Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. A Sense of Yourself
     … Bring some refinement to your analysis and you’ll find that by paying attention to this, you get better and better results. Learning: Learning here doesn’t apply to your learning in school, it applies to your learning in the Dhamma. The Buddha didn’t say that he had sole rights on what counts and doesn’t count as Dhamma. There are things we … 
  10. Be Decisive
     … As for the nibbling-away conversations that come at the edge of your concentration, you don’t have to pay attention to them. Just keep focusing in, focusing in, focusing in. What feels really good right now: Stay with that. And you don’t have to humor all the other members of the committee. Just plow right through. At the same time, don’t … 
  11. Audacious & Undaunted
     … Because the precepts can be broken only intentionally, they focus your attention on your intentions. All too many people go through life without paying careful attention to their intentions. They just go on their urges. If you ask them, “Why did you do that?” sometimes they can’t say. But when you practice virtue, you have to be very clear about what your intentions … 
  12. Unlimited Compassion, Limited Resources
     … He paid most attention to the first group, less to the second, and still less to the third. Why? Because he had only so much strength to teach. So even though the Buddha had goodwill for everybody, he also had to have equanimity for everybody, and he had to balance the two. And the same with us: When we’re practicing the sublime attitudes … 
  13. On the Surface of Things
     … Pay attention to the thoughts that are about the breath, and see if you can settle down on this level of awareness, where you’re aware of what’s immediately apparent. Don’t try to go behind the scenes. Don’t think about the narratives of who’s meditating or where you are. Just: What are you sensing as you sit here with your … 
  14. Do Jhana
     … But even before we sense that sensory input, there’s a whole string of conditions—in terms of how we breathe, how we’re talking to ourselves, what intentions we have, what we’re paying attention to. And these come prior to your experience of the senses in the present moment. So with a thought, it’s not necessarily that a particular thought comes … 
  15. A Diffuse Light
     … Often when we meditate, our attention is present in phrases, like phrases of music. A few notes are connected, and there’s a pause. The next few notes are connected. Then there’s a pause. Or like a movie where there are many different takes. There’s a short take here, then the camera angle shifts, and there’s a short take there. It … 
  16. The Observer
     … Many times what makes a difference in the meditation is the details, the little things, and if you’re not paying careful attention, simply going through the motions, you miss a lot. You may be missing something important even though it seems minor. Try to go through every aspect very meticulously, try to be very observant, be close in your powers of observation. There … 
  17. The Dhamma Channel
    When you focus on the breath, also pay attention to the perception you have of the breath: the image you have in mind. Think of the body being filled with breath channels and that they all connect—so that when you breathe in, every part of the body gets nourished by good breath energy. If one part of the body has an excess and … 
  18. Little Decisions
     … Pay attention to the details, and things open up. So don’t be heedless of your time, and don’t be heedless of your little decisions, because that big decision you made to practice can live on only in the little decisions that you make moment-to-moment. So keep an eye on them. Make sure they’re heading in the direction your really … 
  19. Kindfulness
     … Look at the ways you think, the ways you focus on things, the ways you understand things, the ways you interpret things, the intentions you have, the ways you pay attention to things. These are all actions that might be skillful or not. As your sensitivity develops, you begin to see more and more where you’re acting in an unskillful way, thinking, interpreting … 
  20. Light Merit
     … So try to bring a sense of lightness to the meditation—lightness in the breath, lightness in your attention, a light touch in your skill, shaping a sense of well-being in the present moment. You’ll find that even though heavy merit is a necessary part of life, light merit is where it really gets good.
  21. Borrowing the Buddha’s Wisdom
     … But then there’s the question, “How do you put it into practice?” First, the Buddha says, you have to apply appropriate attention. That means learning how to ask the right questions. “How does this teaching apply to my life right now?” At first, you have to ask yourself, “Is this teaching consistent with what I’ve learned of the Dhamma before?”—because that … 
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