Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Heedfulness
     … Years back I heard someone complain that this focus on being careful in your thoughts and your words and deeds was distracting you from the wonderful deathless that was all around you, the unconditioned that was all around you. If you focus on conditioned things, you’re missing out. But that’s trying to clone awakening, to adopt the viewpoint of an awakened person … 
  3. Why It’s Good to Know Why
     … While you’re sitting here meditating, set up the intention to stay with the breath and then strengthen that intention by making the breath as comfortable as possible, so that the mind will be happy to be here, and, if it loses its focus, you’ll be happy to come back when you realize you’ve lost focus. Then you notice the voices in … 
  4. Best Friends
     … This is where your inner dialogue should focus, reminding you to stay with the breath and to acquaint yourself with the breath, getting more and more familiar with it. It’s interesting to note that these two activities—directed thought and evaluation—are also the qualities that make up our internal dialogue. When the mind talks to itself about something, first you direct your … 
  5. The Noble Truths of the Breath
     … Otherwise, if you’re focused on too narrow a spot and the breath starts to get very refined, you lose your focus. You don’t know where you are. So once the breath gets comfortable, try to spread your awareness around throughout the body. Think of the breath spreading through the body as well. When we use the word *breath *here, it’s not … 
  6. Light Merit
     … You can focus on that. You don’t have to focus on the pains. This is an important lesson: that whatever’s coming up in the present moment, you don’t have to suffer from it if you have the right attitude. If you have the right perceptions, the right insights into what’s going on, you can release yourself from that suffering. Even … 
  7. Talking to Yourself
     … Directed thought is when you focus the mind on a topic, decide that you’re going to focus on one thing, and you keep thinking about it, reminding yourself to stay here, stay here, stay here. For instance, you want to stay with the breath, so part of you has to keep reminding yourself that this is where you want to stay. Part of … 
  8. Sensuality
     … Why is the Buddha focused so much on the negative side of sensuality? It’s because we tend to focus so much on what we see as the positive side, all the pleasure we get out of thinking about these things. But that, too, gets in the way. As these thoughts come into the mind again, and again, and again, they create ruts. From … 
  9. Getting the Most Out of Now
     … But if you focus on the present moment with the thought of developing skill, then you have something to carry with you. The more skill you develop, the better, the more you’ve benefited. So even though we’re focusing on the present moment, we do have an eye to the future. We’re not here just to chill out for a while. We … 
  10. You Can’t Clone Awakening
     … Even just sitting here, you could focus on the breath, you could focus on different meditation objects, or you could sit here focusing on how angry you are at somebody for something that happened 30 years ago—or who knows what else, lots of things you could focus on. But you have that choice. And you find that once you’ve made the choice … 
  11. Borrowing the Buddha’s Wisdom
    **](https://www.dhammatalks.org/audio/evening/2024/240404-borrowing-the-buddhas-wisdom.html) April 4, 2024 One thing I’ve noticed in Thailand when the ajaans get old, is that their Dhamma talks tend to focus more and more on the essentials. When you’re younger, you have the time and the energy to talk about all kinds of things. But as time gets … 
  12. A Sense of Direction
     … What would you like to accomplish in this life? You have to realize, of course, there’s so much in the world that’s beyond your control, but you can focus on developing good qualities in the mind. That’s something that does lie under your control and that should be the primary focus. What this all boils down to is that you’ve … 
  13. Dissolving Distress
     … And you begin to ask yourself, “What am I doing in this process of fabrication?” There’s verbal fabrication as well, as when you tell yourself, “Focus here, focus there, this breath is comfortable, that breath is not comfortable, how can I make it better?” There’s that kind of fabrication going on, too. You begin to realize that you’re shaping the present … 
  14. Filling in the Buddha’s Outline
     … You know that they’re there but you don’t focus on them. You focus on what you’ve got to do. The same with the other bases of success, like persistence: Your efforts may be too much, too little. The focus of your intent may be too narrow or too broad, and your analysis may be too much or too little. So you … 
  15. Honesty & Integrity
     … But in the beginning, don’t make the pain your primary focus. Make the comfort your primary focus. As for the pain, if it’s in the leg, let the leg have it. You don’t have to hold on to it. You don’t have to grab hold of it. This gives you a very basic lesson in the whole issue of self … 
  16. Leaving Meditation
     … Notice what the first thing is that you focus on when you leave the breath, when you open your eyes, when you start thinking about other things that have to be done. Notice how the mind moves to those things, and try to notice what’s the first thing that really knocks it off balance. See how long you can maintain your sense of … 
  17. The Karma of Pleasure
     … It has to blot out huge areas of awareness so that it can wallow in what it wants to focus on. That’s a metaphor for a lot of our lives, and the pleasures that we have. We have to pretend that a lot of things aren’t there so we can focus exclusively on the details we like. That’s pleasure. And then … 
  18. A Safe Harbor
     … So right mindfulness includes right effort, adds more onto it, giving you a place to focus, giving you a foundation, giving you a frame of reference. Then right mindfulness, in the establishing of mindfulness, becomes the theme for your concentration as you’re focused on the breath, focused on the body in and of itself, developing these qualities of ardency, alertness, mindfulness: That becomes … 
  19. The Hall of Mirrors
     … Everybody comes to the breath with lots of different preconceived notions about what the breath is, or, when you’re focusing on something, how you have to focus in order to stay with it. These are old habits we picked up a long time ago, and it’s up to you to observe them. The breath is a good mirror for reflecting the mind … 
  20. The Reality Principle
     … It simply points out the areas where you can’t do anything so that you can focus on the areas where you can, where you can be of help. It’s basically a reality principle. Notice in the statements for the four brahmaviharas: The first three start out, “May all beings be happy. May they not be deprived. May they be released from stress … 
  21. Determined to Stay with the Breath
    When you meditate, you’re making up your mind that you’re going to focus on one topic. And that phrase “making up your mind” means that you’re going to have to deal with all the different contrary impulses there may be in the mind. When you tell yourself that you’re going to focus on the breath for the next hour, what … 
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