Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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.
  10. 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 … 
  11. Settling In
     … But that requires a lot of subtle attention to the process of how you identify with a place to begin with, what you do with it, and how you allow your consciousness to land someplace and then proliferate out of that place. So first you have to cut down on the proliferations. Try to be here as much is possible, with this little elaboration … 
  12. Cutting Roads
     … You’ve got lots of potentials throughout the body—solidity, liquidity, warmth, energy—and the way you focus your attention on them, the way you tune into them, is like tuning in to a particular frequency on radio. Think of all the radio waves that are going through the air right now. All the radio stations in Los Angeles, Tijuana, and San Diego are … 
  13. Monologue on the Breath
     … As for the discouraging words in the mind, well, here you are home on the breath, where you’re not going to pay any attention to discouraging words. One of the important things you find as you meditate is that stress, suffering, discomfort, all essentially come down to a sense of limitation—and you’re creating your own limitations. You’re imposing them on … 
  14. The Hall of Mirrors
     … It comes about by learning to observe what you’re doing as you’re doing it, learning to observe the results as they come, looking in areas where you don’t usually focus your attention. It’s a very simple principle, simply that learning how to apply it to the subtleties of the mind: That’s where it gets hard. But the practice is … 
  15. How Much Concentration Is Enough?
     … So as you’re here, trying to stay focused on the breath, the first thing you want to keep in mind is that everything you’re going to pay attention to for the next hour has to be related to the breath. If it’s not related to the breath, you don’t want it. That’s something you keep in mind. You’re … 
  16. Enlarged Awareness
     … Now this may mean going sweeping your attention up-and-down, up-and-down, up-and-down for a while. Or going through each of parts the body one by one by one, till you get familiar with them and then you can connect them. But after a while, it turns into another image in the Canon: the trumpet blast. You blow your conch … 
  17. Pleasure & Pain
     … This is why you have to start here, creating this little corner and giving all your attention to this one spot where you’re focusing on the breath or whatever your meditation object is. The purpose is to create a little space, at least, where you can put aside the madness of the world — where you feel solid, secure, where there’s a sense … 
  18. The Cost of Happiness
     … He said to look at the way you search, with the purpose of trying to do it in a heedful, careful, attentive way, a sensitive way so that you can really sense the costs. Now, for the mind to be sensitive, it has to be very solid and still. Otherwise, you can’t detect its subtle movements. This is really clear when you sit … 
  19. Living Forward, Understanding Backward
     … As for alertness, that’s what enables you to pay close attention to what you’re actually doing. So while we’re focused on the breath, we’re developing mindfulness and alertness, and a quality called ardency, which means the desire that, whatever you do, you try to do skillfully. In this case, try to relate to the breath in a skillful way. Try … 
  20. Pushing the Three Characteristics
     … You always want to make sure that no matter what, no matter how good or bad the situation is, you always try to apply the skillful approach into the present moment, add as much skillful energy, as much skillful attention as you can. In other words, you have to try to be as constant as you can. Even though the results may be inconstant … 
  21. Free Sources of Energy
     … Where’s your clinging carrying you down? What can you let go of that’ll enable the mind to come back up again? So bring some appropriate attention to these forms of fabrication, and regard each present moment as a gift. There’s something new that’s going to come, there’s a new potential for energy in each present moment. In this way … 
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