Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Generosity First
     … But if you come to the meditation with experience in being generous, the question becomes “What do I give to the meditation?” You give it your full attention. You give it the effort, you’re happy to put in the effort, because you’ve learned from experience that good effort put into the practice of the Dhamma brings good results. And so that internal … 
  3. Put Some Heart into Your Practice
     … Your tendency to dismiss other people, to say that they’re not worth your attention, they don’t deserve to be happy: That’s wrong view. It makes it impossible to get on the path. So we develop generosity, we develop virtue, we develop thoughts of universal goodwill as part of the total training of the heart and the mind together. We here in … 
  4. Virtuous Beginnings
     … They take over all of our attention, all of our time. It gets devoted to getting a good place to stay, good clothing to wear, good food to eat, the right medicine and medical care we’re going to need. So on the one hand, we need to learn to put some restraint on our consumption so that the mind has more time for … 
  5. Food for Consciousness
     … It’s an area that we ourselves don’t pay that much attention to, because our attention is too often diverted outside. And for that reason, we don’t have much of a vocabulary to describe what’s going on inside, as it’s felt from within. But it’s our most immediate experience. After all, it’s on this level of experience that … 
  6. True Freedom of Speech
     … Sometimes there are occasions when you have to speak in ways that might sound hurtful, just to catch people’s attention. Again, you have to be very clear about your intentions, and clear about your reasons for engaging in that kind of speech. So again, there’s no precept. Now, the fact that there’s no precept against these two types of speech doesn … 
  7. Three Stages in the Practice
     … So the simple fact that you’re not thinking about anything sensual, not paying attention to anything sensual: That allows for a level of pleasure and energy that you should learn how to appreciate. Then try to maintain it. Allow it to deepen. Allow it to seep into the different parts of your body. This is where rapture begins to appear as the sense … 
  8. Open Are the Doors to the Deathless
     … One was getting the mind single—in other words, getting it concentrated—and two, applying appropriate attention, which means listening to the Dhamma and asking yourself, “How does this apply to the problem of the suffering in my own heart? How does this apply to what I’m doing right now that’s creating the suffering, and how I can stop?” That’s precisely … 
  9. The Dhamma Wheel in the Heart
     … Ultimately, of course, the child will begin to grow and gradually get a more responsible for itself, and you won’t have to be quite so attentive. But still, you do have to pay attention and you still have to be there to help nurture and foster the child. So when the mind is with the breath, protect that. I had a problem when … 
  10. The Karma that Ends Karma
     … The posing of the question is what’s called appropriate attention. That’s what opens things up, makes it possible to see things that you didn’t intend to see, or to see them where you didn’t intend to see them. This is how things finally open to the Deathless. The Deathless is unintended. It’s something that, when you hit it, you … 
  11. Free Not to Suffer
     … In other words, those are the causes of suffering that can survive only because you’re not paying attention. As soon as you pay attention to them, they shrivel up and die. It’s because of them that some people think that just being non-reactive is enough to get rid of all unskillful things in the mind. You look at them, accept that … 
  12. Dignity in the Face of Hardship
     … So focus your energy, focus your attention on the areas where you do have power, where you do have control both in your relationships with other people—where you treat them with generosity and virtue—and in your relationship to your own mind. Remember that a sense of dignity will sustain you. You may not be able to eat it, it may not be … 
  13. An Environment for Practice
    There’s a discourse where the Buddha talks about five qualities that a new monk should develop or should pay special attention to. The five are useful not only for new monks, but also for old monks and for lay people, because they’re about creating the environment for your meditation practice. All too often, especially in lay life, we think that we can … 
  14. Broad, Tall, & Deep
     … You want to stay focused on the breath because your attention to the breath is what produces the ease. Let the ease do its work in the body but don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by it or sucked into it. Be determined that you’re not going to lose your focus, you’re not going to lose your grasp on the breath. That … 
  15. The Second Frame of Reference
     … Where do you want to focus your attention? What do you want to maximize? Do you want to maximize the pain or maximize the pleasure? What we’re doing as we’re sitting here meditating is learning how to develop the skills for maximizing skillful kinds of pleasure, skillful ways of approaching the pleasure. There are even skillful forms of distress. The Buddha talks … 
  16. Always in Training
     … Otherwise, try and have one spot in the body that’s particularly sensitive, that reacts very quickly to changes in your mood, and focus your attention there. Always breathe in a way that keeps it open, relaxed, spacious so that when something comes up and it constricts, you’ll know immediately, and you’ll have a technique for stopping it in its tracks. Just … 
  17. Take Your Time
     … appropriate attention. The more you do it, the more quickly you can get to the point. You’re also working on that phrase that’s at the beginning of the description of right concentration: “secluded from unskillful qualities,” *vivicce’va akusalehi dhammehi. *You’re putting up a protection against the things that would pull you out of the concentration. What are those unskillful qualities … 
  18. Hobo Mind
     … The reason they get squeezed out is because we give all our attention to our thought worlds or to things outside, so we have to squeeze off this area of our awareness to make sure it doesn’t distract us. Now we’re turning around and learning how to nourish this part of our awareness, to give it space. When you give space to … 
  19. Make Yourself Small
     … We’ve got that chant reflecting on the requisites to remind ourselves how much eating is necessary and how much is more than necessary; how much attention to clothing and shelter is necessary and how much is more. So when we’re not wasting our time on excessive food, clothing, shelter, and medicine, we’re placing less of a burden on other people—the … 
  20. Exploring Possibilities
     … That’s directing your attention in the wrong direction. You’re not supposed to think about the world as being perfect or imperfect. Instead, turn around and ask, “What did that just teach you about the mind?” It may have shown you how you’ve made the imperfection of the world into a burden. Do you feel personably responsible for it? Do you carry … 
  21. Enlarge Your Mind
     … This way, even though there may be pains and aches in some parts of the body, you realize that you don’t have to focus all your attention on the pains and the aches. There are some parts of the body that may be feeling the heat. Here it’s well after sunset and it’s still hot outside. But if you look carefully … 
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