Search results for: "Attention"

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2. Play AudioHeedful of What’s Precious
    … The future is uncertain, but you prepare for the future by being heedful of what you’re doing right now—protecting what’s valuable right now by being careful, ardent, resolute, attentive, observant. These are some of the aspects of what it means to be heedful. It’s through these aspects that the path comes to completion.
3. Play AudioAsk Yourself the Buddha’s Question
    … And try to keep your attention there with those feelings of the in-breath and the out-breath. If it helps, you can use a meditation word to go along with it. Buddho is a common one. It means “awake.” You think bud- with the in-breath and dho with the out. Or you can count the breaths one through 10, then one through … 
4. Play AudioSensitive to Stress
    … If the “you” is still in there, sometimes a perception comes up and it’ll spark a memory of something you did when you were a child, or something else that happened early in your life, or something about the world outside, and that will deflect your attention away. So, you’ve got to learn how to think in the Buddha’s vocabulary: simply … 
5. Play AudioDiscerning the Middle Way
    … Those are the kinds that survive in the mind simply because you’re not looking, not paying much attention to them. But as you notice them and watch them, you realize, “This is ridiculous,” and you can drop them. But there are other causes of suffering that just stare right back at you. They’re going to stay right there. Those are the ones … 
6. Play AudioHere Be Tigers
    … This is the problem that needs most attention. Once you’ve solved this problem, then nothing else is going to be a problem for the mind. So make sure your priorities are straight. And then be very still and watch. What will happen is that you’ll begin to see every now and then little thoughts forming in the mind, and they’ll be … 
7. Play AudioEvaluation
    … That’s where he points your attention. He says to focus your powers of evaluation here, and then he has you apply that same principle to the practice of meditation. You focus on the breath. Think about the breath and evaluate it. Is this a good comfortable breath to stay with? Does it feel good being with the breath? If it doesn’t, you … 
8. Play AudioProtection in all Directions
    … That something more solid is when you learn how to give up your interest in all your sensual thinking—thinking about how you’d like the world to be this way or you’d like the world to be that way—and you turn your attention to your inner world instead. This is why we meditate. The meditation is embedded in this larger teaching … 
9. Play AudioVisakha Puja – True Homage
    … Be ardent, really paying very close attention to what you’re doing. And be resolute: Once you’ve got the mind firmly planted in the breath, keep it there. This way, we practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. It’s an important phrase. Throughout the forest tradition, they talk about how Ajaan Mun took this as one of his two most favorite … 
10. Play AudioMeditating When You’re Sick
     … Focus your attention there. And think of the breath flowing freely in that part of the body. Then as that little beachhead gets established, you can spread it to other parts of the body and finally into the pained part. Think of the breath energy flowing all around and through the pain. All too often we tighten up around pain, which just makes it … 
11. Play AudioDelusion Concentration
     … Keep your main attention with the comfortable parts of the breath, the areas where the breath feels good. This, of course, leads to the problem on the other side. When you’re with the comfortable parts, you have to be very careful not to just wallow around in the pleasure. This is especially tempting after a tiring day. It’s like coming home to … 
12. Play AudioThe Skills of a Hunter
     … There are 32—31 at the time of the Buddha, 32 by the time of the commentaries—but there are five given the most attention, the ones that a preceptor teaches a new monk: hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin. The question is: Why stop with the skin? One reason, of course, is that those are the five parts … 
13. Play AudioThe Larger Picture
     … So the larger picture actually means being very precisely attentive to the small picture. This is one of the principles that comes from a complex causal pattern, like the one the Buddha taught. Large patterns are played out in the very small scales as well. Focus on the small scale and you find that the larger pattern will take care of itself. The important … 
14. Play AudioNo-Tech Meditation
     … This keeps directing your attention back on your intentions and your perceptions. In other words, the focus is always on training the mind. The rules are not extraneous. The training of discipline is not extraneous. There’s nothing in the Dhamma and Vinaya that can be abandoned or bypassed. Everything’s there to make you sensitive to your actions. That sensitivity then goes inside … 
15. Play AudioHow to Read Yourself
     … If that interest is flagging, if there doesn’t seem to be anything to the breath but in and out, ask yourself, “What are you missing? What are you not paying attention to?” Remind yourself of the example of the ajaans out in the forest, sometimes with a minimal amount of instruction. They were able to take that little bit of instruction and do … 
16. Play AudioBalancing Effort & Patience
     … Are there unskillful mental qualities in your mind right now? Pay attention to what’s happening right now. When you see anything unskillful arising, you get rid of it, and you try to prevent it from arising again. This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration: to block these unskillful things from coming into the mind so that you give rise to … 
17. Play AudioNoble Ardency
     … Alertness is paying attention to the present moment, and in particular what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. Ardency is the desire to really do it well. In the Canon, they talk about ardency as the proper response when you realize that if you don’t develop skillful qualities of mind there’s going to be suffering down the … 
18. Play AudioUseful Vocabulary
     … spaces where you don’t pay attention; things you don’t see. And they create locations there. This is one of the aspects of craving that you have to look for very carefully to see. The Buddha’s description is that craving is located now here, now there. Craving is what creates a location that becomes a basis for your becoming. It’s the … 
19. Play AudioThe Right Place to Look
     … He attacked his own mind—“attacked” in the sense of focusing his attention there—and really tried to straighten things out inside. Sometimes we hear that the Buddha wanted to put a stop to all suffering, regardless of whether it was caused by things inside or outside. But as he said, the real cause for the suffering is your own craving and ignorance. That … 
20. Play AudioCorrecting, Fostering, Cutting Away
     … There are parts of your mind that are engaged in thinking that, if you cast the light of attention on them, will get embarrassed. They’ll just stop. But others will not stop. They’ll just keep on going. That’s where you have to exert effort—what the Buddha calls exerting a fabrication. So there are lots of ways that you can cut … 
21. Play AudioThe Use of the Present
     … Without paying much attention to the in-breath, be more careful to breathe out, to get all the unhealthy air out of your lungs: See what holding that idea of the breath in mind does. Or you can experiment the other way around. See what works best right now. Or with your feelings, how you relate to pains in the body: You may have … 
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