Search results for: "Attention"

  1. Page 54
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation
     … Always give that your foremost attention.
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. Look at Yourself
     … The four noble truths point here; appropriate attention points here: Look at the skillfulness of your actions; look at the results. That’s how the Buddha himself found the path. He’d follow a certain practice. Notice, he’d follow a practice and he would look at himself in action. Sometimes we think that all we have to do is get the mind really … 
  16. There’s Work to Be Done
     … Don’t let the parts of the mind that don’t want things to open up inside divert your attention off the path. I’ve heard some people say that “working at concentration” goes against the basic principles of not-self. But then what is the principle of not-self? It’s not the principle that “there is no self,” or “there’s no … 
  17. Change Your Mind
     … Be aware of where you focus your attention, where you focus your desire to develop something. All too often we water the seeds that simply reflect our cravings. When we come to the practice, we try to use right effort: generating the desire to prevent unskillful states from arising, or if unskillful states already have arisen, to try to put an end to them … 
  18. The Fortress
     … Where do you feel it most prominently? Focus your attention there. That’s getting the mind in position. Now, once the body and mind are in position, you want to keep them in position. This is where it gets difficult. When the body’s sitting here without moving, sometimes there’s going to be a pain here or a numbness there. But you have … 
  19. Breath Meditation When It’s Hard to Breathe
     … Then I thought of Ajaan Lee’s descriptions of the various places in the head and different parts of the body where the breath can come in and go out, so I focused my attention there. I thought of the breath coming in and out through the forehead, through the top of the head, in from the back of the neck, down the spine … 
  20. The Desire to Be Free from Desire
     … Or you may decide that you simply don’t want to pay attention to that thinking. This is where perceiving the mind as a committee is useful. Some committee members may have their opinions, but you don’t have to listen to everybody on the committee; you don’t have to identify with everyone on the committee. If they’re going to chatter about … 
  21. Worry
     … You understand the causes that it comes from—in other words, your continuous attention to the breath—so you stick with the causes. Then you learn how to make the best use of the comfort. Spread it around. Learn how to breathe in a way that feels good regardless of the situation in the body, and you have something you can fall back on … 
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