Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 39
  2. No-Tech Meditation
     … When you get to the fourth jhana, the breath energy gets more full in the body because of the steadiness of your focus, undisturbed by thoughts about the world. You get to the point where even the in-and-out breathing stops. You could pursue this through the formless jhanas, and get to the point where mental fabrications—perceptions and feelings— stop as well … 
  3. Sensitive to the Breath
    When you focus on the breath, you want to be friends with the breath, which means that you have to be friendly to the breath. The breath just sits there, comes in and goes out, and pretty much responds to your activities, the activities of the mind. And there is a part of the body that tends to be shy: feelings in certain parts … 
  4. Stepping Out of the Waves
     … It does have its solid aspects, but you don’t have to focus on them. Focus more on the sense of its being energy that can flow in any direction, that has no barriers, no boundaries. When you can think in this way, it’s a lot easier for the mind to settle down. Then, when things come up, you can just watch them … 
  5. Riding an Elephant to Catch Grasshoppers
     … What do meditators do? They focus on their minds.” The same with your world view: Think about your worldview until you get to the point where the narrative tells you that the important people in the world are the ones who focus in on their minds. There’s a nice passage in one of Ajaan Maha Boowa’s Dhamma talks, where he wrote a … 
  6. Birth Is Suffering
     … And only a very well-trained mind can be sure to focus on the skillful things at the moment of death and rebirth—and what you focus on is what creates a state of becoming. There will be a desire of one form or another. Around the focal point of that desire, there will form either a world—the world in which that object … 
  7. Not-self in Context
     … So right now your choice is, “Where are you going to focus?” Okay, focus on the breath. “What are you going to do with the breath?” Try to make it comfortable. “Once it’s comfortable what are you going to do?” Well, see if you can maximize that comfort, make it steady, and then allow it to spread so that the whole body feels … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Forgiveness
     … In the same way, if someone has some good qualities, the Buddha says, focus on those. They’ll remind you that you want to have goodwill toward that person. You may say, “Well, it’s beneath my dignity to focus on that person’s good qualities because they have so many bad qualities.” Well, are you going to drink their bad qualities? Scoop it … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
  22. Load next page...