Search results for: "Attention"
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- 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 …
- Skillful Effort… If you spend all your time focusing your desires on what you want to gain out of the meditation, without paying any attention to the causes, it’s like driving down a road toward the mountain. If you spend all your time looking at the mountain on the horizon and forget to look at the road, you’re going to drive off the road …
- 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 …
- Respect for the Breath… In other words, you want to pay careful attention to what you’re doing. You want to be very observant and very honest. Those are the two qualifications that the Buddha asked for in a student: Is the student observant? And is the student truthful, both to other people and to him or herself? Once you’ve reminded yourself of the importance of what …
- To Certify Yourself… Focus your attention there. Then try to stay there. If you notice the mind wandering off, just bring it right back. Ask yourself, “What kind of breathing would feel good now?” The breath is one of the few processes in the body that you can control. So, why not make use of that ability to make it a good place to stay? Choose some …
- Factors for Awakening… Let your attention settle there. Then you can allow the breath to find a rhythm that feels comfortable. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If not, you can change. Short in, short out; or short in, long out; or long in, short out. Heavy, light, fast, slow. Coarse or refined. Deep or shallow. Get a sense of what the body needs right …
- For the Survival of True Happiness… So this is where you focus your attention: on the things that you choose to do and say and think. In particular, train the mind through meditation. We use the breath as a way of anchoring our attention in the present moment so that we can observe the mind. We work with the breath both because it provides us with a comfortable place to …
- Two Types of Dukkha… The Buddha has you focus attention on this second kind of suffering because you can do something about that. When you do something about that, then you don’t have to suffer from the other kind of stress. After all, arahants live in the same world we do. Their experience of the six senses is fabricated, so there will be that stress, but their …
- Everything Gathers Around the Breath… So try to keep your attention focused here. Everything else you need to know, and everything else you need to deal with, is going to gather around. It’s like putting a salt lick in the middle of a forest. You’re going to get all the animals eventually. They’re all going to come there because they all need the salt. So you …
- Defilements at the Door… Where’s the craving here? What’s the craving based on? What feelings? What intentions? What acts of attention? When you look at dependent co-arising, you see that the really interesting factors are the ones that come before sensory contact: name and form, or fabrication. What perceptions fuel your greed, anger, and delusion? What intentions fuel it? What ways of paying attention to …
- Things that Arise & Pass Away… Do you want a happiness that comes and goes? Most of us pay attention to the coming. You get something you like, you meet somebody you like, things just seem to be going in a right way, and you let yourself get excited about it, lifted up by the prospects for the future. Then these things turn around and crash, and your mind crashes …
- The Meaning of Insight… So use appropriate attention. Ask the right questions. Look at your actions. Train the mind so that it can see its actions and their results really clearly. That’s why we’re here right now. The breath is here to train the mind. We train the mind for the sake of true happiness. These are all means to a goal, although you don’t …
- Working from the Inside… They get sometimes so deeply involved in their own suffering that they can’t pay attention, even when they want to pay attention. So you have to work on what you’re responsible for. You can hope that the good energy that comes from that, the insights that come from that, can be spread out. But your first priority is what you’re doing …
- Different Minds, Different Bodies… Or you can move your attention around. Once, when Ajaan Fuang was really sick, we had to set up a schedule for the monks to look after him. The other monks in the monastery were very quick to find other duties they had to do, and I ended up doing the 2 a.m. to 8 p.m. shift. I usually found around 3 …
- New Eyes… This is why the Buddha said that one of the most important aspects of the practice is something called appropriate attention. Appropriate attention involves asking the right questions, learning to look with the right eyes. When you look with the right eyes, you see that fascinating things are happening right here, right now. The mind is engaged in the process of creating suffering and …
- The Power to Transcend Suffering… Again, it’s just one of those things that’s part of life, but if you turn your attention to the breath and really focus on it, you begin to realize that there are comfortable breaths and uncomfortable breaths. And why on earth would you want to breathe an uncomfortable breath? Nobody’s forcing you. It’s just something you take for granted. But …
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