Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Wisdom for Dummies
     … And that’s why meditation requires that we focus our attention on the present moment, because these choices are being made right now. This again brings up the distinction between short-term and long-term happiness. Not all your choices are between doing something harmful and something not harmful. Sometimes the choice is between two things that are relatively harmless, but one leads to … 
  3. Sensitive in Seven Ways
     … If you have so much desire that you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing, that becomes a problem, too. You have to learn how to modulate that, and again, how do you know? Well, with practice. What’s the right time? When you get to the question of having a sense of the time and place, what’s the right time … 
  4. Calm & Insight
     … In some places it’s more prominent than others, and you want to focus your main attention there. Then eventually, as that area becomes more comfortable, you want to think of that comfort spreading throughout the body. Your awareness spreads throughout the body, so that you’re bathed in breath and awareness. As for insight, the questions are: “How do you view fabrications (the … 
  5. The Buddha’s Encouragement
     … Sometimes he just wasn’t paying attention. On top of that, of course, were the different hindrances that came in: sloth and torpor, doubt. In each case, he had to identify what the problem was and figure out a technique for counteracting it. So it requires some discernment to get the mind to settle down, because you’re fighting the mind’s old habits … 
  6. The Best Use of Your Time
     … That’s the carrot that pulls you in to the present moment, realizing that simply paying good attention to the way you breathe can relieve a lot of stress in the body. You can think of the breath as a whole-body process that permeates down to your fingers and toes. And the way you breathe can relieve a lot of the stress that … 
  7. On an Even Keel
     … We have so many other things we have to pay attention to that we push this out of our awareness. Now we’re trying to bring it back in, realizing that we’ve been abusing it in a lot of ways. The energy flow in the body has been all bollixed up. Now it’s time to let it get back to normal. So … 
  8. A Load Off the Mind
     … Okay, what did you do? Why do you have that habitual reaction? What is there about trying to be consciously aware of the breath that makes you tense up around it? If you find that happening, stop and think about goodwill for a bit, or any other meditation topic so that you can divert your attention away from the breath for a while. Then … 
  9. The Language of the Heart (2)
     … that you have to pay attention. But then they say, “Well, there’s no such thing as success or not success. Everybody’s already awakened.” Well, no, we’re not. If we were already awakened, we wouldn’t be suffering. And the Dhamma’s not a Dhamma of make-believe. The Buddha didn’t just sit around and think up ideas of what would … 
  10. Giving Weight
     … Your mind becomes a slave, like a dog running after whatever captures its attention. It’s under the power of all the things around you. As a result, the mind never gets any rest, never gets any sense of its own importance, because it’s constantly being a servant to this, that, or the other mood or notion or desire, or just whim of … 
  11. Serenity
     … Focus your attention here, and the effects will spread out—which means you can begin to let go of a lot of your concerns for things out there, the things you can’t control. To whatever extent you can control things, that comes under your ability to train the mind well right now. This helps to focus you in, it helps you put other … 
  12. The Bright Tunnel
     … When the sense of ease, energy, and wellbeing is solid, you can turn your attention to the issue of suffering. Learn how to discern suffering. Where is it? How is it happening? The Buddha says, basically, that it comes down to what he calls the five clinging aggregates. There’s form affected by clinging, feeling affected by clinging, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, all of … 
  13. Mundane Right View
     … You’re here to give your attention, your powers of observation to this process. You’re not going to be too quick to call in all your chips. Give it time. People who have time are the ones who are really wealthy. When I first went to stay in Rayong, it was a pretty hard place to stay. The monastery was quite poor. I … 
  14. Endurance Through Discernment
     … The media keep telling us other people are the big troublemakers; they divert our attention from where the real work is: the way in which your mind is creating trouble for yourself right now. And it’s not a selfish quest to try to focus on solving this problem, because the less suffering you create for yourself, the less you’re going to be … 
  15. Beginner’s Mind
     … Give it the chance to come up to the forefront to see what else it can do when you take proper care of it, when you give it the attention it deserves. And think of ways of making the breath interesting. Think of the breath coming in and out of body parts that you normally wouldn’t think about: the legs, or the elbows … 
  16. Seeing with the Body
     … From this point you can begin to spread your attention to other problems that need depersonalizing as well. But make sure you’ve got this foundation strong. Simply stay with the issue of how the breath is coming in, how the breath is going out. Are you enjoying it? Even though the breath moves between two different types of pain, if you adjust it … 
  17. Body as Sensuality, Body as Form
     … We’re just calling attention to the fact that we have lots of delusions around it. By undoing those delusions, we learn how to relate to the body in a way that really is useful, that’s conducive to freedom—not to the repeated slavery that we’ve been experiencing for who knows how long.
  18. Noble Treasures
     … If nothing else, he’d make a vow to focus his energy and his attention to really understand a problem. This aspect of meditation is all too often overlooked, especially in methods that give you a set body of instructions and say, “Just do this and don’t make any variations.” But how do you know that the results you get from just following … 
  19. Fear of Death
     … You’re not paying careful attention. But here as you focus on the breath, you get more and more sensitive: What are these feelings in the body? How do you understand them? How do you relate to them? And also how does the way you label them affect them? For instance, when you feel certain sensations that you don’t like, if you just … 
  20. Rhythms of the Mind
     … The issue is that you’re paying attention and you’re sensitive to what you’re doing. There are other markers we hear about, as when, with the fourth jhana, the breath stops. Here again, you don’t stop the breath. It’s going to stop on its own as you’ve been connecting the different breath energies in the body. The sense of … 
  21. No Arrows, Nothing
     … We train the breath—focus a lot of attention on the breath—because it’s one of our main tools in helping us settle down. But ultimately, the real issue is what the mind is doing. We mentioned this a little last night: the way the mind puts together sensations, puts together thoughts, puts together feelings—glues everything together. And then the things we … 
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