Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Common Sense
     … You can increase or decrease the amount of suffering by the way you focus on the pain. The same with pleasure: Certain forms of pleasure, if you really focus on them, are helpful in making the mind clear and still. A sense of ease and well-being that comes with the breath: That’s a helpful kind of pleasure. Be careful simply that you … 
  3. Whatever It Takes
     … Even though you could hear it, you decided not to focus on it. That’s the kind of concentration you’re trying to develop. In the beginning it is easier when you don’t have those distractions. But any concentration that relies on ideal circumstances is not a very reliable refuge in any way at all. For the most part, things are quiet here … 
  4. The Skill of Letting Go
     … Because it is possible, as you focus down on things in your mind and you tell yourself, “Okay, I’m not going to focus on anything. Anything that comes up, I’m going to push it out of the way, push it out of the way”—and there’s a certain amount of aversion in that—you can put yourself into a state of … 
  5. To the Far Shore
     … So, say, when sensual desire comes up, he doesn’t want you to focus on the object outside that got you excited. Instead, he wants you to see: What was the tendency in the mind that wanted to get excited to begin with? That’s what you want to look for. That’s the origination. Then you want to see that the mental acts … 
  6. Take Time to Evaluate Your Life
     … The question is, what’s the best way to shape it? The Buddha’s recommendation is that you focus on the issue of stress: *dukkha, *also translated as suffering, particularly the kind you’re causing yourself. You would think that everything you do would be for the purpose of pleasure, and often it is, but all too often your actions lead to stress, lead … 
  7. Protection, Inside & Out
     … You focus on the breath and you do what you can to remember to stay with the breath. Then you watch yourself: Watch the breath to see how the breath is going. Watch the mind to see how the mind is going. And then you’re ardent, trying to get rid of unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones. That ardency is based on a … 
  8. Getting Back on Your Feet
     … This time you really will focus on the breath rather than thinking ahead a little bit or back a little bit. Just be with the sensation in the present moment: this breath and then this breath and then this breath. And if the question comes up, “How many breaths do I have to do this?” You can say, “Don’t ask that. Just keep … 
  9. Farming Your Body & Mind
    We focus on the breath so that we can observe the mind. But begin by giving your full attention to the breath. Try to make the breath something you find interesting. Be sensitive to how it feels as you breathe in, as you breathe out. Where in the body do you feel the sensations around breathing? And not just the air coming in and … 
  10. Equanimity
     … It feels like it’s too much, so at that point you focus on a level of energy that’s more refined. And as you focus on that more refined level, the grosser sense of rapture will gradually dissipate. The mind feels very equanimous at that point, but there will be a sense of pleasure still in the body, very subtle. Ajaan Lee’s … 
  11. Reflect
     … Sometimes you work on the breath—changing the way you breathe, changing the way you focus on the breath, changing the different ways of directing the breath energy through the different parts of the body. Other times, you work on the mind. If you find that the mind doesn’t want to settle down with the breath, okay, what’s the problem? Maybe you … 
  12. Restraint Leads to Freedom
     … It’s only when you exercise some restraint like this that the mind gains some solidity, some focus. Once you’re established the power of the focus, that’s what gets expansive. The same principle applies outside as well. When you’re dealing with the outside world, you’ve got to exercise restraint. It’s from restraint that the practice of goodwill can grow … 
  13. Doing, Maintaining, Using
     … The doing is not all that hard—focus the mind on the breath. The breath is right there. You don’t have to go scrounging around. You don’t have to go to the ends of the earth to find your breath. It’s right next to the mind. It’s simply a question of learning to be more sensitive to it. That’s … 
  14. A Safe Place
     … It’s not that the anxiety has no focus. It has a focus, but you don’t want to look at it. And because things like this are so uncomfortable, this is why psychotherapists have to create a safe atmosphere in their offices, so that whatever comes up, whatever is talked about, the patient doesn’t feel threatened. In a way, you’re doing … 
  15. A Clear, Calm Lake
     … This is where we bring in the quality of what the Buddha calls appropriate attention, where you focus on what’s happening in the mind. If something unskillful is coming up, you know what to do with it. It should be abandoned. If something skillful is coming up, you develop it. When you develop that principle even further, it turns into the four noble … 
  16. An Hour of Bliss
     … They’re going to focus on the breath, so they try to strangle it to make it stay in place. And of course that makes it uncomfortable. When it’s uncomfortable, you don’t stay. You wander off. So allow the breath be comfortable as it comes in, comfortable as it goes out. In fact, you can explore: What kind of breathing feels best … 
  17. Organizing Your Inner Committee
     … Even though they may let you focus on the breath for a few minutes, they’re going to try to sabotage it. So you’ve got to realize, as Ajaan Lee says, that there’s more than one mind in the mind. There are lots of minds in here, lots of intentions. It’s a problem in the beginning of meditation, but learning to … 
  18. Breath Meditation: The Second Tetrad
     … You focus on the breath. As he said, the fact that you are paying careful attention to the breath: That, in and of itself, is a feeling. It’s a strange statement, that an act of attention would be a feeling. I think what he’s referring to is the fact that feelings are fabricated. They come from some potentials from the past: the … 
  19. An End to Suffering
     … If you just focus on the “I” it helps give you some encouragement to get your act together. But if you focus on all living beings, it changes your perspective. This is what gets you on the path to the end of suffering. So when you find yourself tied up in your narrative or tied up in your views, try to get a larger … 
  20. Serenity
     … This helps to focus you in, it helps you put other things aside. You can reflect on your own virtue, you can reflect on your own generosity. These are calming thoughts as well: realizing that even though your virtue may not be perfect, you’ve got at least some good things that you’ve done in your past. Your generosity may not be perfect … 
  21. Rivers of Craving
     … So we don’t have to go over to the Bodhi tree to gain awakening, we can focus right here, where the mind and the body meet at the breath, and learn a lot of the same lessons he learned. But first we have to get the mind into concentration, get it focused as steadily as we can. It wasn’t until he got … 
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