Search results for: "Focusing"
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- 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 …
- The Perfection of Freedom… Concentration keeps you focused here. Not only that, but given the fact that the mind is always feeding, concentration gives you something good to feed on, a sense of well-being that comes from within, that doesn’t depend on people outside or anything outside, doesn’t take anything away from anyone. When the mind is well fed, it’s more willing to look …
- Where the Brightness Is… I was once leading retreat where one of the main themes of the retreat was focusing on the issue of what you’re doing that’s skillful and what you’re doing that’s unskillful, in terms of what you do, say, and think. In other words, you look at your actions and see where they cause harm, realizing that you have a choice …
- Three Parts of Right View… Like right now, we’re focusing on the breath. That’s part of developing the path. When it starts seeming fruitless or strange, you remember the motivation—this is why we’re doing this. Those ignoble paths the Buddha talked about—devotion to sensual pleasure, devotion to self-torment: We’ve been down those paths many times before. This one is something different. This …
- Broad, Tall, & Deep… You’d begin to realize that the space you were focusing on had no limitations. When you’re focused on the body, things go out to the skin, or maybe just a little bit beyond the skin, to include the energy cocoon around the body. But with space, there are no limits. After you were used to staying with that perception of space, Ajaan …
- Raise Your Standards… These movements of attention, now focusing here, now focusing there: Ask yourself, what caused you to change focus? When you frame things to yourself, what are the terms you use to frame them? You encounter this immediately when you’re working with the breath. You start out with the assumption that the breath is the air coming in through the nose, but as you …
- Present-Moment Intelligence… This is why it’s so important that the meditation focuses on the present moment—so that you get more sensitive to what you’re doing, and particularly so that you learn how to see where you’re adding unnecessary stress and suffering. For the most part, we tend to take it for granted: a certain level of stress, a certain level of dis …
- The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites… So just focusing on the three characteristics without having a basis of concentration to underlie it and without having mastered the concentration to fight against the characteristics to see exactly how far they go, you can end up becoming very fatalistic. You’ve learned helplessness. Actually, as we’re sitting here, focusing on the breath, we’re fighting against the three characteristics. This is …
- Strong Through Mindfulness… Of those three qualities—mindfulness, alertness, ardency—Ajaan Lee focuses on ardency as being the wisdom factor. We have this knowledge, we’ve memorized these things, and the wise response is to want to use them well to do this well. It requires effort, but it’s effort well spent. Again, to make that kind of effort, you have to remind yourself of why …
- Exploring Possibilities… You suddenly see the world in a new way: “The world is perfect as it is.” Or, “The world is illusory.” Those aren’t the insights the Buddha focused on. He focused more on what it’s possible for the mind to do. Can it operate in a way that it doesn’t create suffering for itself? As you meditate you begin to catch …
- The World Is Swept Away… We need desire to be focused on this one issue: What can we do that gives rise to long-lasting happiness, and ultimately, a happiness that doesn’t give rise to change at all? That’s what we’re working on here. Wherever we may be in the practice right now, that’s the general direction we’re heading. That’s the question that …
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