Search results for: "Focusing"

  1. Page 53
  2. Befriending the Breath
     … So when the breath starts feeling comfortable in the spot that you’re focused on, think of that sense of comfort seeping out to different parts the body. Ajaan Lee gives ideas about how to direct it, but those are just general principles. You may find that your body has a different pattern of energy flow. So explore. When there’s a sense of … 
  3. Attention to Your Potentials
     … As for the cause of suffering, when the Buddha talks about appropriate attention, he focuses on the hindrances. He lists some of the defilements that get in the way of getting the mind to settle down. You have to look at them in an appropriate way as well. One of the most interesting ones is where the Buddha talks about sloth and torpor. He … 
  4. Analyzing Results
     … For this to become a skill, you have to notice what works and what doesn’t work, what ways of focusing the mind, what things you focus on, what levels of pressure you bring into the focus get results and which ones don’t—and which ones get results at certain times and not at another times. Try to take note. Over time, you … 
  5. The Equanimity of a Winner
     … So instead of focusing on trying to change things that can’t be changed, you try to develop the insight that sees which is which—which things can and which cannot be changed—and then you focus on the things that can be changed. In other words, you choose your battles. Even a doctor has to act like a warrior. The equanimity of a … 
  6. Stick with It
     … Where do you feel the sensation of breathing? Where do you feel it when you breathe out? Keep your awareness focused right there. It can be any part of the body. The important thing is that you allow it to be comfortable. Don’t tense up or force the breath or squeeze the breath. Just allow the breath to come in and out in … 
  7. Factors for Awakening
     … The word primary, here, is important, because there’s no way you’re going to be focused on the body without noticing feelings or mind states or mental qualities. After all, they all come together right here. This is why the Buddha says that you can focus on any of the four and follow it all the way to awakening. You choose one of … 
  8. Fear & Conviction
     … Well-placed fear focuses on the fact that situations could arise in the world that might get you to do something really, really unskillful. That’s a danger to really watch out for. You could easily undercut the root of your happiness because of an unskillful sense of fear, combined with greed, aversion, or delusion. When you sense that there’s still something in … 
  9. Prepare to Die
     … Even this technique of focusing the mind on one thing and learning how to let go of everything else: That’s going to be a really skill as the time of death approaches. But you can’t depend just on skills like that. You have to look at the way you live your life leading up to those events, because the way you live … 
  10. Feelings of Pain
     … If the mind leaves its object, why did it leave? When you bring it back, what’s the best way to bring it back? When you bring it back, how do you reward it? If you’re focused on the breath, give it an especially satisfying breath as a reward. This comes under the last two qualities, which are intent and analysis. You analyze … 
  11. Unparadoxical Happiness
     … It’s the happiness, the pleasure and ease, that comes when the mind is concentrated, when it’s focused on one thing and can stay there. As the Buddha said, there is no happiness other than peace. Whatever happiness we get from things outside comes because the mind is able to rest with them for a moment. But what always happens is it gets … 
  12. Advice for a New Monk
     … Whichever part of the body that’s easiest to stay focused on and to know, now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out: Try to stay focused right there. If thoughts come into your head, remind yourself that they’re not destroying your breath. The sensations of breathing are still there. Try to maintain your focus on those sensations and … 
  13. Forest Bathing
     … So you focus on the breath, focus on any part of the body that you find easy to stay focused on. There’s also the meditation on the thirty-two parts of the body. And although in some passages it emphasizes the unclean nature of those parts of the body to counteract lust and to counteract pride—lust for other people’s bodies, pride … 
  14. Starting from Within
    Meditation focuses inside, because this is where troubles begin. But it’s also where the solution can be found. We tend to focus outside, thinking that troubles come from outside or the potential help for our troubles is going to come from outside. And to some extent that’s true. But the deeper causes, both for the trouble and for the help, ultimately come … 
  15. Gaining the Dhamma Eye
     … Appropriate attention focuses you on that potential for freedom. It teaches you what to do to make the most of it. The fourth quality is practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. This means several things. On the one hand, you don’t practice in line with your preferences. You see what the Dhamma requires and you do it. All too often, we … 
  16. Borrowed Goods
     … The fact that you’re sitting here focusing on the breath: That’s form. It’s one of the elements in the body. Then there’s feeling: There may be pains here and there in the body, but you’re trying to create a feeling of ease, a feeling of well-being, which can sometimes get so intense that it qualifies as rapture. You … 
  17. Give Before You Get
     … When he talked about the four noble truths— which are basically truths focused on the fact that you’re suffering and there’s a way out—even before mentioning the four noble truths, he’d prepare people’s minds with what he called the graduated discourse. And the graduated discourse started with giving: how wonderful it is to give, what good mind states you … 
  18. A Skillful Heart
     … The whole idea of focusing a teaching on the problem of suffering has to be motivated by goodwill. You look at all of his teachings, and you can see that there’s goodwill underlying them all. When you look at a particular teaching, you should always ask yourself: “If I have goodwill for myself, goodwill for other beings, how will I act on this … 
  19. The Language of the Heart (1)
     … You’re focused on your breath. Try to bring your awareness to the breath and see what you can notice about what you’re doing that’s keeping the mind disturbed. Then clear away that disturbance so that it can settle down. That right there is where you can dig in. If you find that any of the teachings are directly related to what … 
  20. Equanimity as a Factor of Awakening
     … Stay focused on keeping those parts of the body relaxed, and you’ll find that the thought loses a lot of its power. You’re inhabiting your body so that the thought can’t slip in and take over your body. You’re keeping the body relaxed so it can’t tense things up. What you’re doing is putting yourself in a position … 
  21. The Limits of Interconnectedness
    When we meditate, we’re focusing on our part of our awareness that we don’t share with anyone else: our own sensation of the breath, our own experience of what’s going on in the mind. This is because eventually we want to deal with the problem that lies in this part of our awareness, which is our pain, our suffering. Nobody else … 
  22. Load next page...