Search results for: "Attention"
- Page 58
- Creating a World of Concentration… So you’ve got desire, persistence, intent—where you’re really interested in something, pay careful attention to it—and then finally, the more active qualities of analysis and ingenuity. These parallel the four ways in which you build worlds in your imagination. First, there’s the ability to create a world through desire. Then you maintain it—that’s the persistence. The intentness …
- Limitations… You focus on the areas that really are important in life and you have to develop equanimity for everything else, so that you don’t get distracted from the important things by things that are pressing or urgent, or things that are in your face, demanding your attention all the time. Just because something is urgent and pressing doesn’t mean it’s important …
- Here to Learn… Once you’ve got that part stable and comfortable, then you can start spreading your attention to other parts of the body, allowing that sense of comfortable breath to flood throughout the body along with your awareness. When you’ve developed a sense of well-being like this with the breath, then you can turn and focus on the pain. Be careful to observe …
- The Path of Questions… This is called appropriate attention — yoniso manasikara, learning how to ask skillful questions — and it’s essential to the whole practice. In fact the first question you’re supposed to ask when you go to meet a new teacher is: “What is skillful? What is not skillful? What, if I do it, will be for my long-term happiness? What, if I do it …
- The Uses of the Breath… So try to focus your attention here to see what you need right now. If you need to soothe the body or strengthen the body, okay, breathe in a way that makes the body stronger. If you need to calm the mind, breathe in a way that calms the mind down. If the mind is tired, breathe in a way that gives it energy …
- Of Past & Future… Focus your attention on the breath. The talk is here to be a fence to direct you back to the present moment, direct you back to the breath in case you wander off.” The reason I say that is because that’s how the Dhamma functions as a whole. It’s meant to point you back to your mind in the present moment, to …
- Doing Meditation… If you pay careful attention to the different parts of the body, you see that there are some parts that you tend to tense up as you breathe in, and other parts where you hold on to tension even as you breathe out. You can change that. You don’t have to tense up to breathe in; you don’t have to hold on …
- Transparent Becoming… Sometimes when you’re feeling anxious or scattered, it’s helpful just to think buddho in the mind—bud- with the in-breath, dho with the out—without paying too much attention to how the breathing feels. Just give the mind something to stay with. Or if you’re feeling discouraged in the practice, think about other people who have had problems in the …
- The Four Precepts… All of these things are precepts or habits—that’s another meaning of the word, sīla—that help you to exercise restraint in what you do and what you consume. “Doing,” here, includes not only moving your body, but also moving your attention: deciding what you want to look at or listen to, what you don’t want to look at or listen to …
- Empathetic Joy… So when we talk about breath energy, we’re asking you to open up your mind at the same time that you’re opening up the breath channels, so that you can get more and more in touch with the good potentials, the pleasant potentials that are waiting here for you to pay attention to them, to cultivate, to emphasize. So have a little …
- Befriending the Breath… It might be in the middle of the head, the middle of the chest, the abdomen, anywhere in the body where you feel that your attention can settle in settle in, settle down, and begin to fit together. All the scattered little parts of your mind come together and they click into place. So you’re fully here with the breath. You can fully …
- To Comprehend Suffering… This is the heart of the teaching, the central focus of the teaching, so pay a lot of attention right here and think about what the Buddha had to say about what you’re going to find right here. He started his path with right view. And right view, of course, is the four noble truths, focused on the issue of stress, suffering—dukkha …
- Pain & Patience… And if nobody is paying attention to us, we just add some more pain on until it becomes obvious that we’re suffering, and we hope somebody will notice and have some compassion for us. This works up to a point. Then it reaches a point where other people don’t want to help any more. So you’re thrown back on yourself. And …
- An Exercise in Freedom… It’s simply through lack of attention, lack of understanding, that we don’t really develop this part of our experience. So here we have the chance. Notice where you feel the breathing. Where are the sensations that tell you: “Now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out”? And do they feel good? How does your torso feel? How does …
- Stubborn Clinging… looking after the breath, making sure your attention stays with the breath, making sure your thoughts stay with the breath, trying to be sensitive to how your thinking has an effect on the breath. You’re monitoring this at the same time as you’re doing it, creating the sense of concentration inside. Ajaan Lee was once teaching an old scholarly monk in Bangkok …
- The Gatekeeper’s Duties… This means you want to pay full attention to the breath. In addition to mindfulness, the ability to keep something in mind, the Buddha also recommends that you bring the qualities of alertness and ardency to this. Alert to see what’s actually going on: What’s the breath like right now? What’s your mind like right now? If there’s anything that …
- Two Kinds of Middle… It’s also a pleasure that can come as you learn how to direct the energies in the body—finding out where they’re flowing well, where they’re not flowing well, what ways you think about the energies that help them to flow better, where you focus your attention to loosen up the tension. That’s a pleasure that doesn’t depend on …
- Our Variegated Minds… So focus your attention there. Make that your basic assumption about people, about yourself. When you take that desire for happiness seriously, it’ll get you on the right path.
- Contentment… You keep directing your attention to the breath, and then you evaluate it. Is it comfortable? If it’s not comfortable, you can change it. Try longer breathing. Try shorter breathing. Try deeper breathing. Try more shallow breathing. Once you’ve got a comfortable sensation of the breath, then spread it out through the body. Learn to savor the comfort that comes from the …
- Sophisticated Dhamma… That sense of attention—not pushing things, but protecting them: That’s what gives your concentration a chance to grow. Another problem with respect for concentration, of course, is that once you’ve got it, then you say, “Okay, what’s next? Where are the insights?” Or you drop it for the least little thing, whether it’s fear or lust or anger or …
- Load next page...
