Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Because the Mind Is Purposeful
     … So pay full attention to the breath. If you find the mind slipping off, just keep coming back. Try to breathe in a way that feels good: relaxing when you’re feeling tense, energizing when you’re feeling tired. Think of the breath as a whole-body process. It’s not just the air coming in and out through the nose. That’s just … 
  3. Voices in the Mind
     … Another’s to try to develop thoughts of compassion; thoughts of equanimity; paying them no mind and no attention. And then reflecting on the principle of karma, that if you get involved with them it’s just going to be an endless round. Whatever they may have done to you can probably be traced back to some old karma of yours. So the reflection … 
  4. A Gentle Touch
     … One of the best ways to allow it to happen is simply to allow your attention to be still. You can work at this either from the way you deal with the breath, or the way you manage your awareness, direct your awareness, develop a certain quality of awareness, because we’re dealing right at the point where the mind and the body meet … 
  5. Sensitive to the Mind
     … It has all these needs, and it constantly demands your attention. It’s like a little baby that won’t let you sleep: crying about this, crying about that, hungry for this, pained here, pained there. It needs to move, needs to go defecate, needs to go urinate—all these things you have to do for it. And then what does it do? It … 
  6. Choices that Matter
     … You’ve probably had the experience where you want the results so badly that you’re not paying careful attention to what you’re doing. That’s a good intention, but it’s not skillful. It’s not focused in the right place. You want to focus your desires on the causes. Each time you breathe in, stay with the breath. Each time you … 
  7. A Connoisseur of the Breath
     … Alert means you’re watching what you’re doing, paying close attention to what you’re doing and the results that you’re getting from your actions. And of course you’re mindful, keeping the body in mind. Putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world: This means that any time you want to switch your frame reference back to the world … 
  8. Choices in the Present
    As you bring your attention in the present moment, it’s important that you understand that the present moment is shaped by two sorts of things: influences coming from your past actions and your present intentions. This means that you’re constantly playing a role in shaping your present reality. Now, that role is going to be limited by the range of options coming … 
  9. Into Position
     … Focus your attention there. Then try to decide how you know when a breath is comfortable or not at that spot. You try different ways of breathing, and you’ll find that some ways of breathing are more congenial than others. If you really get sensitive to the breath, you begin to realize that it’s not so much the air coming in and … 
  10. Caught in a Thorn Bush
     … The intent is when you give it your full attention: “So, it’s this thorn?” Okay, you focus on this thorn. And you may notice as you focus on this thorn that you have to be very careful not to pull the cloth in such a way that it tears on other thorns. So, there are some complexities in the path, but you deal … 
  11. Safe Haven
     … We have a lot of tender spots inside that need care and attention. And although it may sound brave and courageous to say we’re going to do this work in the midst of our everyday lives, it’s awfully hard. Even warriors know when they have to retreat, when they have to recover from their wounds—not because they’re cowards but because … 
  12. Mature Happiness
     … You might say that that requires an awful lot of attention. Well, if anything in the world is worthy of a lot of attention, it’s your actions. You’re the one responsible and you’re the one who’s going to be reaping the results, so you want to be very careful about what you do and say and think. And learn from … 
  13. Skills for Dying Well
     … There will be something that follows on death, so you want to be heedful where you focus your attention, where you focus your desires at that point.** This quality of heedfulness is something that we try to develop in the meditation. As the Buddha said, all skillful qualities are rooted in heedfulness. It’s when you realize that your actions really will make a … 
  14. Three Perceptions
     … Ultimately, as your attachments to things outside of the concentration drop away, you turn your attention more to applying these three perceptions to contemplating the concentration itself. As this contemplation gets more refined, you see that even the most stable level of concentration you can attain — the one that has formed your highest experience of pleasure and ease — is composed of five aggregates on … 
  15. Admirable Friendship, Inside & Out
     … The best interior help is developing appropriate attention. The two go together. Start with admirable friendship. The Buddha says to look for people who have four qualities: They have conviction in the principle of kamma, they’re virtuous, they’re generous, and they’re discerning. You try to become a friend with people like that, and you try to emulate their qualities. You ask … 
  16. Encouragement
     … So you had to be very patient and very steady in your attentiveness. If you stopped being attentive, something bad would happen to the blade. The same with making a pot, and with all kinds of skills people used to have to master just in order to function on a daily basis, in order to live comfortably. Nowadays most us have lost those skills … 
  17. To See What You’re Doing
     … So you want to pay careful attention to your actions, having a strong sense that you do have the choice as to what you’re going to do or say or think. And those choices will have consequences. So you want to learn what the pattern is. Basically, if you’re acting under the power of greed, aversion, or delusion, suffering will follow. If … 
  18. Strength Training
     … You’ve been doing things half aware that you’re doing them, but not really giving them your full attention. Often those are lessons you don’t want to hear. But if the mind has a sense of inner well-being, it’s in a much better mood to see where you’re causing yourself unnecessary stress, where you’re placing unnecessary burdens on … 
  19. Listening to the Practice
     … The thinking here is designed to keep your attention focused, to keep reminding yourself that this is where you want to be, right with the sensation of the breathing. That’s the function of mindfulness or sati. The awareness can also be translated as being self-aware, being alert— that’s called sampajañña. It actually involves two things: One is noticing how the breath … 
  20. The Buddha’s Cost-Benefit Analysis
     … After all, so many different desires are clamoring for our attention. We have to decide which ones are worth following, which ones are not. So subconsciously we do a kind of cost-benefit analysis: Is this desire worth the effort? The problem is that some of the considerations that go into that cost-benefit analysis are pretty stupid. A lot of them have to … 
  21. Stepping Out of Truth Games
     … You’re trying to make that the center of your attention, and that’s the center of your desire right now: to get the mind stay here. The problem is that the mind has lots of other worlds at its disposal, because it has lots of other desires. This is the process the Buddha calls becoming, where, based on a particular desire, you take … 
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