Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. At Ease with the Breath
     … You’ll notice that a lot of the tension tends to seep in when mindfulness lapses, when you’re not paying attention. So try to keep your awareness with the breath continuously, as if you were following a long strand of silk. You want the silk to be smooth, you want it to be even, and if any bumps come up, any fraying comes … 
  3. Preparing for Death
     … To know where to focus our attention, what to hold on to, if we have to hold on. Where we can let go. That way, we’re not so desperate. In other words, we go into death without trying to run away. The importance of this skill is obvious, especially now with death all around us. As the Buddha points out, there are four … 
  4. Four Mountains Moving In
     … All the mosquito-borne diseases were still there, just that nobody was now paying attention. And sure enough, some of the people in the community where I was staying got dengue. So we have to look all around, be circumspect in our heedfulness and watch out particularly for the dangers we create that come from trying to prevent or put an end to one … 
  5. How to Be Self-Centered
     … You should center your attention not so much on what’s irritating about their behavior. Center on your own irritation. Why do you let yourself get worked up about it? What’s the problem? Why are you feeling offended by that other person? That’s what you’ve got to look into. Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t care about other people … 
  6. Play with the Breath
     … Even if you pay attention to it, it’ll run away. But if you glance at it out of the corner of your eye and focus on other things, it’ll feel more at ease with you. If you deal well with those other parts of the body, after a while the parts of the body that are tense and tight will begin to … 
  7. Location, Location
     … You really do want to pay careful attention to where your cravings are located, because they can easily lead you astray. You know the image the Buddha gives of rebirth as being like a fire spreading out from a house, clinging to the wind. The wind stands for craving. If your craving is totally unknown to you here and now, it’ll be even … 
  8. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … How are you processing the breath right now? As soon as you turn your attention to the breath, the breath is going to change—based on your perception of the breath, your intentions around the breath—which means the breath is a really good mirror for seeing these things in action. We know that one of the principles of causality that the Buddha taught … 
  9. In Control
     … As we’re living here at the monastery, we don’t have too many tasks, so we can focus our attention on each task as we’re doing it as a way of developing our mindfulness and alertness. But in the outside world often you have so many tasks that you have to decide which ones are worth doing well and which ones are … 
  10. Compassion for People on Fire
     … As the Buddha said, we have the potential for pleasure in the body, we have the potential for rapture, if you pay appropriate attention to what’s going on. Looking for those potentials, making the most of them, you find that you can provide yourself with a sense of intense well-being right here. In the beginning of the meditation, that’s the duty … 
  11. Ups & Downs
     … things that are going on all the time in the mind but you’re not noticing them, usually because your attention is focused someplace else. And yet those things are creating a lot of suffering, a lot of stress. So you want to be quiet enough and alert enough to see these things you’ve been missing. Because it’s all right here. Everything … 
  12. Your One Responsibility
     … You get an idea of how you have to keep your attention focused right here if you want to see what you’re doing, and catch what you’re doing in time. Mindfulness helps, in that it helps you remember what’s going to lead to suffering and what’s not. Alertness is what keeps you right here in the present moment: the direct … 
  13. Keep It Simple
     … And when there’s a problem, you want to know where to focus your attention so you can most effectively deal with it. The Buddha points out the pattern: There’s suffering, but there’s a cause of suffering—and it’s in the mind. The way to uproot the cause is to work on developing the factors of the path. So that’s … 
  14. On Top of Your Actions
     … So try to bring your attention to what you’re doing right now. Your ability to reflect on your state of mind, reflect on the actions of the mind, is where you can start reading things inside. You can get a pretty clear sense of the work that needs to be done. It’s very easy to get sloppy or complacent about this, but … 
  15. The Quest for Inner Happiness
     … You really pay attention to what you’re doing and you really try to stick with it. You learn how not to get discouraged when you find the mind wandering off and sniffing at the flowers, looking at the sky, running over old receipts, settling old scores, planning for tomorrow’s meal, whatever. As soon as you catch yourself doing that, you just come … 
  16. Beyond Duality
     … And exactly what qualities do you analyze? The Buddha says to bring appropriate attention to the issue of what’s skillful and what’s unskillful, as it appears in the mind. When you’re practicing concentration, the immediate issue of skillful and unskillful deals with what ways of focusing the mind, and what objects of focusing the mind on, are conducive to getting the … 
  17. The Brightness of Life
     … It’s simply up to you to decide whether it’s important enough to focus all your attention here.
  18. Getting Your Head Around the Goal
     … You have to put the mind through its exercises because realizing awakening requires that the mind develop strength in its powers of perception, its powers of attention, its powers of reflection. They’re going to be sharp enough and strong enough only if you put them to work in developing the factors of the path. This is what we’re doing right now. We … 
  19. The Role of the Observer
     … Those are the ones that you ordinarily indulge in without really paying attention to what you’re doing, but if you stop and look at what you’re doing, you realize that “This is stupid, this is ridiculous,” and that’s enough to let them go. There are others, though, that are not so obviously ridiculous. Those are the ones that you may know … 
  20. Issues
     … What kind of fabrication went into this? What kind of name and form? In other words, your *intentions, *things you’re paying attention to. What are you clinging to? What are you craving? That framework puts things on the up-and-down axis, with which you can release yourself from a lot of issues. Because one of things that defines this world, this state … 
  21. Virtue, Concentration, Discernment
     … What you find that as you make it more subtle is that you’re focusing more and more attention on this commentator inside. What are its values? And how harmless is the commentator? The commentator will learn how to focus on other parts of the mind—as you’re going through the day, as you’re sitting in meditating—but also, it has to … 
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