Search results for: "Focus"
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- Distinctions That Make a Difference… You’re trying to focus on the pleasant feelings and nurture them—give rise to them and keep them there. Then the perceptions—the images you hold in mind of the breath: When the breath comes into the body, where does it come in? How far does it go? You’ll find that different ways of imaging the breath to yourself will have an …
- Your Game Leg… In other words, you don’t focus on the eyes, ears, etc. Whatever comes up in the senses, you keep watch over the mind as you sit, as you walk, as you stand, as you go through all your activities in the day. If you see anything that comes up, especially the game-leg parts of the mind—the excuse, “Well, I can’t …
- Endurance & Restraint… You try to find a quiet place to live so that you can focus on the real work that needs to be done, which is inside. So the more you’re able to maintain harmony as a group, your ability to put up with the difficulties that other people provide and not respond by creating more difficulties—they may be throwing things at you …
- Peace on Earth… Either change the breath or change the way you focus. The important thing is having a sense of harmony, because that’s an essential part of peace, and you learn about harmony by experimenting inside. When you learn the quality of mind that’s attentive, sensitive, observant, unwavering, and can apply that inside, it’s a lot easier to apply it outside as well …
- The Buddha’s Qualities… Once they’re out of the way, then you can focus on the breath 100%. Just be with the breathing. That’s all you need to know about right now. There’s nothing else. In fact, you don’t even have to listen to the talk. Let it just be in the background as a kind of fence that you run into when your …
- A Mind Like Earth… You focus on the breath, and there it is, it feels good. You think about it spreading around the body and it does. Other times it doesn’t happen so quickly. Sometimes it can take years for you to figure things out about the breath in the body. But the important thing is that you not think about how much time it’s going …
- The Path to Stream Entry… Do the path, focus on what you’re doing, reflect on what you’re doing, and that combination of commitment and reflection will take you to something that’s beyond the path. After all, the path is fabricated—you do put it together—but it can take you to something unfabricated. This is one of the big paradoxes in the Buddha’s teachings that …
- The Quest for Inner Happiness… You can wander around the body for a while to see which part of the body seems easiest to focus on or when you focus on it has the most beneficial effect on the breath. Take your time to choose your main focal point. You’re not just clamping down someplace. You’re actually exploring and choosing which kind of breathing feels best, which …
- Right Learning… So instead, you focus on the area that’s not disturbed. You begin to realize that the disturbance doesn’t have to fill your whole range of awareness. There may be a thought chattering away in the back of your mind, but you don’t have to pull it in and make it fill your whole mind. It can be just there in the …
- Respect, Confidence, & Patience… Sometimes you need to focus on the length of the breath; other times you focus on spreading the breath throughout the body; other times you have to be very careful about where you’re focused in the body. All of these are component factors. Ajaan Fuang once noted that when someone is having trouble in concentration practice, or the concentration of the practice is …
- Distractive Thoughts… In other words, they’re still there in the back of the mind, but you begin to realize that you can still focus on the breath even though the thoughts are there in the back of the mind. The breath is always coming in; it’s always going out. Years back, I was teaching meditation in a room that had a very loud clock …
- Factors for Awakening… When you’re with the breath, what kind of breathing is easy to focus on? What feels good for the body, and what’s right for the mind? You have to take both sides into consideration—both body and mind—because sometimes very subtle breathing may feel good for the body, it’s relaxing, but if it’s too subtle for the mind to …
- Goodwill & Gratitude… But what contains the four noble truths? The fact that someone on awakening would focus on the problem of suffering, teaching other people how they could stop suffering. Where does that come from if not from goodwill? The fact that someone would go around northern India for 45 years, teachings these truths to people—everyone who was willing to listen and able to practice …
- Blessings… You begin by talking to yourself about what would be a good topic to focus on. He recommended the breath. That was the topic on which he was focused the night of his awakening. When he taught meditation, this was the topic he taught more than any other, because the breath is with you all the time, coming in, going out. You don’t …
- Good at Thinking… All your thinking relates to the breath, and then you evaluate with more and more skill what really feels best right now—not only in terms of the breath, but also in terms of the pressure of your focus. Ssometimes you can bear down too heavily on the breath, so that everything in the body feels confined and clamped down. That’s not good …
- Slings and Arrows of Ordinary Fortunes… In other words, you learn to focus not just on the things that are difficult. You could bang your head against them, but instead you focus on where there’s a source of strength inside. And this can be physically with the breath and it can also be mentally, with the attitudes you bring to things. This is what the Dhamma is for. It …
- Life’s First Question… Even the teaching on emptiness is simply a question of how you focus the mind in such a way that it’s more and more empty of disturbance, more and more empty of suffering, how to get your mind into a good state of concentration. and then how to watch it, how to observe it. Essentially. it’s the same skill that’s applied …
- Skills to Make You Free… You’ve got other parts of the body that you can focus on. It’s like that old book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, where the instructor recommends that, when drawing a face, you don’t draw eyes or nose or mouth. Draw the spaces between the eyes and the nose, between the nose and the mouth, between the mouth and …
- Four Determinations… That way, you can focus on the area where the Buddha said you should be discontent, which is the level of skillfulness in your mind. You have the time, the energy, and the opportunity to focus on wherever your skills are lacking, so try to develop them as far as you can.
- Worlds Inside & Out… It was because he had that larger view that he was then able to focus on the present moment. He’d also picked up some interesting lessons from that larger view: learning about the power of intention, the power of views. So those were the things he focused on when he focused on the present moment. What were his intentions? What was his understanding …
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