Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. A Path of Skills
     … It’s not just a matter of focusing on the breath. You’re focusing on the process of fabrication—how the mind puts its experience together—through the way it breathes, through the way it talks to itself, the perceptions and feelings it holds in mind. Even when the breath leaves you, that knowledge of the other types of fabrication will be there to … 
  3. Inner Wealth
     … We’re not under a tree right now, but we are sitting here breathing, focusing on the breath, realizing that the breath has a huge role in contributing to our well-being. Of course, if we didn’t breathe, we’d be dead. But more than that, the way you breathe can have an effect on the health of the body and the health … 
  4. Respect for Heedfulness
     … And that’s why Buddhism focuses on suffering and stress: to give rise to the kind respect for heedfulness that will take us beyond suffering. Some people accuse Buddhism of being very pessimistic and negative, focusing only on suffering and stress as if it were denying that there is any pleasure in life. But the Buddha never denies pleasure. He talks about it very … 
  5. A Willingness to Learn
     … You may find focusing on the nose is not comfortable, so move around until you find a place that feels right for you. Meditation tends to swing back and forth between these two poles: on the one hand, giving the mind a chance to rest, and on the other hand giving it work to do. You’ve got to learn how to read the … 
  6. All Four Tetrads at Once
     … They’re focused on one spot, then they try to be aware of the whole body, and very quickly find themselves back at one spot again. It takes a while to back into the sense of awareness that’s filling the body all the time. Actually, you’ve already got a spotlight awareness and a background awareness. What you’re trying to do is … 
  7. Skillfully Shaping Your Life
     … As the Buddha points out, simply focusing on the breath changes the types of feelings you have in the body. Feelings, here, are not so much emotions as they’re feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Sometimes when you focus on the breath you put too much pressure on it, which creates a feeling of dis-ease. You get irritable. You … 
  8. Not Getting What You Want
     … As you’re meditating right now, you’re focused on the breath, but in focusing on the breath, there’s already directed thought and evaluation. You’re directing your thoughts to the breath, and the Buddha encourages you to evaluate it. It’s not just in, out, in, out, and being with whatever comes up. You have to realize: You can change the way … 
  9. Cooking Food for the Mind
     … But again, there is a problem with focusing on death, which is that it can start getting discouraging and depressing. It can sap your energy. So learn to think about it in a skillful way. This, too, is like learning how to be a skillful cook. There are some foods out there that can be good for you if you fix them the right … 
  10. Stay
     … You see that focusing on different levels of subtlety in the breath can make the body more inviting, make it a more comfortable place to stay. It’s easier to stay in the present moment because you like being there. And you’ve got to learn how to stick with the breath, not only in terms of obvious distractions like thoughts of the past … 
  11. Staying Still
     … In other words, getting the mind focused with the breath is doing it. Staying focused with the breath is the maintaining. The maintaining is a different skill. The first skill is coming out of the noise and into the stillness. In some cases, that requires nothing more than just reminding yourself that you’d like to be with the breath—and there it is … 
  12. Gifts of Noble Wealth
     … That way, when you focus your efforts here on your own mind, you’re focusing them on the right place. You’re not going to regret it. Built on that conviction comes a cluster of three qualities: virtue, shame, and compunction. Virtue means holding to the precepts. Sometimes you hear that holding to the precepts is a fetter. There is the word *silabbata-paramasa … 
  13. Where Perceptions Can Take You
     … What you’ve done is that you’ve focused on one object, i.e., the breath, but you’ve changed your relationship to it by the way you perceive it, the way you perceive the body, and the way you perceive the mind in relation to the breath and the body. From there you can go to even higher levels of concentration based on … 
  14. Less is More
     … The question is, what use comes from focusing on which truths? Where do they lead you? Once, when I was first staying with Ajaan Fuang, there was another young monk who had ordained at his fiancée’s request. She wanted to make sure her husband had had some training as a monk before they got married. So he spent two weeks out there at … 
  15. Working with Fabrication
     … That’s what we’re focusing on right now. As you breathe in and breathe out, you’re fabricating your experience right there. There’s also directed thought and evaluation, which are called verbal fabrication. These are the things you say to yourself—all the different voices in the mind. Pick up a topic, and then make a comment on it. Directed thought is … 
  16. A Connoisseur of Happiness
     … He focuses on your illness because he has a cure. The Buddha described himself as a doctor. He focused on stress and suffering because he had a cure, leading to the health of true happiness. Always keep this point in mind as you practice. We’re not here to run away from pleasure. We’re here to see what pleasure really is, and become … 
  17. Driving Lessons
     … And then, focusing on the back of the neck: Think of the breath entering there and going down the shoulders and out the arms, or going down the spine to the tailbone, and then down the legs. You can survey the body as many times as you like until you feel you’re ready to settle down. Then, choose any spot that feels good … 
  18. Blessings
     … We send off the old year and welcome the new by training the mind to be skillful, focusing on the good things we can do with the mind right here, right now, squeezing some more goodness out of the old year before it goes. That’s one of the blessings listed in that sutta: the blessing of heedfulness, realizing that time flows on, flows … 
  19. The Chess Game
     … There’s a sense of ease that you can tap into at any time just by focusing on the breath, being on friendly terms with your breath, being on friendly terms with your body in the present moment, getting to know it really intimately. Once you have that sense of well-being, then you can really turn and look at this whole issue of … 
  20. Expanding Your Awareness
     … You catch sight of the motions in the mind out of the corner of your eye that you’d miss if your awareness were too narrowly focused. So this practice of expanding your awareness and keeping it expanded is a really important part of the meditation. It provides nourishment for the mind in all kinds of ways and keeps your perspectives straight, so that … 
  21. Stay with the Breath
    Try to stay focused on one thing for the rest of the hour. You don’t even have to focus on the Dhamma talk. If there’s anything relevant to what you’re doing, it’ll come right into your awareness and you’ll notice it. You’ll hear it. If it’s not relevant to what you’re doing, it’s a distraction … 
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