Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Oneness… It means being focused on one thing, like the breath. You stay steadily focused on it, at the same time making it the one thing filling your range of awareness. So you start out trying to do that. But in the beginning, there are two ones. There’s the mind aware of the breath, evaluating the breath, commenting on the breath. That’s one …
- Start with Goodwill… If you can connect them all, so much the better, because you’re aiming at a stable, focused awareness in the present moment that fills the whole body. It requires that you direct your thoughts to the breath, to keep on focusing them here to prevent them from wandering off someplace else. And then you evaluate what you’ve got right here so that …
- Coming into the Present… They may seem like a foreign way of thinking about the body, but this way of thinking has its uses, particularly when you’re focusing on the breath. If you think of all the energy sensations in the body or the energy facet of every sensation of the body as being part of one large continuum—in other words, filling the whole body—and …
- Actualizing Your Potentials… You find that by focusing on doing fewer things, you actually get more accomplished. Years back when my brother was in graduate business school, at the start of the first semester he realized that the amount of work he was assigned to do is humanly impossible. It would require that he stay up to weird hours of the night, and of course in forcing …
- Breath Teaches the Bramaviharas… So don’t keep casting your eyes down the path, asking, “When is insight going to come?” or “When’s the next step going to come?” Keep your eyes focused on what you’re doing right here, right now, and whatever ways the mind is going to develop, it will come from focusing right here, right now. There’s no such thing as right …
- Multi-Dimensional Dhamma… It starts with two principles focusing primarily on the goal: being dispassionate and unfettered. It also includes two principles concerning inner attitudes that help you reach the goal—persistence and contentment—as well as four principles governing the way you interact with other people: being modest, shedding your pride, finding seclusion, and being unburdensome. When you gauge any teaching, action, or quality that arises …
- Locate Your Craving… You’re focused on your breath, not because you want the breath, but because you’d like the pleasure. You have to be frank with yourself about that, but at the same time, if you focus on the pleasure once it comes, you lose your foundation. Then you’ve lost them both—the breath and the pleasure. So, you have to remind yourself the …
- One Thing Clear Through… One of the ways of developing right concentration is not just focusing on the breath, but also focusing on goodwill for all beings. This is something we need, especially now. You look at the difficulties the world is going through. A lot of people are desperate. We’ve had a healthy economy and it’s crashed. People have been used to feeding well. They …
- The Five Hindrances… So as you’re focused on the breath, that’s the driving. And you refer to the map only when you’re doubtful and things don’t seem to be right. Or when the navigator, sitting next to you in the right-hand seat, says, “Whoops! No, we missed that turnoff,” that’s what the Dhamma talk’s for in the background. In case …
- Establishing Priorities… Keep this point in mind as you practice because a common experience in meditation is that you sit here focused on the breath and then after a while suddenly realize that you haven’t been with the breath at all. You’ve been someplace else. There was a lapse of mindfulness, a lapse of alertness. You’re usually surprised that it’s happened, but …
- Catch Yourself Lying to Yourself… This is why, when the Buddha sets out the factors for the path, after he talks about the wisdom factors of right view and right resolve he focuses on speech, what you say. Because what you say to others reflects what you say to yourself . And vice versa. The two processes go together. If you find that you can get away with lying outside …
- The Art of Right Speech… What all this reflection does is that it focuses your attention on your intentions. When you speak, are you intending to misrepresent the truth? Are you intending to break a friendship? Are you intending to hurt someone’s feelings? Or do you have no real clear intention at all? Okay, be careful. None of that’s going to be right speech. It’s in …
- True to the Practice… In other words, don’t tense up the area that you’re focusing on. Focus on keeping it open and relaxed. If you slip off, come right back. Slip off again, come back again. This is a practice that takes some determination. That’s why we have those reminders at the beginning of the sit. After all, if you can’t find happiness here …
- Three Recollections… But the goodness is there, and the Dhamma focuses on that. That basically gives us power. We find so many ways in the world basically says, “Okay, the world is a mess, but you can’t do anything about it.” There are people who have power and they’re very jealous of their power. And they’re not very compassionate with their power either …
- Holding On to the Path… The first tetrad, the first set of teachings, focuses on the body. The Buddha has you get sensitive to long breathing and short breathing, and be aware of the whole body as you breathe in, breathe out, because as you get more sensitive to the breath, adjust it with more and more precision, there’s going to be a good sense of ease that …
- Learning from Desire… We breathe in, breathe out, focusing on the breath. Then there’s feeling—the different feelings of pain there may be in the body—but we’re also trying to develop a feeling of pleasure by the way we breathe and the way we focus on the breath. Perception: the labels we apply to things, the images we hold in mind, the ways we …
- The Five Strengths… But when you’re focusing on the breath like this, you can see intention, i.e. kamma, in action. The way you intend to deal with the breath, the way you intend to treat the feelings of fullness that may arise, allowing them to stay: That’s present kamma. It does make a difference in how it feels to sit here, makes a difference …
- A Handful of Leaves… The reason why he focused only on this handful of leaves, he said, was because if he talked about the leaves in the forest—all the other things he had learned—it wouldn’t help people gain awakening. It wouldn’t lead to dispassion; it wouldn’t lead to release. But the leaves in his hand would. A number of people have expressed amazement …
- Observant & Ingenious… The word pāda, which means “base,” can also mean “foot” or “footprint.” But I think there was a special meaning for the word, because Ajaan Fuang focused especially on the last two iddhipādas as favorite themes for his meditation instructions. The four iddhipādas are concentration based on desire, concentration based on persistence, concentration based on intent, and concentration based on analysis. The intent there …
- Perfection in an Imperfect World… You’d be resolute, mindful to put that fire out—focused on putting the fire out. In the same way, when passion, aversion, delusion come into the mind—when any unskillful quality comes in the mind—you’ve got to figure out, “How do I get past this?” You can’t just sit there and wallow in it, enjoy it, or participate in it …
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