Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Effective Self-Discipline
     … You have to focus your attention on them and get them right. Right now the causes are being mindful of the breath, being alert to the breath, and being ardent as you stick with the breath. Those are the issues you focus on. Sometimes it seems paradoxical. On the one hand, we’re looking for big results here—the deathless, the unconditioned, nibbana. And … 
  3. Distractive Thoughts
     … If you pay any attention to the beggar, the beggar’s got you. Or a crazy person coming to talk to you: Even if you focus on the crazy person just enough to tell the crazy person to go away, the crazy person’s got you. These thoughts keep trying to pull you into their conversation, into their crazy worlds. So you have to … 
  4. Self View & Conceit
     … As for the pleasure, you don’t let the pleasure absorb all of your attention. When you’re with the breath, you don’t leave the breath. It’s a matter of learning how to be with pleasure, sometimes very intense pleasure, and yet not focus on the pleasure itself. Keep your eye on the breath. Stay with the breath. It’s like that … 
  5. Pleasure on the Path
     … All of this has to do with your intentions and your attention: how you pay attention to things, and your perception of this whole issue of potentials in the body. It’s not as if pains and pleasures are totally given. The given is the potential that come from your past karma, but there’s also what you contribute right now. The impact it … 
  6. Heedfulness
     … Sometimes you can actually make it go away, because a lot of pains come simply from the fact that you’re not paying attention to certain parts of your body, and the breath energy in those parts gets stagnant. But if you take an interest and breathe freely through those parts of the body, the pains will disband. Sometimes a pain in one part … 
  7. The Time & Place to Let Go
     … But as for other things that might come up that demand your attention, you can say, “Wait a minute, you’re not really me, you’re not really mine. I don’t need you right now. This is not the time and place.” As long as you’re going to keep changing your sense of who you are and what your responsibilities are and … 
  8. The Skill of Letting Go
     … Still, that realization should focus your attention inside. The source is here. Mano pubbangamā dhammā, mano-seṭṭhā: Phenomena are led by the mind, created by the mind, dominated by the mind. So you want to look inside. The next three steps have to do with not just the fact of fabrication but also the value of fabrication. First you want to see, “What is … 
  9. Don’t Stop with Acceptance
     … There are also acts of attention and acts of intention. What is your intention with regard to the pain? Maybe that’s aggravating the pain. Do you want it to go away? Where is it going to go? And how do you pay attention to it? Here again, there’s perception. What are the images you have around the pain that solidify the pain … 
  10. The Grass at the Gate
     … Pay attention to your feet and your hands. Where are they right now? How do they feel? Tense? If they feel tense, relax them. Go through them finger by finger, toe by toe, through the palms of the hands, the backs of the hands, the soles of the feet, the tops of the feet, relaxing all the little spots of tension you find. You … 
  11. The Energy You Broadcast
     … So give all your attention to this inner experience of the body, this inner experience of the breath. Listen to its ins and outs and you’ll find they have a lot of good things to tell you—if you’re sensitive to what they want to say. If you have a lot of preconceived notions about what they should be saying or what … 
  12. Consciousness, Awakened & Not
     … How does it pass away? What’s the allure? Why do you go for it? What are the drawbacks? This involves a fair amount of thinking and observation, and focuses attention again inside, just as the precepts focus attention inside. They may be dealing with your external actions, but the big issue in the precepts, of course, is your intention. What was your intention … 
  13. The Practice of Right View
    The Practice of Right View April 22, 2009 When there’s a talk during meditation, don’t focus your attention on the talk. Focus on your breath. The purpose of the talk is to act like a fence, to catch you when you wander away from the breath, to keep pointing you back to the breath. Because it’s right at this spot—where … 
  14. Taking Initiative
     … But if you stay with it over time and give it your full attention, you begin to see you can make something out of the breath — in terms of how long it is, how short it is, deep, shallow, heavy, light, fast, slow. That can have an impact on your body. And you can adjust the breath in such a way that it has … 
  15. Victory over Death
     … I’ve known a lot of people who’ve said, “That’s an awful lot of attention to pay to your actions.” But the proper response is, “What else are you going to pay attention to?” You learn from acting. You learn by doing. You especially learn by trying to do your best and, when you see that your best is not good enough … 
  16. The Pursuit of True Happiness
     … It’s just that we’re not paying attention. We don’t usually think that there’s anything there to pay attention to. Yet the energy of the breath is our basic energy in life. It stands to reason that if the breath energy is good, the body will be healthier, the mind will be more at ease. It will have a better place … 
  17. The Constancy of the Body
     … Whether you pay attention to it or not, that’s what it’s doing. It’s not looking for your approval. It’s just doing what it does, with a certain constancy. So at the very least, try to make your mind as constant as the breath. Stick with it all the way in, all the way out. And then all the way in … 
  18. New Feeding Habits
     … So, given that nobody’s forcing you to breathe in an uncomfortable way, why do you let yourself breathe in an uncomfortable way? Largely because you haven’t been paying attention. So give the breath full attention. When you breathe in, where do you feel it? Other parts of the body that feel restricted as you breathe in: Can you loosen up those restrictions … 
  19. Duties in the Present
     … You can focus your attention in any part of the body where it’s easy to see that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out, and the mind feels comfortable being centered there. These are your resources. Try to keep them together: Keep your thoughts with the breath, keep thinking about the breath each time it comes in, each … 
  20. The Desire for Things to Be Different
     … how you visualize the breath to yourself, how you pay attention to the different parts of the body, how you react to the parts of the body where there are patterns of tension. Can you focus on them in a way that begins to disperse the tension? Can you spread your awareness around so that it envelops the body and dissolves away any bits … 
  21. Hindrances to the Heightened Mind
     … In fact, when your eyes are closed and there’s nothing much else to distract your attention, they’ll come on in full force. So your first lesson in dealing with the hindrances is: Don’t wait until you’re sitting here with your eyes closed. As you go through the day, watch over how you look at things, how you listen to things … 
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