Search results for: "Focus"
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- Defabricating Anger… Don’t focus on their bad side. Focus on their good side.” You say, “That’s beneath me. That’s an insult to my dignity.” But then if you maintain your dignity, what’s going to happen to your goodness? Your goodness is going to die. Your heedfulness is going to die. When that dies, you’re dead. So you do what needs to …
- Achieving Balance… Where are those bones? In other words, when you think about the bones in the toe, focus on the feeling in the toe. With the bones in your feet, focus on the feelings in your feet; and so on, up through the body. This way you give the mind work to do. If your mind won’t settle down with the bones, survey the …
- A Connoisseur of the Breath… As you stay with the breath, you focus on the breath in ways that deal with feelings, that deal with the mind, that deal with mental qualities, but you never really leave the breath. You simply train yourself to observe things in conjunction with the breath. So of all the various places you could establish mindfulness, the breath is the most important. It’s …
- Ending Suffering… You focus on your breath: If the breath doesn’t feel comfortable, well, you can change. No one is going to put you behind bars for changing your breath. Often we feel that as a meditator we have to simply watch what’s going on without participating in it at all. But that leaves you totally helpless, totally exposed. You can change the way …
- Well-being Despite It All… So this is why we focus inwardly as we meditate. We’re focusing, to begin with, on the breath. The breath itself may be subject to change but it gives you something to hold on to. It’s difficult right in the beginning to focus directly on the mind, so you focus on the breath instead, because the breath is near the mind, it …
- A Total Training… You want the mind to become less and less stubborn and more and more tractable, because a large part of the training is learning how to focus it on things that are useful. All too often, we spend all our time thinking about things that are totally of no help at all. You can sit here and make yourself miserable or you can sit …
- Unattractive… So, because we want to focus on that aspect of the body—its usefulness in the practice—we have to focus on its unattractive side to discourage the unattractive and stupid mind states we build up around it—both our bodies and other people’s bodies. So include this kind of contemplation in your arsenal. It’s going to be a necessary part of …
- Ups & Downs… After all, you’re not here to focus on past or future, you’re here to focus on the present. Of course, in the back of your mind there’s going to be the desire to get back to where you were or past where you were, but you can’t make that the focus of your attention right now. Focus on just the …
- Concentration Work… You’re not here to focus on your selves. You’re here to focus on your breath. So focus on the breath first. As you get used to being with the breath, you can’t help but notice that your mind is relating to the breath in different ways. There are times when the mind wants to simply enjoy the breathing; other times when …
- Look at Yourself… How can a person live in the Sangha and live at peace? The Buddha’s basic answer, aside from developing your powers of concentration and getting rid of your defilements, starts out by saying to focus on your own actions, on your own faults. Don’t focus on the actions and faults of others, aside from the question of whether you can learn from …
- The Karma that Ends Karma… You focus your intention on staying with the breath, staying with goodwill, whatever the object of your meditation, and then you try to maintain that intention. Then you see what you can learn about intention in the course of trying to maintain it, what other things you can learn about the mind as you try to maintain that intention. The usual culprits to begin …
- Choices… You can focus on the breath, or you can focus on some other Dhamma theme: contemplation of the body, goodwill, recollection of the Buddha. Or you can focus on something else entirely. Nobody knows what you’re thinking about right now. You’re free to think about anything, but which choice would be the wisest? That’s a question you always want to ask …
- The Bright Tunnel… If you try to understand it without any concentration, it’s hard to maintain your focus. At the same time, it’s hard to maintain a sense of not being threatened by the suffering. This is why we work at developing our concentration, because concentration involves not only a focus but also a sense of wellbeing with your focus. You stay with the breath …
- An Environment for Practice… When things come up in the practice, what are the things to focus on, what are the things not to focus on, what are the real important issues in life? The Buddha once made the point that a large part of wisdom lies in knowing which questions to answer straight out, which questions need to be reformulated, which ones have to be dropped, which …
- Pitching Your Tent in the Present… Lay claim to it and focus all your attention on developing it. It’s only when you’re content to stay here and focus here that you’ll find that the Buddha is right, these potentials are right here. And the results are not quite for the asking, but if you put in enough work and attention, they’re all your own.
- Friendship… In fact, that’s a more useful place to focus, because it means you can focus anywhere in the body. Notice how the breathing feels. Try to explore what feels best. Sometimes long breathing feels good, sometimes short. Sometimes heavy, sometimes light. Fast, slow, deep, shallow. You’ve got a whole hour to explore here. Try to notice how the breath affects your experience …
- Body as Sensuality, Body as Form… Whatever way of contemplating the body allows you to focus on the drawbacks, use it. You can focus on the diseases that are there. Recently, a number of my friends from my youth have been dying or going to the hospital. And guess what? What did they do to their bodies that made them die? It was just the fact that they took on …
- Put Your Books Back on the Shelf… Luang Phaw Phut was saying that when people would come to meditate with Ajaan Sao, he’d say, “Okay, repeat Buddho or focus on the breath.” And they’d ask him, “What is going to happen when I do this?” And he’d say, “Don’t ask. Just do it.” “What does Buddho mean?” “Don’t ask, just repeat it.” Whatever questions, “Don’t …
- Equanimity & More… When you have equanimity for all beings, it’s not just saying, “Well, who cares?” It’s more to focus you. There are a lot of things you cannot change in the world, but there are some things that are within your power, and the path is something that’s within your power. It’s something you can do. That, the Buddha says, is …
- Your Sketches vs. the Buddha’s… You can focus on certain aspects of them and see that they follow certain patterns of behavior that are constant. But if you focus on that, what happens? You get attached to these things, whereas if you look at them as being inconstant, stressful, and not-self, you have to arrive at the value judgment: It’s not worth it. So as a way …
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