Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. A Sense of Well-being
     … Then the question arises: “Where do you focus then?” Well, focus on the stillness. It’s still a type of energy in the body. It’s simply energy that has grown still. From this point you begin to see other things that are even more refined—that your sense of the shape of the body, or the boundary between the inside and outside of … 
  3. Rooted in Desire
     … So, instead of just thinking about how much you want to do it well, you actually focus on the steps. If you’re learning a musical instrument, you focus on your scales, you focus on your intonation, you focus on your fingering—all the little bits and pieces that go into mastering the skill. That way, you take your desire and focus it where … 
  4. The Treasure Hunt
     … So what we should focus on is the process of what we’re doing. Think back on his Awakening. There were three knowledges that preceded his attainment of nibbana: knowledge of previous lives, knowledge of beings passing away and being reborn in line with their karma, and then knowledge of the four noble truths. Those first two knowledges were not all that certain; there … 
  5. Mind Your Own Business
     … You haven’t asked them, “Do I have your permission to think about your bad points?” So he counts it as a kind of inner theft, because when you start thinking about other people’s bad points and just keep the focus out there on how bad that person is, you’re bound to start breaking into speech that’s really not skillful. You … 
  6. Balanced Meditation
     … One is through giving it something tranquil to think about or to focus on. The other is through some new insights. Something that’s been bothering you, something that’s been eating away at your awareness because you don’t understand it, suddenly becomes clear. That brings calm to the mind as well. So both activities are important parts of the meditation. If there … 
  7. Keep the Mind from Wandering
     … The potentials you focus on are the ones that tend to get emphasized, that tend to be stirred up—the Pali word is “provoked.” The potential was lying there very still or in a subtle form, and as you focus on it, you amplify it. We tend to do this in a very unskillful way because we’ve never thought about it systematically. We … 
  8. When Things Regress
     … Just allow it to get more and more gentle as you spread your awareness to fill the body so that when the breath gets really subtle, you don’t lose your focus. Your focus becomes the sense of breath energy throughout the body. You do this in such a way that you can observe what kind of breathing is most pleasant right now. And … 
  9. A Load Off the Mind
     … A lot of this has to do with what you’re doing right now, what you’re choosing right now, where you’re choosing to focus, how you’re choosing to focus, and how you picture these things to yourself in your mind. In other words, suffering is optional, and it’s usually through our own ignorance that we take the suffering option. But … 
  10. Forest Bathing
     … So you focus on the breath, focus on any part of the body that you find easy to stay focused on. There’s also the meditation on the thirty-two parts of the body. And although in some passages it emphasizes the unclean nature of those parts of the body to counteract lust and to counteract pride—lust for other people’s bodies, pride … 
  11. Think of the Consequences
     … So you could focus say, on the chest or on the abdomen, in the middle of the head, wherever the energy flow feels most prominent and also most comfortable, where it feels really satisfying to breathe. If you lose focus, come right back. If having a large area of focus is hard, you can go back to one spot. But it’s good in … 
  12. Just This Breath
     … Ajaan Sao’s meditation instructions were simplicity itself. “Just focus on the meditation word,” he said, “that’s all you have to know. Don’t ask what it means, don’t ask where it’s going to take you. Just focus on the one word, buddho.” Luang Paw Phut, being the sort of person who liked to read a lot, would read Ajaan Singh … 
  13. The Reality of Emotions
     … But you can also focus on the fact that you’ve got a breath, you’ve got the different elements in the body. The sense of liquid: You can focus on how sticky and disgusting the liquid in your body is or, for the time being, on the fact that liquid feelings in the body are cool. Focus on them so that you’re … 
  14. Big Things in Little Things
     … So bring your focus back here, with a sense that this is where the real work is accomplished. And however long it takes, it’s all good work. The Buddha would never have you focus your attention away from the places that really matter.
  15. Caught in a Thorn Bush
     … One way of guaranteeing that is to focus it on causes. If you simply sit here saying, “I wish my mind were quiet, I wish my mind were quiet,” it’s not going to happen. What are the causes to make it happen? You focus on the breath. If the mind wanders off, you bring it right back. If it wanders off again, you … 
  16. Mindfulness Aims at Concentration
     … You can focus on their stressful side. You can focus on the extent to which they really don’t lie under your control. So you get more and more focused here, inside, more and more centered. That’s when you get really good at the concentration, when you’ve loosened up a lot of your other attachments outside—and that’s when you can … 
  17. The Power of Intention
     … What you want to learn is how to focus on the helpful potentials. As you do that, you learn an awful lot about this process of intention. You gain a sense of the power you have when you’re choosing to focus on something and, from that skillful focus, you can fabricate things skillfully and create a sense of ease even in the midst … 
  18. A Memorial to Your Life
     … The trick, of course, is to desire the right things and to focus your desire properly on the causes, not so much on the results. Assuming that you know the connection between the causes and the results, you then focus on **doing the causes. You don’t just sit around, waiting for the results to come. This is related to the Buddha’s observation … 
  19. How Right Mindfulness Leads to Right Concentration
     … You focus on the breath, but the way you focus on the breath and the way you mindfully maintain that focus, that’s what gets the mind into concentration.
  20. The Mind's Immune System
     … If you notice that when you focus on certain details the mind gets worked up, don’t focus on those details. Often when we hear “restraint of the senses,” it sounds like we’ve got to put blinders on — we’re not allowed to look, we’re not allowed to listen, which would cause all sorts of repressed things to come boiling up out … 
  21. Giving Ballast to the Mind
     … There will be pains in some parts of the body—there may be pains in your legs, pains in your back— but you don’t have to focus on them. Focus on the comfortable parts. And do your best to stick with them. The more continuous your gaze, then the more refined the sense of pleasure, the more gratifying the sense of pleasure becomes … 
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