Search results for: "Focusing"
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- The Real Thing… Try to get your awareness focused on what’s right here in the present moment to see what’s right here. The Dhamma’s proclaiming itself day-in, day-out, and yet we’re ordinarliy turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to it. When we talk about ignorance: Ignorance is not just a passive thing. Sometimes it’s an active ignoring, focusing …
- Truth Without Air Quotes… As we were saying today, the techniques that seem to get the best results are those that make you very sensitive to the process of fabrication, like focusing on the breath. The Buddha’s instructions deal with what he calls bodily fabrication, the in-and-out breath, and then mental fabrications, which are the perceptions you use as you try to get the mind …
- The Skills of Truth & Calm… And because we’re focused on getting the mind to be still, that makes what’s going on in the mind really transparent. Remember the Buddha said that our trouble is that we have cravings that lead to becoming. With every problem that comes up to us—about what we want, about what we don’t want—we create a state of becoming around …
- Smoothing It… If you find that sitting with pain focuses your mind, that’s perfectly fine. There are people who say that because the Buddha said that the middle way is a middle way between self-torture and self-indulgence, you shouldn’t try to inflict any pain on yourself at all. But that’s ignoring huge parts of the Canon where the Buddha says it …
- Three Levels of Evaluation… You start with using your ingenuity in thinking of different ways of working with the breath and working with the mind—i.e., focusing on different parts of the body, noticing how much pressure you need to exert in order to keep the focus there, how much pressure is too much, how much pressure is not enough. Then you learn how to read the …
- The Power of Truth… What this does is that it focuses you on that issue of: where is the stress right now, what’s causing the stress? This called appropriate attention—seeing things in these terms—and this is the internal quality the Buddha said is most important in gaining awakening. This is how you gain insight, looking at what you’re doing, because that’s what insight …
- Asalha Puja… We’re trying to develop right concentration, taking themes of right mindfulness in terms of the body, feelings, or mind states, focusing on these in and of themselves, not worried about the world outside—just focusing on what it’s like to have a body, what it’s like to have feelings, and mind states. When you look at these things directly, you begin …
- Things As They Function… These are the things we’re focused on as we meditate. You watch the breath. You get very conscious about how you talk to yourself about the breath. All too many people, when they hear that the first level of right concentration has directed thought and evaluation, say “How do you do that?” The answer is: It’s something you’re doing already. It …
- A Frame of Reference… But as you’re focused on that spot, don’t tighten up around it. Don’t put too much pressure on it, just enough pressure to allow you to stay with that one spot and not lose it. As for any other issues that may come through the mind, you don’t have to pay them any attention. If they can come in, they …
- The Buddha’s Shoulds… What’s interesting here is that when the Buddha presents this introduction to his teaching on kamma, he focuses on two types of good actions to stress their importance: gratitude to your parents and generosity. These things really do have merit; they really do have value. The fact that your parents gave birth to you was not just a set of impersonal processes that …
- Fabricating the Present… One, it gets you really focused on the present moment. Two, it helps make you more comfortable being here. And three, you see the process of fabrication at work. You see how you’ve got raw materials here in the present moment and how the element of fabrication shapes them into experiences. As a meditator you want to see this clearly again, and again …
- Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, Space… single in the sense that it’s the one thing you’re focusing on, and single in the sense that it’s a single sensation filling the body. Of the various elements, the breath is the easiest to manipulate, the easiest to nudge into the different directions to adjust and get it so it’s just right, feeling good coming in, feeling good going …
- Right Resolve in Real Life… And when you’re focused on things outside of the mind—the pains, the unpleasant things—it’s very easy to want to go for sensual thinking. As the Buddha said, if you don’t see any alternative to pain aside from sensual thinking, that’s what you’re going to go for: the sensual thinking. Then you start thinking about people who’ve …
- Invest in the Breath… One, because as things get easy, it’s hard to keep a clear point as to where you’re focused. And two, it’s all too easy to fall into that sense of pleasure and lose the breath. You can’t drop the breath. You have to stay there. So, it’s important that you be able to make a distinction. Here’s the …
- Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self… He doesn’t say why he focused on these three perceptions aside from the fact that they provoke feelings of disenchantment and dispassion. He wants to provoke dispassion because the passion we have for fabricating our worlds of becoming, our sense of who we are and the worlds we inhabit: that passion is what keeps these processes going. It keeps us tied to these …
- Heedfulness… You’re focusing on the breath. You’re focusing on making the breath as comfortable as you can. This is going to require getting interested in the breath. If you see the breath simply as the air coming in and out of the nose, there’s not much to get interested in. It comes in, goes out, comes in, goes out. That’s it …
- The Riddle of Freedom… But as you keep focusing on what you’re doing right now to see if it’s skillful or not, you’re getting closer and closer to what’s actually a mystery or a riddle in the Buddha’s teachings. Why* is* there this moment of freedom? What is it about the moment that allows you to make choices? So you dig down there …
- Body Contemplation Is Compassionate… Where exactly in the lust is your craving focused? Why is it focused there? Why is there that attraction there that you’re so willing to give into? It’s only through knowing your own mind in this way that you can get past the tricks that it plays on itself—like the equation of affection with lust. So there’s nothing in the …
- Strong Through Admirable Friendship… You’re focusing on the state of your mind as your major resource, as your major treasure. An important element in developing that kind of desire is to associate with people who are admirable friends. As the Buddha said, in an admirable friend, you’re looking for four qualities. One, they have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. Two, they’re virtuous. Three, they …
- Rebirth & Not-Self… This is why the Buddha focused on craving as the cause for suffering. There are three kinds: sensual craving, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. Sensual craving is your desire to keep fantasizing and planning for sensual pleasures. You can ask a lot of people what they think about as they go through the day, and a lot of jobs that people have …
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