Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Do Jhana
     … You evaluate your focus. Where are you focused in the body? At what spot is the focus strongest? Can you maintain that focus and, at the same time, have a sense of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out? Evaluate how you can do that. Learn how to judge your meditation skillfully so that the meditation itself becomes more and more … 
  3. Two Types of Dukkha
     … The fact that they’re inconstant means that as you focus on trying to find happiness in them, it’s really hard. It’s like trying to build your house on a sandy plot where the ocean is coming in and there are lots of earthquakes. Things are constantly changing. It’s very unstable. If you try to place your happiness there, you suffer … 
  4. Walking Meditation: Stillness in Motion
     … What do you have in your current range of awareness that’s breath energy but still? If you can’t focus on that just yet, focus on the perception of breathing in, breathing out, trying to get the right length of breath, the right quality of breath. That will help you to get centered and to settle down. But there will come a point … 
  5. The Strength to See
     … As for mental suffering, most of us tend to focus on the kind of suffering that comes from when other people have mistreated us. But actually, the most difficult thing to look at is not that. It’s the suffering we cause through our own actions. When we’ve mistreated others, when we’ve mistreated ourselves, we don’t like to admit it. To … 
  6. Calm
     … If you need a sense of refreshment and energy, focus in on one that’s energizing. If you need one that’s more calming, try a level that’s more calming. And ask yourself about your perceptions concerning the body. If there’s a perception that the energy is bottled up in the body, that means you’re perceiving a membrane someplace that can … 
  7. Things that Arise & Pass Away
     … They hadn’t thought I would focus on karma; they thought I’d focus on emptiness or something of that sort. And I was surprise that they were surprised. The whole point of the Buddha’s teaching is that it is possible, through your actions, to find happiness in a way that develops noble qualities in the mind and actually has a good impact … 
  8. Grounded in the Breath
     … Sometimes it is necessary to start out with a smaller focus. But if you want to gain some insight into the mind, you have to expand the range of your awareness. It’s like a theater. If there’s a spotlight on the stage, it brightens up that one spot, but it puts everything else in the dark. What you want is a theater … 
  9. Dependent Co-arising in Fifteen Minutes
     … You focus on a topic and then you make comments on it. Right now, you should be focusing on the breath, commenting on the breath. If you find that you’re focusing on something else, commenting on something else, come back to the breath. And thirdly, there are perceptions and feelings: the feeling of ease or dis-ease you have around the breath. Then … 
  10. Death Is All Around
     … You use your perception of the breath to focus your concentration. You use your directed thought and evaluation, which are thought constructs, to keep your mind on the breath and to evaluate the breath. Then you’re aware of all these things. That’s taking these five aggregates and turning them into your path. They may not be yours, they may not be you … 
  11. Joy in Effort
     … You realize that, yes, the experience of awakening is not here yet, it’s someplace in the future, but to get there you have to focus on here. And focusing on here is not just a matter of relaxing; there’s work to be done. Ajaan Lee has a good analogy. He says the practice is like trying to get fresh water out of … 
  12. Strength of Persistence
     … So focus on those. Focus on the opportunities you do have and be happy that you have those opportunities. It’s not the case that conditions will always be right to meditate, but the conditions are right, right now. So look at this as a wide-open opportunity, and then the persistence, the effort, and the exertion will come on their own.
  13. Four Bases of Success
     … So if the mind is wandering off, you first focus on bodily fabrication. Ask yourself, “How am I breathing right now? Is it aggravating things so that it makes the mind want to wander off?” Or if anger, greed, or fear has taken hold of the mind, what have they done to the breath? Can you consciously get it back? If they’ve kidnapped … 
  14. Surprise Yourself
    It’s possible to focus on the breath and not learn much of anything. One of Ajaan Lee’s friends, who was also a student of Ajaan Mun, complained to Ajaan Less one time, “Why do you teach people to focus on the breath? All there is in and out, in and out.” And as Ajaan Lee replied, “If that’s all you can … 
  15. Appreciating the State of Peace
     … Most often we focus on the metta—the goodwill. And it’s easy to see why, because so much of the sutta is composed of expressions of goodwill. But the “karaniya” is also important: “What is to be done?” In other words, the practice of metta is not floating without context. It has a context of actions. And the actions are incumbent on us … 
  16. Above & Beyond Suffering
     … Once the mind feels ready—centered, stable—then you can focus it on the breath. It may seem strange. You might think, “After all, aren’t we trying to use the breath to make the mind stable?” Well, yes—sometimes. Often you can go straight to the breath. Other times there are things standing in the way, and you’ve got to deal with … 
  17. Hold a Mirror to Your Mind
     … This is one of the reasons why we focus our attention on the present moment in our meditation. There are meditations where you think about the qualities of the Buddha and other topics that are more discursive. But the real work is done when you reflect and try to understand what you’re doing. This is why a mirror is such a prominent image … 
  18. Delight in Concentration
     … As Ajaan Lee points out, when you get to concentration, the ardency turns into evaluation, where you focus your desire to do this well on looking at what you’re actually doing and you maintain the desire to make improvements. So this element of generating desire runs like a thread through all three factors. This is where you have to be really intelligent to … 
  19. After-work Meditation
     … This way, you change the focus. Remind yourself that you do have a role where you can be more proactive in life, and that it’s what you do with the situation that makes all the difference. The situation may be bad, but you can turn it into something good. It’s like being an alchemist. You take lead and other base metals and … 
  20. A Pleasure Not to Be Feared
     … The focus seems to be on suffering, but notice that the truths don’t just stick with suffering. They’re also about how to find an end to it. And the end of suffering is true happiness. So those four noble truths are not all about suffering. Look in the fourth truth, which is the path to the end of suffering. You find right … 
  21. When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath
     … If it needs to be energized, you focus on the factors that are energizing: analysis of qualities, persistence, rapture. If it needs to be calmed down, you focus on the more calming factors: calm, concentration, equanimity. In other cases, though, he treats the factors for awakening in a linear way. You start out mindful and alert and then you go straight for the analysis … 
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