Search results for: "Attention"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- The Brightness of Life… It’s simply up to you to decide whether it’s important enough to focus all your attention here.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- The Power of Intention… Here, too, you’re paying attention to your intentions. How is the breath going? How do you stay with the breath? It requires fabrication. The breath itself is a kind of fabrication. You can breathe in all kinds of ways. You’re not stuck with any one way of breathing. And there’s nothing in the Buddha’s teachings to say that you just …
- Skillful Fears… So keep your attention focused here, for this is where all the necessary work gets done.
- A Gift of Strength… It means keeping certain things in mind—and especially, the whole issue why you want to focus on being skillful, where you have to focus your attention, focus your energy, looking at the way your intentions take shape. Where do they take shape? They take shape right here. That’s why alertness is often paired with mindfulness, seeing exactly what the mind is doing …
- Choose Your Actions Wisely… If it keeps coming back, coming back, coming back, you have to be really insistent in not paying attention to it. It’s like a stray puppy who wants to move into your house, but you don’t want the puppy. It’s going to make all kinds of sad noises, but you have to be firm. If it gets so that you can …
- The Right Touch… Let the breath work gently, and have a lot of patience. “Patience” here doesn’t mean just putting up with things; it means sticking with something that requires your full attention and your full sensitivity and not giving up, but also not squeezing things to hurry up the results. So, try to bring the right touch to your meditation. Observe what you’re doing …
- Life’s First Question… So do your best to focus your attention on that issue, learn how to translate everything else into those terms, and drop ways of thinking that get in the way of seeing things in those terms. When you keep things simple, and you keep the mind directly focused like this, then you begin to see the real value of these teachings, because they really …
- Arising & Passing Away… What do you watch? Any of the themes that are among the factors of dependent co-arising—everything from fabrication in the mind to acts of consciousness, intentions, moments of attention, contact, feeling, perceptions, the physical elements in the body, the sense spheres, feelings, craving, clinging, becoming—any of these things. The problem is that you never know beforehand which of them is going …
- Totally Secure… This is why you want to keep your attention focused, realizing that the fabrications that come from within the mind are the big problem. What other people fabricate, that’s their issue. Your issue is how you maintain your even keel. As you do this, you begin to see the process of fabrication of the mind more and more clearly all the time. That …
- Always Observe Your Mind… That’s why we have the precepts, not only to make life better for ourselves and for the people around us, but also to focus our attention on our intentions: What do we mean to do? That’s the difference between breaking a precept and not breaking a precept. Similarly with generosity: There are different factors that go into determining how much you’re …
- The Power of the Mind… Craving, clinging, intention, attention, perception: Which of those are causing the problems? Realize that you can change those actions into something more skillful. There’s a basic duality here. It’s very ironic that Buddhism is supposed to be all about oneness and non-duality, but with the four noble truths you’ve got two dualities. And the message of those dualities is that …
- Only One Person… In other words, you’re giving them the dignity of being responsible people, paying attention to the fact that they’re not just the recipients of your actions. They’re also generators of their own actions. So if you try to get other people to break the precepts, you’re really harming them. If you talk them into being ungenerous, you’re harming them …
- Metta Meditation… All too often, as we sit here and look at the body, the first things that pull our attention are the pains. It hurts here, it’s tight there, it’s tense here, and if you focus on those areas, they become the little monster in the hall of mirrors. Try to find the spaces between the pains and the parts of the body …
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