriate attention—is to figure out which of those duties you need to follow right now and with regard to which events in the mind. There’s a translation of a Dhamma talk by Ajahn Chah in which the original translation said that when you’re focusing on the breath, any thoughts that come up, you want to …
- Limitless Thoughts… When you’re not really paying that much attention to the present moment, there are lots of little hidden corners where other things are going on, and they fragment your attention. But the more fully you can immerse yourself in the present moment, the less room there is for those hidden corners. This is why being fully sensitive to the breath also allows you …
- Only Your Best… When he talks about the qualities that he brought to his awakening, it was resolution along with ardency and heedfulness, realizing that some things are more important than others, and so require your full attention, your total focus. Some dangers inside and out are more important than others, more dangerous than others. You’ve got to prepare. The big danger, of course, is death …
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