Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. A Room of Your Own
     … But if you can learn how to be gentle and perceptive with the comfortable spots, then the uncomfortable spots will feel less threatened by your attention and they can begin to open up. They, too, can be brought into the compass of the sense of ease, feeling at home in the body. Some of your inner barriers begin to break down. One of the … 
  14. Working with Nature
     … Sometimes it may, by a fluke, get into concentration, but if you’re not paying careful attention, you’ll fluke out of it as well. So it’s a combination of knowing what to do and what not to do. The things to do are the causes. As Ajaan Lee points out, when you’re trying to get the mind into concentration, directed thought … 
  15. Expand Your Expectations
     … One of the basic principles of appropriate attention is that you put aside any questions about “Who am I? What am I? Do I exist? Do I not exist?” And there’s another sutta (I’ve forgotten the number now, it’s in the Anguttara) where the Buddha says you put aside the assumption that you’re good, you put aside the assumption that … 
  16. Respect for Concentration
     … They’re not much, but they have a lot of potential if you pay attention, if you learn how to appreciate them. Don’t be in too great a hurry to push through the steps, because some of them take time. It’s like seeing little tiny fruits on your tree. You say, “Ah, the fruits are here,” so you pick them all. It … 
  17. Dhamma Opportunism
     … Many Thai ajaans are told by their lay students, “I don’t have the time to practice,” and the ajaans’ response is always the same: “Do you have time to breathe?” Well, yes. “Okay, you can practice with the breath.” You may not be able to give your full attention to the breath, but it is possible, as you go through your activities, to … 
  18. Mind Control
     … You’ll find that, after a while, as long as you stay with the breath, that thinking will just gradually drop away, drop away, because it was feeding on your attention. If you don’t give it any attention, it starves and fades away. If that doesn’t work, then when you’re in touch with the breath, you can begin to notice that … 
  19. Staying Grounded
     … the stress? And what can be done to put an end to that cause?” Think in those terms, and you’re on the path, engaged in what the Buddha calls appropriate attention. You’re asking the right questions, and you’re framing them in the right way, so that you can get some useful answers. But if you’re not sure about your thinking … 
  20. Worry vs. Heedfulness
     … Heedfulness November 16, 2019 Bring your attention to the breath. Try to breathe in a way that feels good. And try to stay with the breath all the way in, all the way out, each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. What often happens, though, is that you stay with the breath a couple of times, and then another thought comes … 
  21. Heedful of Ruts in the Mind
     … So you have to pay extra careful attention to your actions. One of the main lessons of the forest is that you don’t take any unnecessary risks. There’s a story of Ishi, the last wild Indian in North America. When he finally left his home territory and went to live in a city, one of the first things they did was to … 
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