Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. Perceptions & Potentials
     … You’re focusing on the sensation of the breath energy in the eyes and you’re holding a picture in mind: in this case, the picture of the breath energy going around the eyes. As the Buddha said, every state of concentration up through the dimension of nothingness is a perception attainment. That picture you hold in mind—that’s your perception at the … 
  3. The Allure of the Hindrances
     … This is why the primary way of dealing with that particular hindrance is to look at the negative side of whatever it focuses on. Contemplation of the body: You think of the human body and an image immediately comes to mind, attractive in one way or another. You’ve got to realize that that attractive image is hiding a lot of things that are … 
  4. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … So when you’re focusing on the breath, realize that you’re going to be using perceptions to stay focused. Just learn how to be very, very sensitive to what they are. And learn how to play with them so that you can develop even more sensitivity, because it’s in that realization that you can really choose which perceptions you’re going to … 
  5. Mature Happiness
     … Your present actions include the way you conceive the breath and where you’re focusing, how you’re focusing, and how much pressure you’re putting on it. If you exert too much pressure, the Buddha said it’s like holding a baby quail in your hand and squeezing it: It’s going to die. Not enough pressure: It’s like holding it so … 
  6. Look after Yourself with Ease
     … We’d have no idea that simply sitting here, looking at your breath, focusing on the breath and getting really absorbed into it, could be the path to anything. If you were a little kid sitting there, focusing on your breath, and your parents came along, they’d say, “What are you doing here, sitting here doing nothing?” That’s what they’d say … 
  7. Use Your Defilements
     … You’re developing all kinds of good qualities in the mind by focusing on this skill, so the desire to be virtuous is a good desire. Your aversion to stooping to something below the standards of the precepts is a good form of aversion to take on, to develop. The same with your concentration: It’s okay to desire for the mind to be … 
  8. Three Perceptions
     … The three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self are focused on our psychology, on how we can recognize when we’re looking for happiness in the wrong way so that we can learn to look for happiness in the right places, in the right ways. The contemplation of these three themes, the use of these three perceptions, is aimed at finding happiness of … 
  9. Approaching the four noble truths
     … How does this teaching relate to how I’m suffering? How I can put an end to suffering? And you’re really focused. The term for singleness of mind—cittass’ ekaggata—is sometimes translated as one-pointedness of mind: so one-pointed that, in some cases, people interpret it as meaning you can’t even sense your body or anything else around you. Of … 
  10. Visakha Puja
    Stay focused on the breath. When the breath comes in, know it’s coming in; when it goes out, know it’s going out—all the way through the in breath, all the way through the out. On the night of his awakening, the Buddha watched his breath. So this is one way of commemorating his awakening: by focusing on your breath, to see … 
  11. Lessons in Fabrication
     … You’re focused on the breath. The fact that you have this body sitting here comes from past actions. Some of the actions are pretty recent, others go way back, but you can do things with the potentials that they’re yielding here right now. The breath is one such potential. You can breathe long, you can breathe short, fast, slow, heavy, light. No … 
  12. The Self-correcting Mind
     … You want to stay focused on these things, make them your frame of reference. But just staying with the breath, if you could just do that, would not be enough. You need two other themes to think about. One is what the Buddha calls “the theme of uplifting—in other words, energizing the mind so that if it sees any unskillful qualities in the … 
  13. Cut the Currents
     … The good thing when you’re focusing on the breath is that the breath is quite large. It has space for all the movements of your mind because it’s a whole-body process. When you breathe in, the whole nervous system is involved—all the way down to the tips of your fingers, the tips of your toes, out to every pore of … 
  14. Sources of Lasting Happiness
     … As you’re focusing on the breath here, there are three qualities that have to come to the fore right away. The first one is mindfulness, which is the ability to keep something in mind. Sometimes you hear it defined as being non-reactive or being fully present to the present moment, but that’s not how the Buddha defined it. Non-reactivity he … 
  15. Determined to Make a Difference
     … You keep reminding yourself: “This object that you’re focused on is really worth staying with.” Then you evaluate it to make sure that the mind stays with it—with a sense of satisfaction, wanting to be here. Other thoughts will come up, and you have to remind yourself, they’re not worth it right now. The Buddha gives some principles for your speech … 
  16. Developed in Body & Mind
     … And as we’re meditating, we’re focusing more and more directly on the mind. With generosity, you’re thinking about this person, that person, what object you want to give. With virtue, you’ve got to think about your dealings with other people. But when you’re practicing meditation, it’s exclusively the mind dealing with itself. You’re taking on the big … 
  17. Anger
     … Look at the situation in terms of a larger framework, so that your thoughts aren’t focused with such narrow intensity on the person or the activity you don’t like. When they’re narrowly focused like that, the huge blind spots around them make us lose our perspective — not only about what’s happening but also about what we should be doing. Often … 
  18. A Game of Chess
     … There’s the perception of whatever object you’re focused on. As the Buddha said, all concentration states, up through the dimension of nothingness, are all perception-attainments. They’re based on a perception that you keep in mind—as when you focus on just “breath, breath, breath.” Then there’s the form of the body, and the awareness of all this. You’ve … 
  19. Turning Points
     … There would be pain, there would be struggle in the path, but he kept going on, not through a sense of pride, but through the actual pleasure that comes from focusing the mind, getting it centered, totally secluded from all its other preoccupations. And he discovered that this was a blameless happiness. This is really important, because his understanding of the mind focused all … 
  20. Attachment to the Body
     … The Buddha goes on to have you meditate, focused on the breath, inducing a sense of rapture, a sense of pleasure, getting sensitive to mental fabrication, in other words, your feelings and perceptions: the perceptions you hold in mind as you visualize the breath to yourself, as you visualize the breath moving through the body, and then the feelings of ease that you’re … 
  21. Your Tranquility & Your Insight
     … How can the mind be made to settle down? In other words, how can it let go of whatever hindrances are disturbing it? How can it be unified, to the point where the sense of the body and the mind become one? How can it be concentrated, fully focused? You learn from the techniques that other people have tried and found successful, and then … 
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