Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Breath Energies
     … If you don’t feel it, focus on the areas where you do have a sensation of movement and allow that movement to be as comfortable as you can make it. How comfortable is that? It’s up to you – how sensitive you want to be to these movements. Part of this depends on just allowing yourself to think in these ways. It’s … 
  3. For Your Benefit Here & Now
     … If you find that focusing up in the head puts a lot of pressure up there, well, move your focus down. If you’re focused down in the body and you find that you’re getting drowsy, move your focus back up. Then look at the breath. How are you breathing? Is this the best way you could be breathing right now? Sometimes the … 
  4. True to the Breath
     … But for the time being, though, just focus on being with the breath, making the breath comfortable. You can experiment with different rhythms of breathing. You make it faster or slower, deeper or more shallow, heavier or lighter—all kinds of ways you can play with the breath—until you figure out which kind of breathing feels good for the body right now. Then … 
  5. In Restraint Is Strength
     … When you look at something in a certain way, what impelled you to look in that way? What impact is it going to have on the mind? Who’s doing the looking? Which part of the mind is getting strengthened by looking that way? The Buddha doesn’t say not to look, just learn how not to focus on the things that are going … 
  6. A Master of Your Thoughts
     … Or if you find that making the mind stay focused in a certain part of the body gives you a headache or gives rise to a sense of discomfort, you can focus someplace else. There’s no law that you have to stay at the nose or that the breath can be felt only at the nose. After all, the breath is the energy … 
  7. Strengthening Discernment
     … There’s a whole tribe of people out there who, every time they say they focus on the breath, point to their nose. But that’s not the only place where you feel the breath. In fact, if that’s your perception of what the breath is, it’s important to realize that you can create a lot of tightness, a sense of constriction … 
  8. True Values
    We live in a world where the values tend to focus on wealth, status, praise, sensual pleasures. One of the purposes of having a monastery, coming to a monastery, is to remind us that there are other things more important in life, that the values of the world can be pretty hollow and not very dependable. Wherever there’s wealth, there’s loss of … 
  9. The Door of the Cage
     … He’s going to have us focus on what we do. In the beginning, he uses that to get us over some of our very unskillful ways of relating to sensuality. It’s a gradual process, and he calls it a graduated discourse. He starts talking about giving, the good things that come from being generous; virtue, the joy that comes from being virtuous … 
  10. Shaping Your Life
     … When they describe the process of what it means to practice these skills in an effective way, they always focus on looking for how you’re doing things in an inefficient way, expending more energy than you really have to and getting less results than you should. So learn to let go of as much misunderstanding, as much inefficiency, as much lack of mindfulness … 
  11. Surveying the World
     … With every survey of the world before his awakening, his focus had to come back into the present moment each time. So ask yourself: Do you have that arrow in your heart that the Buddha was talking about, the arrow that keeps you running after things that you’re going to have to fight for? Kurt Vonnegut could imagine a world in which beings … 
  12. A Mirror for the Mind
     … Keep your focus gentle, fuzzy. If, however, having your eyes open is distracting, keep them closed. You make your choice based on what works. The point that I did have a problem with was the idea that we’re meditating for the sake of the work of the world. We’re not training the mind for the sake of the world. We’re training … 
  13. Shifting Your Paradigm
     … You just notice which of the details set you off, and you learn not to focus on those details. You realize there are other details you can focus on. It all comes down to that set of perceptions that you normally apply things that create issues, that harm you. So you try to get as close to the present moment as possible, so that … 
  14. The Energy You Broadcast
     … Don’t focus so much on what other people are doing and how that’s hitting you. Instead, your focus can be, “What can I generate inside? What’s the best thing I can generate inside?” Then send that good current out in all directions.
  15. Protection Through Mindfulness
     … Mindfulness in that case keeps reminding him, “You’ve got to focus on this above everything else. You’ve got to put out the fire. You can’t get distracted by other things.” Certain things are urgent; certain things have to take priority. In this case, of course, the priority is the state of your mind, the qualities of the mind you’re acting … 
  16. Even Animals Can Be Trained
     … You focus on the body in and of itself, and you put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Any thoughts about the world—what you want out of the world, how you’re upset about the state of the world right now: You’ve got to put those aside. He also says you have to keep the mind in its proper … 
  17. Learn from Your Mistakes
     … That’s a pretty tall order, but notice that the focus was on looking for what was skillful. It was a path of action that he was constantly focused on. He never thought that maybe some god would come down and save him, or that his own innate goodness would carry him through. And that meant that when he noticed he was not getting … 
  18. Emotion
     … We’re very selective in the things we focus on when we want to encourage lust, while there are huge areas of the body that we refuse to look at, refuse to consider. With anger, you focus only on the bad points of the people you don’t like. You don’t want to look at the good ones. Ill will, partiality: These things … 
  19. The Duties of Happiness
     … Wherever it’s most prominent, wherever it’s easiest to focus your attention, settle your mind right there. Now allow the breath to become comfortable. Notice that statement: It is a matter of allowing; but it’s telling you something you should do. Yet it’s also something that, at the same time, should be very comfortable right in the present moment, and you … 
  20. Be Observant
    Breathe in comfortably; breathe out comfortably. Focus on the sensation of breathing anywhere in the body that feels convenient, that feels natural for you to stay focused on. Some people find it natural to stay focused on the nose, others on the chest or at the abdomen. Focus anywhere where there’s a sensation that tells you now you’re breathing in, now you … 
  21. Peace vs. Clinging
     … So you’ve got to focus your real attention on the good that can be developed in the mind. We’re not saying that the body is bad or that it has no use at all in the practice. But while we’re sitting here breathing, watching the breath, trying to develop a sense of well-being in the body through the breath, we … 
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