Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
     … If there are pains in your knees, pains in your hips, you don’t make that the focus of your attention. You focus on the parts that are comfortable. You remind yourself, after all, that those knees and those hips are not really yours. You have the choice as to whether or not you want to lay claim to the pain in those knees … 
  3. Dissolving Your Thoughts
     … In other words, you give all your attention to the breath energies in the body. Try to connect them as much as possible when they’re positive, and as the breath energy feels more and more full, there will naturally be less of a need to breathe in and out. The breath gets softer and more gentle, and when everything is really well connected … 
  4. The Knife of Discernment
     … Just make sure that you’ve got the causes right in terms of the stability of your gaze, the sense of wellbeing you can fall back on whenever you need it, and the quality of appropriate attention — learning how to ask the right questions. That’s what you do in the meditation, that’s what you intend in the meditation, and when these things … 
  5. The Anatomy of the Present
     … Sensory contact is where we tend to locate the present moment, but the Buddha is saying that this aspect of the present moment is shaped by a lot of factors that go prior to it in the present, including the factors and sub-factors of fabrication, intention, and attention. These are the things that prime you either to suffer or not to suffer from … 
  6. The Cool Fire of Jhana
     … Once it’s settled in, you don’t have to be quite so attentive to it. You still have to tend to it. But you can actually allow other thoughts to come in—not that you’re going to go with them, but you’re beginning to see the process of how a thought forms. There’s room for that. At the same time … 
  7. A Blameless Happiness
     … be better off if you could let go of some of that attachment? What is your perception of the body? What is your perception of the pain? How are you paying attention to it? Are you thinking, “Why is this pain here? Why is it harming me?” How about changing the question to, “How can I understand this pain?” You just change the question … 
  8. Raise Your Standards
     … These movements of attention, now focusing here, now focusing there: Ask yourself, what caused you to change focus? When you frame things to yourself, what are the terms you use to frame them? You encounter this immediately when you’re working with the breath. You start out with the assumption that the breath is the air coming in through the nose, but as you … 
  9. De-thinking
     … There’s the desire, the interest, the persistence as you keep after it, the close attention you’re paying to it, and then the ingenuity you’re putting into the questions you ask. All these things contribute to concentration, help the concentration get settled, get solid, get very clear. It’s this ability to ask questions that makes all the difference in your practice … 
  10. Action & Result
     … He teaches you where to focus your attention, say, on the body in itself, the breath in itself, and how to develop powers of mindfulness and concentration around that. When the mind gets well-fed with the concentration, clear with the concentration, then you start asking the right questions. And again, these are questions of action and result—the kinds of questions the Buddha … 
  11. Strength of Conviction: 2
     … In that case, who you believe would be people of integrity; what you believe is the true Dhamma; what you do as a result is that you develop appropriate attention and you practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. Now there’s another list of stream-entry factors: These are the factors of stream-entry or that constitute what it means to obtain … 
  12. Put Your Heart into It
     … So whatever disturbances there are outside, you learn how to not pay them any attention. Whatever disturbances there are in the mind, disregard them as just another committee member or block of committee members. They don’t have to have control over everything. You hold on. You’re resolute. You’re ardent. And you do this because you’re heedful. You realize that if … 
  13. Oozing Bodies, Oozing Minds
     … In other words, the purpose of this is to deflect your attention away from the object back to the fact that you’ve got this desire for the body to be attractive. You have to keep asking yourself: why? Why do you want it to be attractive? What is this fermentation that comes bubbling up? What does it want? What are its assumptions? That … 
  14. Rooted in Desire
     … But, you had to learn how to balance that desire so that you can actually pay attention to what you’re doing while you practice. So, instead of just thinking about how much you want to do it well, you actually focus on the steps. If you’re learning a musical instrument, you focus on your scales, you focus on your intonation, you focus … 
  15. The Right Attitude to the Body
     … As soon as the Buddha saw that he’d gotten her attention, he then had the women in the vision get old, get sick, and then die and decompose. Rupananda realized that even the most beautiful bodies would end up that way. The realization hit her so hard that she was able to let go of her attachment to her own body and gain … 
  16. Learning Right Speech
     … When the Buddha taught the noble eightfold path, he didn’t teach any extraneous folds, any extra factors that were unnecessary, so learn how to give each of the factors the attention it deserves.
  17. Savor Your Breath
     … Pay special attention to the in-breath, because that’s the energizing breath. The in-breath is something you do. The out-breath is something you should learn how not to squeeze out. You do the in-breathing; the body will allow the breath back out again at its own pace. Then when you feel the need to breathe in again, then breathe in … 
  18. Present-Moment Intelligence
     … Most people go through life without paying much attention to their breath. As for the way they talk to themselves, they take it for granted: This is the conversation, this is how it tends to be, these are the voices that tend to have power in the mind. As for the perceptions, what we think is abstract thinking is often driven by underlying images … 
  19. For Your Future’s Sake
     … That doesn’t mean that they’re the same thing, just that you should give all your attention to what you have to do right now, and don’t try to second guess what’s going to come down the line, how far away it may be. The Buddha makes that point again and again: You have no idea in advance when the moment … 
  20. Responsible Happiness
    Focus your attention on the process of breathing in the body. When you breathe in, where do you feel it? There’s the passage of the air through the nose. There’s the movement of the abdomen, the movement of the chest. Focus less on the air and more on the movement of the body. It may be subtle, but it’s there. In … 
  21. The Treasure Hunt
     … What happens when you really focus your attention right here and don’t let yourself get distracted? What happens when you develop your sensitivities in this area? What do you find? Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about his time with Ajaan Mun, saying that Ajaan Mun would give long Dhamma talks, sketching out the whole path of the practice, because at any one time there … 
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