Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Insight Is a Judgment Call… to sit here in one position for an hour with your eyes closed, focusing on your breath. I’ve encountered a lot of people who, even though they’ve been through a lot of suffering in life, would never want to do this. A woman once came here at the invitation of a friend, and the two of them joined in a group sit …
- Discernment on the Path… He said, “Take buddho as the path for the mind." Buddho is the meditation topic he worked with, but the same principle applies to the breath or whatever other topic you’re focusing on. It’s your path. You stick with it; you follow it. With the breath, you don’t leave the breath until the breath leaves you. In other words, you stay …
- The Culture of the Practice… But the problem of focusing exclusively on a technique without the culture means that once the technique is placed in a different culture, it takes on a new meaning. The other day I read a piece by someone claiming to be a lineage holder in the forest tradition, talking about how she had trouble one time in a meditation retreat because she had chosen …
- Warrior Knowledge… Learn how to put a question mark next to them, saying, “I wonder if that’s really true? Maybe I can look into it some other time.” Then put the issue aside and go back to work, focusing on the breath. As the mind gets more and more quiet and still, you begin to see these voices more clearly, and other voices that have …
- There’s Work to Be Done… You have to evaluate the breath, while you keep your thoughts focused here on the breath. So there’s work to be done. The Buddha recommends three qualities that you bring to the breath. One is that you’re mindful. You keep remembering to stay with the breath each time it comes in, each time it goes out. Each time a thought presents itself …
- Choose Your Cravings Wisely… You’re focusing on the breath in the present moment, but you’re also keeping in mind what you want to do right now and where you want to go—because what you’re doing right now has a shape. It shapes not only the experience you’re having right now, but also where you’re going. Keeping the past in mind, both your …
- Hedgehog Knowledge… As you stay with it, you’ll begin to get more and more sensitive, and as you get more sensitive, you’ll begin to realize that certain ways of focusing are more comfortable than others. So you focus in on the more refined sense of the body that appears there. Same place. It’s not under a different place at all, it’s the …
- A Centered but Broad Awareness… Sometimes it’s all too easy when the breath feels comfortable and you’re focused on one little spot, the breath gets more and more refined, you lose track of the breath, and you fall into an air pocket or just drift away. So you want to expand your awareness, from the top of the head down to the tips of the toes, all …
- Inconstancy… So even though we’re focusing on the breath as our primary frame of reference, there’s this other frame of reference going on at the same time. You have to learn how to recognize which qualities are hindrances and which are the factors for awakening. The hindrances are the primary set of unskillful qualities; the factors for awakening are the primary skillful ones …
- Wild Horses… As you sit here focused on the breath, you can get the breath really comfortable as you explore how the breathing process feels in the body. That feeling of comfort, even though it can be very intense, is not counted as a sensual pleasure. Even though it’s related to the body, it’s not counted as a sensual pleasure; it’s the pleasure …
- Rooted in Desire… by focusing on their minds. That’s the proper way to listen to a talk. Otherwise, the talk is here as a fence. If what the talk is saying is not relevant to what you’re doing right now, you don’t have to pay any attention. But if you do start wandering away from the breath, the talk will be here to turn …
- Mindfulness Immersed in the Breath… It’s from focusing on the breath that you develop a lot of the important qualities you need to be truly happy. Keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath: That’s called mindfulness. Then be alert to what’s going on with the breath. Know when it’s coming in; know when it’s going out. Notice how it feels. Where you feel …
- The Buddha’s Filters… In other words, we get focused and fixated on questions and issues that really have no importance and actually get in the way of putting an end to suffering. Like that famous sutta about the man who’s been shot by an arrow. They take him to the doctor and he says, “Now, before you take the arrow out, I want to know who …
- The Swinging Balance… That takes time, especially if you haven’t been focusing much on the body or have been avoiding the body. It’s all too easy, when you focus on the body, to barge in and just say, “This has to be that way, that has to be this way,” and you start pushing the blood into different parts of the body, pushing the breath …
- Tranquility & Insight… It can be thoughts of goodwill, or focusing on the breath, or whatever topic you find congenial as a place where the mind can get some rest. As you do this, you’re getting the mind into concentration. It’ll involve some thinking to begin with. You think about the breath—in case you’re taking the breath as your object. You think about …
- Sense Pleasures & Sensuality… These precepts, by limiting the pleasures of the senses, are really good for focusing you on where you really need to be focused, which is finding pleasure in concentration. So with sensual pleasures it’s a matter of selective restraint. With sensuality, though, it’s a matter of trying to escape from it entirely. First you have to see the drawbacks of that kind …
- Signs Along the Road… remaining focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The same with feelings in and of themselves, the mind in and of itself, mental qualities in and of themselves. For example, when you focus on the breath, this is an aspect of the body in and of itself. Then you follow …
- Buddhist Engineering… When you’re focusing the mind like this, don’t throw away whatever mindfulness or concentration you have. Some people say, “This concentration is weak, so I’ll throw it away to find something better and stronger.” But where is concentration going to get strong unless you take the weak concentration you’ve already got and work with it, try to extend it? If …
- Insight Is a Judgment Call… Right concentration is where you get to use pleasure in a skillful way, a pleasure you gain while staying focused on the breath. But at the same time, you learn an important lesson about pleasure: that if you go running after the pleasure, you’re going to lose the cause. So you stick with the cause and enable the pleasure to develop on its …
- The Science of Meditation… You’re sitting here with your eyes closed, focused on the breath. Well, the mind’s going to do a lot of different things even while you’re focused just on the breath. You have the choice to decide what to do. You can change the way you breathe; you can change the way you focus. Which aspect of the process are you going …
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