Search results for: "Attention"
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- How 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 …
- Balancing 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 …
- Noble 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 …
- Useful 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 …
- The 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 …
- Correcting, 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 …
- The 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 …
- Take Care of Your Tools… But your attention to the breath is what keeps that ease going. So you don’t want to lose touch with the breath. So indulge yourself with the sense of well-being that comes with breathing well and staying focused on the breath. Ask yourself which part of the body seems to be starved of breath energy. Sometimes it’s in the throat. Sometimes …
- Body as Path… You can use the breath as an example, just paying close attention the breath. Find out which way of breathing can give rise to a sense of ease, a sense of pleasure. Then let that pleasure and ease spread out throughout the whole body. Let it saturate the whole body, suffuse, permeate the whole body. That sense of ease comes when you finally have …
- Expert’s Mind… But if your views deal with what are you doing, what kind of actions are skillful, what kind of actions are not skillful, they focus your attention where it really can make a difference—where it really can be of use. The rest of the path then follows on that. You make up your mind that you’re going to act on intentions that …
- Settling In… But here’s your chance to give it all the attention it deserves so that the mind *can *have a home. If the mind is going to go thinking, tell it to think only when it really needs to. Otherwise, you’re going to stay right here—rested, refreshed, nourished—allowing body and mind to heal from all the jouncing around and knocking back …
- Wearing the Breath… Where do you feel the flow of energy as the air comes in, the air goes out right now? Where is it most prominent? Focus your attention there and try to figure out which ways of breathing feel best. Again, you’re feeling it; you’re wearing it. It’s what nowadays we call proprioception: your sense of the body as you feel it …
- Gather ’Round the Breath… You want your mindfulness to think about the breath, and to think about the mind, and your alertness to pay attention to both: How are things going with the breath? And to what extent is the mind staying with the breath? In the beginning, you have to go back and forth between those two things until everything gathers together into one. Try to keep …
- Lessons from the Breath… Anywhere where it’s not, you pay attention to what it needs. Does it need to be shorter, longer, faster, slower, deeper, more shallow? Make those changes where you can. When it’s already going well, you try to maintain that sense of ease. You don’t take it for granted; you don’t just throw it away. You appreciate it, recognize its importance …
- The Languages of Right View… This is why the Buddha teaches appropriate attention as a way to talk to ourselves. And basically it speaks two languages: There’s the language of karma, which talks about actions, people who do actions, people who receive the results of actions, the worlds they live in, and the worlds they create. And then there’s the language of the four noble truths, which …
- Everything’s Right There… Learn to read the feelings that come about as a result of paying attention to the breath. When the Buddha talks about being mindful, it’s not simply being aware and non-reactive to what’s coming up. You’re trying to keep things in mind. Alertness is what notices what’s happening. Mindfulness is what remembers things that are useful to know right …
- An Ennobling Pleasure… Your attention to the present moment is a type of fabrication. Your decision to watch the present moment: That’s a fabrication as well. But as you get the mind into this fabrication, one, you’re putting yourself in a better position to observe the grosser kinds of fabrication; and two, as your sensitivity improves, you can start taking this kind of fabrication apart …
- Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation… Always give that your foremost attention.
- Guiding Truths… They do this by focusing our attention on the immediate issue: What is the suffering right now? What are you doing that’s aggravating the suffering? Can you stop? What do you need to do in order to stop? Those are the questions you can apply to any issue at any time. They focus directly on your own experience, the part of your own …
- What Are You Doing?… And the questions have to do with, “What are you doing?” Of course, with the pain, what you’re doing is the perception along with the way you’re pay attention to it and the stories you bring to it and all the other issues around the pain that you add to the pain. All too often they’re things we’ve been doing …
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