Search results for: "Focus"
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- Homage Through the Practice… So you can focus on any part of the body where you notice: Now it feels comfortable with the breath coming in, now it feels comfortable with the breath going out, and where you can gauge whether the breath is too long or too short. All of this comes under the quality of alertness. And then finally the third quality the Buddha recommended applying …
- To Be Your Own Teacher… Note, though, that if you find the little details still set you off, just learn not to focus on those details. Focus on something else, something that might be neutral or actually counteracts the response you have to the original details. But as you work more and more with this principle of restraint of the senses, you come to see how the little details …
- Heedfulness Is Auspicious… As the Buddha says, you don’t want to focus on those; you want to have something better to focus on. Of course, the building of the chedi was, as Ajaan Fuang used to say, heavy merit, whereas meditation is light merit. Light merit you can take with you wherever you go. The heavy merit has good memories, but those memories can get obscured …
- Recovering Your Balance… You try to focus in on that, just to be aware of what’s going on, seeing what’s going on, so that you can understand it. If you don’t understand it, watch it. Have some patience. Whatever comes up, just watch, watch, watch until you see something that interests you. Then focus in on that. In other words, watch the mind in …
- It’s All in What You’re Doing… So why are we looking at our breaths? It’s because we need to focus the mind. We need to bring it into the present moment. The breath is the guarantee that we’re right here. There’s no future breath you can watch, no past breath you can watch. So, at the very least, you’ve got some part of your mind focused …
- Time to Heal… When you’re feeling tense, what kind of breathing feels relaxing? When you’re feeling tired, what kind of breathing lifts your energy? When there are pains in different parts of the body, where do you focus the breath energy to help deal with those pains? For instance, sometimes there’s a pain in your back. A good place to start is to focus …
- Delight & Beyond Delight… Yet we want it to be attractive, so we focus on certain details and ignore other details that are right next to the details that we like, just millimeters away. We don’t like being reminded of the fact that there are these other unattractive features to the body. ** So this is delight. This is allure. The mind is basically lying to itself. As …
- From Darkness to Light… So you want that to be your focus. The problem is, when you leave meditation, you go out to deal with other people. All of a sudden, it’s the question of “you” and “them” again. The priorities get changed, the duties get changed again. We drop the framework we’ve been using while we meditate and pick up our old framework. It’s …
- Freedom Undefined… It’s not an easy skill, but when you realize that all of the alternatives out there are difficult, then you realize that it doesn’t make much sense to focus on the difficulties of the path, for at the very least this is a path that leads to a way out. Three years ago, when I sensed that Ajaan Suwat was about to …
- Goodwill First & Last… And it was only after seeing the larger pattern that he was ready to focus on the present moment with in the proper terms—events in the mind viewed as causes and effects—and with the proper question: How do view and intention operate in the present moment? Is there some way that this knowledge can be used to put an end to suffering …
- Allowing the Breath to Spread… You focus on the breath and, as Ajaan Fuang used to say, the comfortable breath just explodes throughout the body, and there you are. Other times, though, you have to build up to it, because there may be parts of the body that don’t go the way you want them to. They may be painful no matter how you breathe. So in the …
- Technique & Attitudes… You can focus on any part of the body where there are sensations that tell you now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. In other words, you don’t have to focus on the feeling of the air coming in and out the nostrils. You can also focus on the movement of the body that brings the air in …
- The Rivers of Karma… You learn how to take that ability to focus and ignore, and use it deliberately for the purpose of keeping the mind from suffering. This is a skill we learn as we meditate. At the same time, we learn how not to be overcome by pleasure. First there are sensual pleasures, which we tend to go running to as our main escape from pain …
- Bodies & Minds Outside… You can focus on them either internally, externally, or both. Internally, it’s pretty obvious what he’s talking about: your own experience of body, feelings, and so forth. But what about externally? If you believe that mindfulness means simply being aware, how are you going to watch other people’s feelings or mind states? Actually, though, mindfulness means keeping something in mind. And …
- Hold onto the Breath… Some things outside we can change, but a lot of things we have to let be, so that we can focus on where the real problem is, inside. Like that telephone line-worker I met in Paris. I was waiting outside the hotel. I was going to be taken to a talk and I suddenly realized, “Here I am, exposed, in the streets of …
- Not Just a Witness… The way you breathe is the connection between your mind and your body, so he has you focus on the breath. He has you focus on how you talk to yourself about the breath, because how you talk to yourself is how you construct your reality—as in all situations. Of course, those constructions are going to be built out of perceptions. Sometimes the …
- Reclaim Your Breath… This is one of the reasons why we focus on the breath: to bring knowledge to the process so that at the very least, even though we might not be at the total end of suffering yet, we can still breathe in a way that alleviates a lot of suffering. After all, the breath has an effect not only on the body but also …
- Be Bigger Than Your Pains… That’s the skill we’re working on as we focus on the breath: developing qualities of mind we’re going to need to find that true happiness. We start with mindfulness because it’s a pretty simple mental faculty: just keeping something in mind, reminding yourself why you’re here: that you want to act in a skillful way, think in a skillful …
- Willing & Observing… You want to stay with one spot in the body as your central focus. But you find as the concentration develops that, say, the sensation of breathing at that central focus is going to get more, and more subtle, harder and harder to keep track of. This is where your ability to keep your whole body in mind, and to be aware of the …
- A Thread Out of the Maze… When you focus on that, learn how to stop that. Again, it’s a choice. You have that freedom. This is why the Buddha has us focus again and again and again on this issue of our intention, because that’s where in the present moment freedom is to be found. So pursue that: Why do you have this freedom of intention? The Buddha …
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