Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Training the Mind to Train the Mind
     … Such a large part of our culture points us away from paying attention to these things. They say, “Well, you can’t do much about these things anyhow. So you might as well not even think about them.” But these are the big facts in life, the big things that cause us to suffer. And the Buddha’s message, of course, is that you … 
  3. Generosity & Gratitude
     … People tend to get very defensive when you bring it to their attention that their happiness depends on other people’s suffering, and they do everything they can to justify it. They say, “Those people don’t matter,” or, “They’re not really suffering,” or, “That’s just got to be the way it is.” Well, it doesn’t. You have the choice to … 
  4. Breath, Tranquility, & Insight
     … When you shift your attention to feelings, it’s very much connected with the idea that you want to breathe in a way that feels refreshing, feels full, so that you’re not squeezing the breath energy out as you breathe out, and you’re not dragging things in as you breathe in. You allow the breath energy to have its fullness, to have … 
  5. Ingenuity
     … If lights appear in your meditation, basically don’t pay them any attention, unless there’s a white light, and you can control it. In other words, you can make it appear, make it disappear, make it go far away, bring it close, make it large, make it small, so that you know that you’re totally in control of it. Then you can … 
  6. Chanting Before Meditation
    Try to gather your thoughts, gather your attention, right here, right now. There’s just your awareness, your body, and the feeling of the breath coming in, going out. Notice where you feel the breath and notice how it feels. You can try some long breathing to start out with, and if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, you … 
  7. Wide-open Awareness
     … When we’re meditating we want to keep our attention focused just on that one level, no matter what else is happening. The pattern of light from the candle flame shining on your eyelids, the sounds in the background, the sounds of the Dhamma talk: Just leave those in the background. You don’t have to shut them off, but you don’t want … 
  8. Safety
     … There’s bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, mental fabrication, all the activities of what’s called name—in other words, perceptions, intentions, acts of attention, feelings, contact: This is contact inside the mind, inside the body. All of that comes prior to what you’re experiencing at the senses. That’s what’s shaping things, and that’s what primes you to suffer. We do … 
  9. The Four Jhanas
     … They may nibble at the edges of your awareness here and there, but you really don’t have to pay them any attention. You don’t have to chase them away. If you chase them away, you drop the breath and they’ve got you. So you don’t want them to trick you in that way. Whatever thought comes passing by, just let … 
  10. Pride in Your Craft
     … It’s simply a practical issue you haven’t been paying attention to. But if you pay attention, you can start seeing what kind of breathing genuinely does feel good now. It’s going to take a while to get really skilled at this, because sometimes a certainly way of breathing that feels cool right now is actually not all that good for you … 
  11. Perceptions of Self & Not-Self
     … once, when he was asked directly by a wanderer from another sect, and then another time, when he was talking to a group of monks, saying that questions of “Who am I? What am I? Do I exist? Do I not exist?” are all not worthy of attention. Then the question, of course, is: Which questions are worthy of attention? The answer is: those … 
  12. The Fourth Frame of Reference
     … The only way to gain direct knowledge of these things is to bring some appropriate attention to the hindrance, seeing that it’s a cause of suffering. Try to look for where the stress is, look where the limitation is, to see how that hindrance is squandering your energy. And then look for ways to abandon it. When you do this, you’re developing … 
  13. Right View Tells You What to Do
     … If you’re not with the breath, you try to bring your attention back as quickly as possible. When you are with the breath you try to be as sensitive as possible to how the breath feels. When you breathe in, where do you notice it? Focus first on the areas where it’s obvious… And by “breath” here we mean not just the … 
  14. Path & Raft
     … So you have to pay attention to where you’re stepping now—right now, right now, right now—the kind of lesson you learn when you’re walking around the monastery here. I was coming up the hill the other day and wasn’t looking too carefully beyond my next step. If I had looked three or four feet further on, I would have … 
  15. Positive Right Speech
     … Again, you go out of your way to pay attention to the other person; how they’re receiving your words. This connects with the next type of right speech, where you avoid divisive tale-bearing. The positive side is that you speak in ways that are harmonious, that help create harmony within the group. We’re so casual in the way that we destroy … 
  16. Fire Escapes
    Fire Escapes April 7, 2016 A rainy night like this forces your attention inside. If you send your mind out, you run into the rain and the cold, so you bring it back in. Try to inhabit your body fully. Think of your awareness as having a shape like the body and that it fills every part of your physical body. You’re aware … 
  17. Looking at Your Life
     … And of course, as you’re paying attention to the breath, the mind is right here as well. You can think of the breath as the point where the mind and the body meet. As you open up your awareness to the breath energy in the body, you’re opening up your mind as well. The mind is surprisingly compartmented. It tends to focus … 
  18. Breath Meditation
     … Remember that in learning to deal with the breath, you develop skills, you develop attitudes, ways of relating, that are useful in all areas of your life—if you take the time to pay the breath the attention it deserves.
  19. The Tools of the Path
     … These are the ones that are there in the mind because you haven’t been paying close attention. When you do pay close attention, you realize: This is really stupid. You see no reason to follow those causes of suffering anymore, and they just go away. There are others, though, that are more deeply entrenched. In that case, you have to exert a fabrication … 
  20. WYSIWYG
     … And if you pay attention, you begin to realize that it reflects your mind state with a lot of sensitivity. At the same time, as you can learn how to control the breath, you see it has an effect on the mind state. The two are very closely associated, very closely connected. This is where you can get a handle on your mind, on … 
  21. Just-Right Concentration
     … You just keep bringing your attention back, bringing it back. Then, when it settles down, you can’t just sit there enjoying the quiet, because that turns into delusion concentration pretty fast. When things have settled down, you tell yourself, “I’ve got work to do.” This is where you can work with the breath energies in the different parts of the body. Do … 
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