Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. In the Mood
     … If you’re in a bad mood, think in ways that will improve your mood, that will improve your attitude toward the meditation, your attitude toward the object that you’re going to be focusing on. Remind yourself that the breath is your friend, and you’re here to develop the friendship even further. In that way your thinking, instead of being a distraction … 
  13. Why We Train the Mind
     … You see that you really can change the direction of the mind to look for happiness in new places, to look for happiness in new ways—like we’re doing right now, focusing on the breath, getting the mind to stay in the present moment, so that we have a good solid place to look at its thoughts, or a good solid place to … 
  14. The Third Noble Truth
     … One of the ways the Buddha has you develop disenchantment is by focusing on the inconstancy of what you’ve been feeding on. But it’s not enough just to say, “So, yeah, it arises and passes away and arises and passes away, or it arises because of causes and, well, what’s next?” Instead of making a generalization, the Buddha wants you to … 
  15. Growing Up Inside
     … A while back I was reading a book by a psychologist who had focused on issues of adult development, not just child development, but how adults grow and mature as they grow older, and to what extent they can genuinely grow up. And he found that one of the most important things in the lives of people who do make a big change at … 
  16. Insight into Pain
     … Instead of thinking about things as you normally do or focusing on things as you normally would, try to hold on to your perception of the breath regardless. The mind may say, “This is stupid; you’re not getting any insights,” but you can say, “Sorry, whether it’s stupid or not, I don’t care. I’m just going to keep on doing … 
  17. A Better Place to Feed
     … When the mind is small—in other words, when you’re focused on one tiny little spot—it’s very easy to slip off into the past or the future. It’s as if the path to the past or the future were a little tiny tube, and if your mind is small enough, your awareness is small enough, it’s going to slip … 
  18. Songkran
     … Focus on making the future as good as you can by focusing on making the present moment as good as you can. In that way, this convention of a new year will serve a true purpose.
  19. Balancing Tranquility & Insight
     … Or by adjusting the breath, or by adjusting your perceptions of the breath, the perceptions of what you’re focusing on. Then you allow the mind to get more and more steady. What perceptions allow it to get more steady? Perception of the breath as a whole body process gets it more steady. Your perception that you’re not separate from the breath, that … 
  20. Dwellings
     … He asked about doubt.” “Doubt? Oh, no, never.” Then he focused on Fred. He started talking and he didn’t let up in his talk, which meant there was no room for me to translate. Even I, off to the side, could feel his compassion, it was that palpable. Karen, the woman sitting in front of the heater, said she was pushed against the … 
  21. Endurance with a Purpose
     … Here you’re focusing on the parts of the body that you can make comfortable by the way you breathe. Then you can think of that good breath energy going through the pain. Say there’s a pain in your knee, and there’s good breath energy in the torso. Well, think of the breath energy in the torso going down the back, down … 
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