Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Focused on Your Duties
    When we meditate, we focus on the present moment, not because it’s a wonderful moment, but it’s the moment where we have to think about our duties. This is where the duties get performed. What duties do we have? As the Buddha said, you have the choice of taking on the duties or not. But if you want to put an end … 
  3. The Most Important Thing to Be Doing
     … The question often arises, “How much concentration do you need?” The Buddha talks about different levels of jhana, as he calls them, but we’re not here to focus on jhana, we’re here to focus on our breath. There’s no jhan-o-meter than can measure whether you’ve gone over the threshold to how much concentration is needed. What you know … 
  4. Honest & Observant
     … You can focus your attention on another part of the body. If there’s a pain, say, in your knee, you can focus on your other knee. Or if both knees are in pain, you can focus in your chest around the heart. Try to find some part of the body that’s not in pain. As Ajaan Lee once said, if everything in … 
  5. Encouraging Perceptions
     … When we focus on the sensation of the breathing, we’re also keeping in mind a particular perception of the breath so that we know what to look for, where to look for the breath. For example, if you have a perception of breath simply as air coming in and out of the lungs, you’re going to be looking in one place and … 
  6. Perception
     … Here we’re trying to focus on the present, and yet we use our memories from the past to cover up the present, to shape our experience of the present. Say, when there’s a pain in your leg, a pain in your waist, a pain in the back, what perceptions does the mind apply to it? If you can’t see the process … 
  7. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … When does the comfort come, and when does it go? In what ways, what kind of desire to make it comfortable actually is going to make it less comfortable? In what way do you focus the desire to make it comfortable and work with that desire so that it does get results. That’s where the skill of the four noble truths comes into … 
  8. The Path of Adventure
     … What you do is that you don’t focus on the thousands of steps, you focus on the one step you’re doing right now. Make sure that when you place on foot in front of the other, you’re placing it well and you’re going in the right direction. That’s all you have to do. It’s not hard. And remember … 
  9. Centered in the Body
     … It’s good to choose a spot on the body that tends to tighten up when you get anxious or fearful, and do everything you can to keep that spot open, even in situations where you feel anxiety or fear—knowing that if you lose focus, defilements are going to cut off your head, ignorance is going to put a big bag over your … 
  10. Chopping Off Thoughts
     … That’s the one thing you have to focus on for the hour. Tell your mind it has no business thinking about anything else. In order to keep the mind with the breath, you have to make it interesting, so explore what kind of breathing feels good right now: long breathing or short, heavy or light, fast or slow. There are no set instructions … 
  11. Harmless & Clearheaded
     … You can focus on any part of the body where the sensation is clear that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. And explore to see what rhythm of breathing feels best. Try long breathing, short breathing, or longer or shorter, or more middling, deeper or more shallow. heavy or light or faster or slower. There are lots of … 
  12. Discernment Is in the Details
    When you focus on the breath, there are quite a few activities going on in the mind. But the two most important in getting you to be with the breath and stay with the breath are directed thought and evaluation. Directed thought is when you keep reminding yourself to keep coming back to the breath: “Breath, breath”—this is what you’re going to … 
  13. Mature Strategies
     … He says to focus on happiness, focus on what needs to be done for happiness, but also be aware of the limitations of how you’ve been looking for happiness. As you get more sensitive to those limitations, you can uncloud your mind to want something more refined. That’s where he offers you more refined techniques, more refined strategies. So in that sense … 
  14. Locate Your Craving
     … You have to be frank with yourself about that, but at the same time, if you focus on the pleasure once it comes, you lose your foundation. Then you’ve lost them both—the breath and the pleasure. So, you have to remind yourself the pleasure will be there, and as you keep doing the work of staying with the breath consistently, the pleasure … 
  15. The Path Is in the Details
     … Give yourself good intentions to focus on, as when you’re doing meditation: Give yourself a good intention to hold on to, so that the mind can develop the stability and the sense of ease it needs to keep watch continually in the present moment. You find, as time goes on, that the task gets lighter and lighter. You’re more familiar with that … 
  16. Taking an Active Role
     … What happened just now? Where did you lose your focus? Where did you allow the pain or the pleasure to overcome you, so that you lost your more proactive approach to things? This way, you’re less on the receiving end, and taking on more of the role of the skillful shaper, figuring out how to make the most out of whatever potentials you … 
  17. Exploring the Basics
     … Then there’s the quality of focus. It’s very easy to fall into old habits, that when we focus on something we tense up around it in order to highlight it in our awareness. But that simply creates a sense of discomfort, blockage in the body. So one of the skills of concentration is knowing how to stay focused without tensing up around … 
  18. Active Truth
     … You find that when you meditate — you focus on your breath like this or that — it works, it gets good results. In the beginning you’re dealing for the most part with individual truths, because sometimes a particular focus or a particular way of conceiving the breath is going to work for one session — in other words, it works for a particular problem — and … 
  19. Concentration & Insight
     … So when we focus on the breath, that’s where we’re focused: on the sense of energy that flows through the body. Because we don’t often see that as energy, it seems a little foreign to perceive it this way, but it’s actually the most immediate thing you sense about the body. So, take a couple of good, long, deep in … 
  20. Holding On to the Path
     … So you keep focused on one spot as your primary focus. It may it be the tip of the nose, the middle the chest, any place where you find it easy to have a good strong focus, and then think of your awareness spreading out from that spot, like the lit candle here in the front of our room. The flame of a candle … 
  21. In the Mood to Meditate
     … But the Buddha never has you focus on past kamma. He has you focus more on what you’re doing right now. This is why karma is very relevant to the meditation. If your mind is in good shape, then you’re more likely to do the right thing, shape your life in the right way. And you have that power. That’s a … 
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