Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. The Power of Your Actions
     … He focuses particular attention on your actions in the present moment. Even though your actions from the past can influence the way things are coming into your senses right now, you don’t just sit there and receive these things. Your mind processes them. Its ability to process and filter and shape things is what makes the difference between suffering and not suffering. Not … 
  3. Get Attached to Jhana
     … You could think of focusing a camera, and that somehow you could take the focal length of the lens and move it inside the lens itself. That’s the kind of focus you want, right here in the midst of the body as you allow yourself to be surrounded by the breath, bathed by the breath, surrounded by the sensation of breathing. Think of … 
  4. Judging Mindfulness & Concentration
     … The first is keeping focused on one topic, like the breath, in and of itself. You’re not worried about the breath in relationship to the world outside, just the breath that you’re experiencing directly, right here, right now. Where do you experience it? Where do you feel it when it comes in, when it goes out? Stay right there with it. Sometimes … 
  5. One Thing at a Time
     … We’re focusing in on the mind. As the Buddha said, the mind is what creates the problem of suffering to begin with. You can think of all the things in the world that you might be suffering from—what other people have done, what other people have said—but the Buddha says that those are not the real cause of suffering. The real … 
  6. The Kamma of Meditation
    The reason why we’re focusing on training the mind in the present moment is because of the way the Buddha taught kamma. That may seem ironic, as most of us think of kamma as having to do with past and future—and it does. But it actually has to do with all three time frames—past, future, and present, and it hinges on … 
  7. Joy in Effort
     … And focusing on here is not just a matter of relaxing; there’s work to be done. Ajaan Lee has a good analogy. He says the practice is like trying to get fresh water out of salt water. The fresh water is already there in the salt water, but just allowing the salt water to sit and relax for a long while is not … 
  8. Bless Yourself
     … All too often when you start thinking about your own bad points, you try to push the thought out of your mind by focusing on the bad points of other people. And when you’re focusing on their bad points, it becomes harder to treat them well. So you have goodwill for yourself, and then you have goodwill for others, reminding yourself that the … 
  9. Disenchantment
     … You start by focusing on one object, like the breath, and then you stay with it long enough that you start developing a sense of oneness with it. Your awareness of the breath and the breath itself seem to become one and the same thing. There’s a sense of unification — ekodi-bhava — which the Buddha has us develop as much as possible. And … 
  10. Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom
     … Instead of focusing on all the sorrows and pains and difficulties in your life, you might look at where things are going well right now. This is not to say that you don’t have to deal with the negative issues, but you do need to learn how to put things into perspective so that you’re not shooting arrows. You’re shooting wisdom … 
  11. Body & Food
     … Your eyesight gets focused further and further away. As a result, you miss the motions of the mind. So you want to focus on things that are very close at hand so that you can catch the mind in action around them. If you want to see attachment, you look at things that are very close. The two closest things are, of course, one … 
  12. The Path Converges Right Here
     … Right concentration is focused on one thing: It’s singleness of mind, focused on an object like the breath. As the Buddha describes it, you drop your interest in sensual pleasures. In other words, you’re not escaping from sensual pleasures. You don’t have to go off and find someplace that’s really painful to stay. It’s simply that while you’re … 
  13. A Noble Warrior’s Path
     … Of course, the desire has to be focused properly, not just on the goal but—primarily—on the means to the goal. So you focus right here: each breath coming in, each breath going out. Each breath is the next step on your path. It’s through developing the path that the goal is found. The path and the goal are not the same … 
  14. Large Perspective, Small Focus
     … When you get power, are you going to use it well or not? The Buddha saw that the best line of action was to get out of this system entirely, and his line of action focused on: What are you doing right now, what are your intentions, and what is your *attention *doing right now? What are you paying attention to? What are your … 
  15. The Psychology of Harmlessness
     … Like right now, focusing on the breath: As the Buddha says, you discern when the breath is long, you discern when it’s short. The word “discerning” here doesn’t mean you simply watch what’s already there. The analogy he gives is of a turner, someone who turns wood on a lathe. The turner discerns when he’s making a long turn and … 
  16. Duties
     … Because when we talk about doing breath meditation, that’s the breath we’re focusing on. It doesn’t have to be the air coming in and out through the nose. Anyplace where you feel the energy of the breathing process, anyplace where you’re especially sensitive to the breathing process—it can be down in the area around the heart, or in the … 
  17. Pleasure & Pain
     … What are you going to do then? If you can be very clear, mindful, and alert about where you’re focused, and very consistent in maintaining your focus no matter what, then you’re in a position to withstand the pain, to gather your forces for the next attack. And what is the attack? You want to untangle all the many layers of pain … 
  18. With Reference to the World
     … You’d think you are sitting here just by yourself focusing on the breath, but you bring lots of worlds with you. We have this weird ability, as soon as there’s little stirring in this body/mind complex we’ve got here, that we can switch into an entirely different world. It can be world of the past, a world of the future … 
  19. Firmly Intent
     … We’re going to be focusing on that issue. What are the messages that the mind sends to itself? One way of learning about that is to intentionally send different messages and see where they run into your old messages. The Buddha’s basically saying, “Be with the body in and of itself.” And one way of doing that is being with the breath … 
  20. Resourceful
     … And in line with what the Buddha said about developing your refuge by working on the establishing of mindfulness, Ajaan Lee focused on the establishing of mindfulness as the way in which you develop this internal refuge. You have to remember that his approach was interesting in that he focused not so much on body, feelings, mindstates, or mental qualities. He did talk about … 
  21. To Practice Dying
     … He doesn’t talk about what dies, what gets reborn, or what goes in between, aside from explaining the process by which it happens, and focusing specifically on what you’re doing. What happens at death is very much the same as what happens in the process of distraction while you’re meditating. You have an intention to stay with the breath, and other … 
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