Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Giving Ballast to the Mind… The more continuous the sense of pleasure of the body, the more easily the mind will stay focused continually. It’ll be less and less inclined to want to change. To teach it the habits that it needs in order to be reliable, you have to stick with something. Train the mind to be continuous in its gaze, continuous in its attention, continuous in …
- Alone & with Others… And even when you’re with other people, try to make sure that your inner center stays in place, wherever you’ve focused it in your body. That way, living alone doesn’t become a problem or an obstacle to your practice; and living with other people doesn’t become an obstacle, because you’ve learned to develop a sense of balance. Particularly when …
- Whole-Hearted Concentration… If you’re focusing on the breath in and of itself, okay, every cell of the body is breathing in, breathing out. Everywhere there’s a nerve end, think of its being awake to the breathing in and breathing out of every cell. Be fully present. Willingly present. Whole-heartedly present. All too often our concentration gets cut off because we’re partly here …
- The Karma of Meditation… Primarily he’s focusing on the suffering of stress in the mind. But to comprehend that, you have to consider how the mind conceives of, say, pain in the body. How does it conceive unpleasant emotions in a way that makes it suffer even more? For most of us, as the Buddha said, when we’re struck with a pain of some kind, it …
- Learning How to Talk to Yourself… So, you can provide yourself with good food here in the present moment by developing the right attitudes, focusing on the right things, useful things to think about, focusing on commenting on them, evaluating, asking questions, answering the questions in a way that’s really useful—true, useful, timely. That becomes your food. You find that when you have a good source of food …
- A Gift of Well-Being… Which side of the body seems to be holding more tension? For example, if you’re focusing on the back, notice: In it the upper back, is the left side or the right side holding more tension? Then go down to the lower back. How about there? Down through your legs. You find that the tension tends to be distributed in very unusual ways …
- A Pure Happiness… This is why we’re focusing on the breath. This is our manageable bit, our manageable piece right now: this breath, right here, right now; this moment of mindfulness right here, right now. And whatever comes up in terms of an obstacle, it’s just that little bit of a thought right here, right now. If you start thinking about it in big terms …
- Neither Here nor There… We go through many becomings in the course of the day, focusing our desires here and then jumping over there, and then coming back here again and then someplace else. It all comes from our cravings. The cravings, of course, are the cause of suffering. They’re precisely what we need to study if we want to get past suffering. We have to understand …
- What’s Constant, What’s Not… And you do it by focusing on what you’re doing right here, right now, not concerned about the future, confident that if you put good causes into the system right here, right now, the future will have to come out good at some point. Don’t pin your hopes on its coming out good at any one particular point in time, though, but …
- On Not Being a Victim… He focused his conviction on that. And the power of his conviction made a difference. It reshaped his mind, reshaped his experience of things. It shaped his mind until it reached a point where it could see things very clearly in terms of why there is suffering and how you can put an end to suffering. It didn’t just happen; it happened through …
- Peace of Mind… If you choose a spot that seems difficult to stay focused on, move around a bit until you find a spot that’s just right. Let the mind settle down and rest for a while. It doesn’t have to go anywhere; it doesn’t have to do anything. You have no responsibilities right now. Anything that has to do with the past or …
- Karma for Freedom… This is one of the reasons why we meditate, and why the meditation is focused on what we’re doing right now in the present moment. You make up your mind to breathe in one way, and you can watch the results. If you don’t like the results, you can breathe in another way. Heavy, light, fast, slow, deep, shallow, short, long—there …
- As Days & Nights Fly Past… Heavier or lighter; deeper or more shallow; faster or slower; broader or more focused. There are lots of different ways you can breathe. Experiment to see what the range of breathing can do for the body. It’s like getting a new stereo. You fiddle with the dials to see how they affect the sound, what kind of noises you can get out of …
- The Analytical Mind… When we learn, say, scholarly method or the scientific method, that’s when you’re focused on your actions, and those lessons can be useful. Whatever background you have in gaining a sense of what you’re doing is useful to apply to your meditation. We’re trying to get the mind quiet, so that it learns the skill of how not to think …
- Centered in the Body… Even when you’re very focused in walking meditation, you still have to be aware of how the body is moving, when you’re coming to the end of the path. That slight bit of distraction can often leave a little bit of an opening. As they say in Thai, suam roi: The defilements can step in your footsteps as you’re looking out …
- Take Care… You just keep focusing on the quality of your intention, right here, right now. Be careful of what you do, careful of what you say, and careful of what you think. As when you’re sitting here meditating: Be very careful to stay with the breath. Be very careful to notice even the slightest hint that the mind is going to wander off. Catch …
- Success with Breathing… If your desire isn’t well focused, if your efforts are lackadaisical, you don’t pay much attention, and you don’t try to figure out when things are going wrong why they’re going wrong, then it’s not going to grow. It’s not going to succeed. You have to be confident that you can succeed with the breath. That’s all …
- The World Offers No Shelter… When we do some of the reflections to develop a sense of heedfulness, they end by focusing on where the problem is. When we do the five reflections, they end with a reflection on karma. Here, the reflection ends with a reflection on craving. No matter how insufficient the world is, we keep wanting to come back. That’s what the problem is. That …
- Samatha, Vipassanā, Jhāna… You stay focused on the breath in and of itself. You’re ardent, alert, and mindful. As for anything else that’s not related to the breath, anything that’s related to the world, you just put it aside. Then you get more and more refined in how you stay with the breath, more and more solid in your concentration. You learn things as …
- Ready for the Truth… before, renunciation doesn’t mean just giving things up. It means looking for your pleasure in an area that has nothing to do with sensuality—like we’re doing right now: focusing on the breath, trying to make the breath comfortable, putting the mind at ease with the breath, and seeing that this really is a good place to be. Then, the Buddha said …
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