Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Concentration Isn’t Dumb
     … Even though you’re getting the mind into concentration, they’re still going on, simply that you’re changing their focus. Focus on this: How do you change your breath so that it’s more enjoyable? How do you change your inner conversation so that it’s more willing to settle down and take an interest in the breath? This whole issue about the … 
  3. Skills for Dying Well
     … If there are pains here or there, don’t focus on the pains. Focus on the parts of the body that you can make comfortable, because you want a place where you can feel good staying, and not be tempted to just float out after any thought that comes through. Whatever thinking you do, make it centered in the breath and the mind’s … 
  4. Steps in Concentration
     … So focus on the conditions, focus on the causes: being ardent, alert, and mindful. Those three qualities will play different roles as your concentration develops. They’re all right here, it’s just that their role gets more and more subtle. Your work is to make it more continuous. Because when things are really still like this, that’s when you can see subtle … 
  5. Focused on Results
     … So we do focus on results. We focus on acting in a skillful way and learning from the results of our actions. That’s how the Buddha found awakening, and that’s how we’re all going to find our own awakening: by being very clear about what we’re doing, the results we’re getting, and what we can do better. So in … 
  6. The Five Strengths
     … So try to focus more attention on the breath. Notice how it feels when it comes in, how it feels when it goes out. You can focus your attention on the breath at any spot in the body where it’s clear: now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out. Allow that spot to be relaxed and comfortable. Notice what … 
  7. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … The noble truths focus on suffering and stress, but there in the fourth noble truth, at the heart of the truth, is right concentration, and one of its factors is bliss or pleasure, happiness. Another one is rapture. This is why, when we talk about practicing the Dhamma, the focus is on practicing concentration, getting the mind to settle down, having a sense of … 
  8. The Right Place to Look
     … And then you won’t have anything at all.” When we focus on the breath, it’s not just for the breath. When the Buddha gives instructions on how to deal with the breath, he talks not only about bodily fabrication, which is the breath, but also about verbal fabrication, i.e., the way you talk to yourself: When you tell yourself to breathe … 
  9. A Simple Path Through a Complex Map
     … If it’s too complex, you’re overwhelmed with details and don’t know where to start or what to focus on. If it’s too simple, things that are actually important sometimes just get ignored. So you can imagine the Buddha making a map of the mind, or the workings of the mind—the challenge he faced because the mind is very complex … 
  10. Body as Path
     … It depends simply on how you focus on the body, how you focus on the breath. In other words, it’s a skill. And as in every skill, there are several things you have to master, such as the ability to stay focused, the ability to identify which kinds of breathing are comfortable, which ones are not, and the ability to spread that sense … 
  11. Expert’s Mind
     … But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference—where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that … 
  12. A Refuge Inside
     … There’s a tendency sometimes to force the breath too much when you focus on it. It gets constricted, but it’s hard to stay with a sense of constriction. So try to find some place where there’s a sense of comfort that you can associate with the breath, and then maintain that sense of comfort with whatever rhythm or texture of breathing … 
  13. Twigs & Branches
     … As you’re working on concentration, you don’t focus on the concentration as being inconstant, stressful, and not-self. Instead, you focus on anything else that would pull you away from the concentration. The same as when you’re practicing virtue: You don’t look at your precepts as being inconstant, stressful, and not-self, even though they are. For the time being … 
  14. The Breath All the Way
     … And in the fourth set, you focus on the mental qualities that are involved in developing dispassion for the whole process of fabrication. Because of the focus on fabrication, this is an insight practice. Because you’re using your understanding of fabrication to bring those fabrications to calm, it’s a tranquility practice. So you’re working on insight and tranquility in tandem, which … 
  15. Truth Without Air Quotes
     … There are intentions, acts of attention—choosing what to focus on, what not to focus on—perceptions; all kinds of things shaping the things we’re going to see and hear and taste and touch and smell, even before they happen. So no wonder we’re dubious as we get conscious of these different factors and see how they shape even basic things like … 
  16. Right View & Right Resolve
     … The more continuous your focus, the smoother the breath’s going to be: all the way in, all the way out, all the way through the mid-parts between the in and the out. The smoother the breath, the greater the sense of ease. So you focus on the causes, and in this way you get a sense of well-being in the present … 
  17. Gather ’Round the Breath
     … So focus on the second kind. There are feelings right here hovering around your sense of awareness, perceptions that hold you here. The breath is very close, so focus on the breath first. Eventually, you’ll be getting right at the sense of awareness itself. You’ll have a perception that hovers around that, along with fabrications, the thoughts that protect that awareness, that … 
  18. The Fabrication of Pain
     … You find a part of the body that’s not affected by the pain and you focus there. If the pain is in the knee, let it have the knee for the time being. If it’s in the arm, let it have the arm. You’re going to be someplace else, where you can develop a sense of well-being, a sense of … 
  19. A Heart Wider than the World
     … He just talks about where it’s best to focus your efforts: You focus them inside. You keep in mind the possibilities there. As Ajaan Lee says, “Before you make yourself large, you have to make yourself really small, focused inside. What’s happening right here with the breath, at the mind? What’s happening in the mind, right at the breath? Looking at … 
  20. When Attacked by Distractions
     … But as the Buddha said, if you focus on another person’s bad qualities, it’s as if you’re going across a desert, you’re hot, you’re tired, you’re thirsty, and you come across a little puddle of water in a cow’s footprint. If you spend your time focusing on the mud around it, you’re never going to get … 
  21. Think Your Way to Stillness
     … But the ironic thing here is that your self gets healthier the less you focus on it, and the more you focus on doing the skill properly. So train yourself to think about the breath in ways that are actually helpful, that make it more comfortable, make it easier for the mind to settle down here. As for other ways of thinking, you can … 
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