Search results for: "Attention"

  1. Page 55
  2. Concentration Teamwork
     … You can think about the breath going into parts of the body that you don’t pay much attention to. You can try different focal points. If you’ve been focusing at the tip of the nose, you can try, say, the base of the throat, the tip of the breastbone, or the spot just above the navel. There are lots of places you … 
  3. Effortlessness Through Effort
     … Why does it pull you away? Why does it capture your attention? Now, “allure” here doesn’t simply mean the things that you find pleasing. There are some things that are actually negative, but the mind really goes for them anyhow. If you dig down a little bit deeper you find that there is some pleasure in going for the things you don’t … 
  4. The Awful Truth
     … In the beginning, you want to give as little attention as possible to the things that pull you away. But once your center of gravity shifts so that it’s inside, then you begin to look to see: What are these things that pull you away? We build up this stillness inside so that we can use it as a foundation to look at … 
  5. Discernment Requires Concentration
     … You get there by focusing your attention on the breath, the body in and of itself, feelings, mind states, mental qualities in and of themselves, all of which circle around the breath. You’re ardent, alert, mindful. Ardency, of course, is right effort continued. Alert means watching what you’re doing while you’re doing it, because after all, what you’re doing is … 
  6. Skilled in Aims
     … It’s not the case that the breath pulls at you and says, “Hey, hey, hey, pay attention to me!” It’s because we have right view, realizing that the mind needs to be provided with a sense of nourishment inside that doesn’t depend on things outside, that we look for it in the breath. Then we cultivate the breath. This all comes … 
  7. Skillful Distress
     … But renunciate distress focuses your attention in a different direction: toward the people who have attained awakening. They were noble people. Instead of hanging around with uninspiring people, maybe you can hang out with people who are noble. I was reading yesterday about how the idea that there is an attainment that you can attain—one that gets you out of this up and … 
  8. Indulge in the Pleasure of Jhana
     … The more attention you give to this, the greater the rewards are going to be. This becomes the pleasure that’s your food as you go along the path. It gives you the strength to keep on going.
  9. Watch the Mind at the Breath
     … And it’s important that whatever feelings of ease and well-being come up, you don’t focus your primary attention on them. You notice that they’re there, but they’re not your focus. The focus has to be the energy and the quality of the energy. Eventually it’s going to grow still, and if your only concept of the breath is … 
  10. Hope
     … In the same way, centering your attention on the breath in the body is a good way of stepping out of your thoughts. Or you can think of having a sense of the breath energy around the body—a cocoon that surrounds the body. Think of your awareness being sensitive to that all around. I know people who say they can see people’s … 
  11. Memory & Motivation
     … And the purpose of this future thinking, of course, is to turn your attention back to the present moment, so that you can develop those qualities of mindfulness and alertness and ardency without being distracted. Take what you’ve learned from the past and apply it to the present and know that it’s going to be good for the future. These things are … 
  12. A Goal Without Limits
     … It’s based on a perception, the perception infinite consciousness, and it’s maintained by acts of attention and intention. So when the Buddha says that there’s no name or form in anidassana consciousness, he’s talking about nibbāna, because that’s where there’s no experience of name and form. Consciousness without surface is a type of consciousness but it’s not … 
  13. Perfect Breathing Isn’t the Goal
     … You’re going to see a lot of things you don’t like, and there is that tendency to deflect your attention away from those things. But those are precisely the things you’ve got to understand. The Buddha gives you his five-step process: look for the origination, look for the passing away, look for the allure, look for the drawbacks. Compare the … 
  14. True for What Purpose?
     … now that the body is going to start falling apart, where are you going to focus your attention so that you don’t create unnecessary suffering for yourself? Here again, the four noble truths provide the grammar. They provide the structure, allowing you to organize your sense of what’s important, what’s not important, where your priorities are. Anything that fits into that … 
  15. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … You can keep the rest of the meeting on topic, and you find that the crazy person thinking off in the corner, if you don’t pay attention to it, you’re not feeding it, begins to die out after a while, because there’s no one listening. So even though there may be some background chatter in the mind, remind yourself that the … 
  16. Cutting New Paths in the Mind
     … Remember those questions that he said don’t deserve asking, or don’t deserve attention: “Who am I? What am I? Am I good? Am I bad?” Get the question of identity out of the way, and simply look at, “What kind of habit is this? Is this a useful habit? Do I really want it?” You may know very well that you don … 
  17. The Dhamma Eye
     … And although we shouldn’t focus too much attention on where we’re going—we should focus on what our next step will be— still, hearing about it gives us an idea that this is a good direction to go: something that’s totally free. Total freedom, total happiness, totally harmless. We think about that as a possibility, then we look at our other … 
  18. Respect for the Triple Training
     … You’re not really paying attention. Or laziness: You don’t want to be bothered. But you’ve given in to these three habits for a long time. That’s a triple training you don’t want to get involved with—you don’t want to submit to. You’ve submitted to it long enough. By submitting to virtue, the practice of concentration, and … 
  19. A Seeker’s Habits
     … And that begins to focus your attention on what’s really important in your life: the intentions that shape what you do. Because what you intend to do then in turn shapes your experiences. If you’re not skillful, it can go into a downward spiral. So you have to take a good look at your life to see which parts of your life … 
  20. Four Roles to Play
     … Where do you feel it? Then you focus your attention to where it’s clearest. The next question is: How does it feel? Does it feel good? You can try experimenting. Tell yourself to try long breathing for a while, then to try short breathing. Fast or slow, heavy or light. Deep, shallow. Broad, narrow. This is where you bring in another aspect of … 
  21. Minding Your Own Business
     … You begin to see that even the simple process of breathing can get all screwed up if you don’t pay it any attention. What you’re here trying to do is to sort out which ways of breathing feel good for the whole body. You take it section-by-section first: Breathe in a way that feels good for this section, then move … 
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