Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. Clinging-Aggregates in Context
     … You’re focused on the breath. That’s part of form. You’re trying to create a feeling of pleasure. To stay focused requires a perception, a mental image of the breath that you keep in mind. And then you talk to yourself about how well it’s working, trying to get the mind to fit snugly with the breath: That’s fabrication. Then … 
  3. The Battle of Your Selves
    We sit here trying to get the mind into concentration, to get it focused on the breath, and all of a sudden we find it someplace else. By that I mean without any sense that we intended to go someplace else, it’s just that we’re there. This is a good lesson in how your self is pretty arbitrary, and how there are … 
  4. The Lightning Bolt
     … The issue is that you keep at it, that you don’t let yourself get discouraged, and that you try to create the right conditions, both inside and out, for focusing on training the mind as your top priority. In the texts they talk about four factors for gaining your first taste of the deathless. One is trying to find a person of integrity … 
  5. The Practice of Right View
     … The talk is to help keep you focused here and to give you some perspective on what you’re supposed to be looking for, what you’re supposed to be doing. Last year I received a phone call from someone who was doing a thesis on using Buddhist teachings and practices in the workplace. He wanted to ask me some questions as part of … 
  6. The Constancy of the Body
     … After all, he emphasizes that we should see things as inconstant and stressful and not-self, and here it seems like we’re focusing on making the mind constant so it has a sense of ease and that it’s under our control. And that’s true. But only when you develop the mind in this direction will you begin to see the really … 
  7. Choosing Your Allies
     … So this questions focuses on the fact that your actions are really important in shaping your life and that you have the freedom to choose your actions, so you want to make the most of that freedom of choice. Wisdom is not simply accepting, “Well, things come and go and I guess I’ve got to be okay with that.” The Buddha’s saying … 
  8. A Good Buddhist Ego
     … Even in the passages where the Buddha talks about the importance of focusing on the present moment, it’s in the context of death contemplation, reminding you that you’ve got to prepare for death. There’s one where he says you put aside thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, concerns for the future, and you focus on what’s arising in … 
  9. The Power of Intention
     … The question came up yesterday, How is it possible that people can have evil intentions and still get the mind into concentration? Well, it’s possible with all kinds of intentions to get the mind focused, but if you want your concentration to lead to awakening—in other words, you want it to be honest and really conducive to true happiness, i.e., right … 
  10. Duties in the Present
     … developing mindfulness by staying focused on the breath. At the same time, as you get more and more clear about having a consistent intention in the mind, this develops discernment. Discernment is focused on understanding the most important part of the present moment, which is the intention that’s shaping how you experience things right now. When you’re meditating, you’re setting a … 
  11. The Uses of Concentration
     … It’s like that book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which teaches how to draw a face by focusing not on the eyes or the nose or the mouth, but on the space between the eyes and the mouth, or between the eyes and the nose. In other words, look at the shapes you ordinarily don’t look at, and you … 
  12. Hindrances to the Heightened Mind
     … So as we sit here meditating, trying to get the mind into right concentration, we’re focusing right at the heart. The problem is, there are large parts of the mind that want to do something else. We’ve got to clear them away. In Pali, they’re called nīvaraṇa, or hindrances, and the standard list is of five. The Buddha describes how you … 
  13. Four Determinations
     … What’s the allure? Where is that particular desire focused? As the Buddha notes: The desire can be focused on almost anything. You think you desire a person, but often it’s not the person you desire. You desire a certain perception around the person. Or you desire a certain status: Like that old commercial about the BMW chill. A guy comes up to … 
  14. Guardian Meditations
     … The purpose of taking the body apart this way is to keep focusing you back to what the real problem is. It’s not with the body out there, it’s with your own mind: in particular, the desire to lust. You want to look into that desire. It’s easier to look at the desire in and of itself once you’ve learned … 
  15. Equanimity & Karma
    The reflection on equanimity just now focused on karma: Each of us is the owner of our karma. If you don’t understand the teaching on karma, it sounds kind of pessimistic and fatalistic. As people do their thing, we have our karma. We just have to put up with it. But actually, it’s pointing out what you have to put up with … 
  16. Choices
     … That’s a choice you’re going to have to make again and again and again for the rest of the session, because there are lots of other things you could be focusing on: the sound of the crickets, pains here and there in the body, the fact that it’s so warm. But you’re choosing to stay with something that’s going … 
  17. Desire Is Part of the Path
     … In other words, you stay focused on the breath because your focus on the breath is going to be the cause of the sense of pleasure. With that focus, you manufacture the pleasure, but then you have to let the pleasure do its work on its own. You don’t have to stretch it here or there or gobble it down for fear that … 
  18. Mind Reading
     … The fact that it’s placed third, and we’re dealing with steps 9, 10, 11, and 12 in the Buddha’s instructions for focusing on the breath, may lead you to think that you have to wait to deal with the breath first, and then with feelings, and finally get to the mind. That’s not the case. It’s not the case … 
  19. The Particulars of Your Suffering
    The Particulars of Your Suffering September 22, 2011 I once knew a journalist in Bangkok who asked me why Buddhism focuses so much on suffering. He said, “I don’t have any suffering in my life. Why all the talk about suffering?” So I asked him if he had any stress in his life and he said, “Oh yeah, lots and lots of stress … 
  20. In Line with the Truth
     … So we sit here focusing on the breath to train the mind in mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment, persistence, compassion for ourselves and others. All sorts of good qualities get gathered together here if we focus properly on the breath. Try to focus with a sense of ease, as a way of showing compassion to yourself. We all want happiness, and this is a good … 
  21. Breathing to Awakening
     … Remind yourself that your awareness is not focused ahead of you. We tend to think that it is because our eyes are focused toward the front, but when we close our eyes, we can remind ourselves that our awareness of the body is all-around. So think of the breath bathing you, or that you’re wearing the breath all around. As you think … 
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