Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. Reflecting on the Requisites
     … So what are you going to do with that food? Are you going to pretend that it comes without a cost? Or are you going to be conscious of the cost and do what you can to pay back the debt? One of Ajaan Lee’s more memorable Dhamma talks focuses on the fact that this body we have right here is made of … 
  14. More than Just Letting Go
     … That’s where the Buddha focused. He didn’t take on all the suffering in the world—which is another misconception you hear around: that the Buddha said he wanted to end all suffering in the world. Well, no. He wanted to end the kind of suffering that people cause themselves unnecessarily. That’s what he focused on. He couldn’t go out and … 
  15. Getting Out of Karmic Debt
     … He focused, of course, on the animals he’d eaten. But even people who are vegetarian have debts to the farmers and other people involved in the food chain. When you do something good with the body, that’s how you pay back the debts. In the Canon they talk about how one of the motivations for wanting to gain awakening is that the … 
  16. The Hall of Mirrors
     … Everybody comes to the breath with lots of different preconceived notions about what the breath is, or, when you’re focusing on something, how you have to focus in order to stay with it. These are old habits we picked up a long time ago, and it’s up to you to observe them. The breath is a good mirror for reflecting the mind … 
  17. Discipline Is a Choice
     … Normally, we jump back and forth, focusing on our bodies for a while, then going out into the world for a bit, then coming back in. But that’s not much of a path. It’s a very zigzag path. You want to make up your mind that the path of right mindfulness is the one you want to follow, and anything that’s … 
  18. Determined to Stay with the Breath
     … The Buddha has a passage where he talks about the reasons why people get lazy: “It’s too hot,” “It’s too early,” “It’s too late,” “It’s too cold.” There’s no reason why heat should be an obstacle to getting your mind focused. There’s no reason why cold should be, or earliness or lateness. When there’s noise outside, think … 
  19. Questioning the Hindrances
     … If you wanted to actually gain that object or that person, what would you have to do? And try to think of all the implications, not just the nice ones, because we tend to dress things up, focusing only on the good things and forgetting the bad things. You’ve got to keep reminding yourself: These are the implications. You want a body that … 
  20. Realities Right Here
     … See if we can work with it.” I focused on it and I was able to get it to unknot itself, I guess you might say. Then it got into my digestive system, and I belched. I was really surprised: It really was breath. I don’t know what I’d been thinking up to that point: that this was some kind of make … 
  21. Pleasure & Pain
     … This is why you have to start here, creating this little corner and giving all your attention to this one spot where you’re focusing on the breath or whatever your meditation object is. The purpose is to create a little space, at least, where you can put aside the madness of the world — where you feel solid, secure, where there’s a sense … 
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