Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. A Sense of Yourself
     … not focusing on how hard it is but focusing instead on where you’ve got strengths, what you can build on, so that you can be true to what you’ve decided to do—so that when the times comes that you have to relinquish something you really like, you can do it with a sense of calm, confident that you’re making a … 
  3. The Mind When Trained Brings Happiness
     … After you’ve surveyed the body for a while, choose one spot in the body to focus your awareness, wherever the breath is clear, wherever it seems easy or natural to be focused. Then let your awareness spread out from that spot to fill the whole body, so that you’re aware of the whole body all the way through the in-breath and … 
  4. A Memorial to Your Life
     … So you want to know what to do, so that your desire then gets focused on what you have to do. Try to do this well. You’re sitting here, watching the breath. What does it mean to watch the breath well? You stay continually with it, as best you can. If you wander off, you come back as quickly as possible, firmly, but … 
  5. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … At first, you’re focused on your image of the body. But then there comes the question, “What makes you want to give rise to, say, a perception of the body as unattractive, and what makes you want to develop a perception of it as attractive? What’s the instigator? And what is this thing, this perception of attractive and not attractive?” You learn … 
  6. Goodwill Plus
     … The Buddha says you can make it a basis for concentration, what they call the immeasurable concentrations, where you’re focused less on the body and more on the whole world, thinking of goodwill in all directions. The image the Buddha gives is of a man blowing a conch trumpet. As soon as he blows it, the sound goes in all directions at once … 
  7. Living Forward, Understanding Backward
     … So instead of focusing forward or backward, we learn something from looking back and then focusing back on Now as much as possible, because everything comes together right here and now. Everything comes out of right here. So as you go through life, try to bring as much attention as possible to the quality of mind that underlies your decisions right here, right now … 
  8. A World Apart
     … We start out by focusing on the breath. As the Buddha said, you focus on the body in and of itself. In the case of the breath, this means simply being with the sensation of the breathing as it comes in and as it goes out. As for how that connects with the world outside, you try to cut all those connections. When the … 
  9. Tranquility & Insight with the Breath
     … You may be focusing on one spot in the picture, but you see the whole picture. Your vision isn’t limited just to that one little laser-small beam of your focus. So you want to focus, but you want the range of your awareness to cover the body so that you can have a sense of whether the breath is flowing well or … 
  10. Changing Your Default Settings
     … That means you’re going to be focusing on the feeling that you’re trying to create here. And then you hold to a perception of the breath: a mental image. It can be either a picture in the mind, or just a word or whatever, of how you conceive the breath, and how you hold the concept of breath in mind. You hold … 
  11. Fabricated Path, Unfabricated Goal
     … What we’re trying to develop here is a state of mind where you’re still and focused but, at the same time, your awareness is all-around. The focus is so that you can see things precisely. The all-aroundness is so that you can see things out of the corner of your eye that you might otherwise have missed. There’s stuff … 
  12. Death Is Normal
     … His first question for Ajaan Fuang was that he was a Christian; was that going to be any obstacle in his meditation? Ajaan Fuang said, “No, we’re going to be focusing on the breath. The breath doesn’t belong to Christianity; it doesn’t belong to Buddhism. It belongs to everybody. It’s common property all over the world.” When you focus on … 
  13. Relating to Results
     … As when you’re focusing on the breath right here, right now: If you’re focusing in a way that makes the breath constricted, you want to know. And don’t just blame it on the breath, saying that breath meditation is not a good method, or placing the blame in other places. You can change the way you focus, you can change the … 
  14. Observe Your Concentration
     … How about focusing on the state of mind when it goes? Now, sometimes you’re not able to maintain your balance that way, so you go back to where you were before. But when you find that you can maintain your balance in the new, more subtle level, you go for it. You keep this up all the time. Settle in, then watch. Look … 
  15. The Kindness of Body Contemplation
     … Like the breath we’re focusing on right now: How does the breath feel right now? Where do you feel the breath? Where does the breath flow smoothly? Where does it not flow smoothly? If it’s not flowing smoothly, where are the patterns of tension in the body that get in the way? How can you dissolve them? These are things you can … 
  16. The River Gauge
     … You’re not focusing on the things that are hard, the things that are difficult to bear. You keep in mind the things that are positive. Does that feel artificial? Well, every new habit feels artificial to begin with. I was listening to a Dhamma talk by an ajaan the other day, saying that if you have an attitude that you’re here trying … 
  17. Right Now
     … But if you learn to look at those thoughts, you’ll see that it’s stressful and painful to keep focusing on them. Then look at the gratification of thinking about those things: Exactly what gratification do you get out of it? Then you compare the gratification with the stress that’s caused, and you see that it’s not worth it. Even though … 
  18. Looking After Yourself
    The Buddha’s last words were to reach completion in the practice by being heedful, which focuses attention on the word heedful. It’s important to notice who he was talking to. The text tells us that all the monks in the assembly were at the very least stream-enterers, in other words, people who’d had their first taste of awakening, their first … 
  19. Focus on Your Intention
     … the breath that you’re focusing on; the feeling of pleasure you’re trying to create by the way you focus; the perception of the breath as a whole-body process that helps you stay with the breath and helps that feeling of pleasure to spread through the body; the fabrication, the directed thought and evaluation by which you adjust the breath, adjust the … 
  20. Path & Goal
     … Then you can drop the directed thought and evaluation, and can be nourished by the sense of ease, the sense of rapture that come from being focused. As long as you need that rapture to give you energy, you stick with it. There will come a time, though, when it feels like too much. You don’t need it any more. That’s when … 
  21. Big Desire, Detailed Focus
     … It’s a big desire, but to work, it has to get very small, focused on this breath, this breath, what you’re doing with this breath. Yet as Ajaan Lee said, this was how the Buddha became great. He started out small, did each step precisely and carefully. And because each step was well-founded, well-grounded, it became a good foundation for … 
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