Search results for: "Focusing"

  1. Page 58
  2. Respect for Concentration
     … If you can catch sight of it, you’ll see: “Oh, that’s what happens when the mind focuses its attention outside.” There’s both a mental and a physical side to that change of reference. When your sense of clear awareness is still enough, you can see these things as they move. The more still your frame of reference, the more refined the … 
  3. Mind in & of Itself
     … There are better uses for the body, like focusing on the breath. In particular, if you want to understand the reasons why the mind can make the body look attractive one moment and unattractive in another, and go for the unattractive or go for the attractive, you need to develop more mindfulness, more alertness. And where do you do that? You go back to … 
  4. Committed to the Breath
     … Well, focusing on the mind is like observing wildlife. If you stare at a deer or stare at any wild animal, they’re going to run away. So, you have to look at them out of the corner of your eye, pretend like you’re not paying them any attention; you’re not the least bit interested in them. And then they’ll start … 
  5. Skillful Fears
     … So keep your attention focused here, for this is where all the necessary work gets done.
  6. A Gift of Strength
     … This leads ultimately to concentration, keeping the mind focused, keeping it intent on one thing for long periods of time. This is nourishment for the mind. Of the various qualities along the path, the one the Buddha consistently compares to food is just this: concentration—staying with one object, like the breath, or whatever object you find comfortable, effective, at any one time, staying … 
  7. The Tricks of Denial
     … You may be focused on one topic, or else just lots of different things coming up all at once, and none of them seem to have any rhyme or reason. In cases like that, try to remember the example of what birds do when you get too close to their nest. Years back, I was up in Canada and we saw a loon family … 
  8. The Perception of Space
     … So she focused totally on the perception of space and let go of every other perception concerning the body. She stayed there for quite a while. Then she realized that she hadn’t died. She came back to the body and everything had returned to normal. As she said, she learned a good lesson that night—when there’s no place you can stay … 
  9. Slings and Arrows of Ordinary Fortunes
     … If you don’t like focusing on the breath, if the breath is getting all tangled up—the more you try to adjust it, the worse it gets—just be with the bones. You don’t have to do anything with the bones. They just sit there. Try to be as patient as the bones. Holding that perception in mind helps you deal with … 
  10. Protecting Your Space
     … It’s just a matter of noticing—when you see that focusing on certain things gives more energy to your greed or more energy to your anger—that you learn not to focus on those things. You focus on other things. Or you look at the same thing in a different way. Say there’s a picture that gives rise to lust. Think about … 
  11. Centered on Concentration
     … As you look at all the other things you could be focused on, you realize that they don’t offer the happiness that you once thought they did. This is why the Buddha calls it awakening. We dream about things, looking for happiness here and there, and when we try to find it there, as he said, the fires of the mind scorch wherever … 
  12. Bedside Dhamma
     … The stronger her powers of concentration and the more focused her mind, the stronger the anger. That, as my teacher said, was because she wasn’t trying to apply things. She just thought that somehow, magically, the practice of concentration would seep into the rest of her life without her trying to apply it. It doesn’t work that way. You have to realize … 
  13. Social Anxiety
     … It’s interesting that Ajaan Lee focuses on what other people say as one of the tests for a mind that’s really at peace. The Buddha makes a similar point in one of the Dhammapada verses. “If, when other people say harsh things to you and you don’t reverberate — like a cracked gong — that’s a sign that you’ve attained true … 
  14. Getting into the Body
    One of the Buddha’s terms for concentration is adhicitta, which can be translated as “heightened awareness” or “the heightened mind.” It can also be translated as “heightened intentness.” In other words, you really do pay careful attention to what you’ve got here, the object you’re focused on—in this case, the body, the breath. Give all your attention to how the … 
  15. A Culture of Restraint
     … You can look at them and say, “That’s not a thought I want to follow.” When you’re used to saying No to things already, it’s easier to say No to them when you’re sitting here with your eyes closed focusing on the breath. And vice versa: When you’ve got your eyes open you can remind yourself, “I’ve been … 
  16. The Heightened Mind
     … So, instead of being focused on trying to fit yourself into the world, try to see the world as being encompassed by this larger awareness—both the range of the awareness, and also the larger perspective that comes from this heightened, broadened, deepened, state of mind. That way, the issues of the world don’t loom so large, and you’ve got your priorities … 
  17. Totally Secure
     … This is why you want to keep your attention focused, realizing that the fabrications that come from within the mind are the big problem. What other people fabricate, that’s their issue. Your issue is how you maintain your even keel. As you do this, you begin to see the process of fabrication of the mind more and more clearly all the time. That … 
  18. Give of Yourself
     … When something comes up in your mind that entails suffering, how does it relate to the way you’re breathing? How does it relate to the way you’re talking to yourself? How does it relate to the perceptions and feelings you’re focusing on? How can you change those things, so as to get rid of that cause of suffering? That’s for … 
  19. The Dhamma Without Price
     … We do that by focusing on our practice, training the mind in an institution that places the training of the mind as its bottom line. As for the economics of buying and selling, that gets pushed off to the side. The fact that the Dhamma is supported by gifts is what keeps it pure, keeps it in line with its original principles, and keeps … 
  20. Guardian Meditations
     … This is why a large part of the practice is focused on the issue of perception: the way you label things, how they fit into the larger picture of your thoughts. And this is why the Buddha didn’t just sit people down, and say, “Okay, just be in the present moment and don’t think about anything else.” He would often start his … 
  21. The Community of the Wise
     … I felt I really should be spending all my time focusing on the breath, and yet issues related, ultimately, to the value of what I was doing kept coming up. So I had to deal with them. It was only in retrospect that I began to realize that that, too, was an important part of the practice. It’s not that you can ignore … 
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