Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Calm… If you’re focusing on one that’s energizing and becomes unpleasant, then—after you’ve opened up all the escape channels—try to tune in to a calmer energy in the same spot where the excited energy is. It’s like digging a well. When I was living in Wat Asokaram, they had a constant problem because the monastery was right at the …
- Appreciating the State of Peace… you into little pieces with a two-handled saw. Even in cases like that, he said, you should have goodwill for them. In fact, that’s where you start your goodwill: focused on them. Of course, you’re doing this both for them and for yourself, because you realize if you were to die at that moment, you wouldn’t want to die with …
- Doing Your Duty… He would be focusing on a particular dhutanga practice and trying to be very, very careful in adhering to it—and getting proud about it. Ajaan Mun would have his ways of breaking the practice to make him sensitive to his pride. In the same way, we have to watch out for the fear that can get in the way of dealing with the …
- Laying the Infrastructure… It’s by focusing your attention of the breath—getting really, really sensitive right here—that your sensitivity is going to take you where you want to go. Because the sensitivity involves not only very clear perception, but also continuity. If you really want to be sensitive to something, you’ve got to watch it continuously and not go skipping around. Think of a …
- Dignity in the Face of Hardship… How are we breathing? How are we talking to ourselves about this? What perceptions, what feelings are we focusing on? It’s through those fabrications that we maintain ourselves both in dignity now and in well-being on into the future. So focus your energy, focus your attention on the areas where you do have power, where you do have control both in your …
- Stillness & Clear Seeing… That’s why we practice concentration, focusing on the breath. Take some good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. And if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t feel good, you can change. Find a level of breathing—fast, slow, heavy, light, deep, shallow—that’s just right. The breath is the most responsive of all the elements in the …
- Mindfulness of Death… It focuses on the fact that the mind goes beyond death and you’re going to need good qualities not to suffer from the death and to be able to establish yourself well in the next life, Or, if you can go beyond having to be reborn, so much the better. This means that these reflections don’t focus on death. They focus on …
- Fabrication… Now it’s like that.” The directed thought and the evaluation are there as well, keeping you focused on the breath and on evaluating the breath. So these things are all together. If you stray away from here, you’re usually straying away into distraction, into the realm of further elaboration, in which you lose this basic frame of reference and create a whole …
- Calm & at Ease… And only when it’s settled down can it stay firmly focused. The English word concentration is a good translation for samadhi, because it’s when the mind is firmly intent. Calm is more gentle. You’re beginning to settle down, so you have to induce a sense of ease. The Buddha teaches how to induce it through fabrication in his instructions on breath …
- 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 …
- The Raft of Concepts… That’s why we’re focused on the present moment: to look at our intentions. When you have right view, you realize that that’s why we’re here. This helps give focus to your meditation. Once the mind is still, you intend to keep it still. That’s a skillful intention. Then you can start looking at the process of intention in a …
- Guardians at Death… He recommends that you get the mind in a good state of concentration, because the place where your mind is focused at the moment of death will have a huge impact on where you’re going to go. You want to maintain a focus that’s solid, clear, aimed either at total release or at least a rebirth where you can continue practicing. And …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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