Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Be Heedful & Think
     … Some people complain all this attention to minutiae seems to put a straightjacket around their minds. But actually it’s liberating. It frees you from the mind’s abstractions. It frees you from the mind’s ignorance. You focus on things that are right before your eyes, you look at them carefully, and you’re careful about your choices. In doing so, you get … 
  3. Mindful of Your Potentials
     … As you pay more attention to it, it comes to the fore. When you get really good at this, you realize: How could you have not seen it before? Part of the problem, of course, is cultural. Here in the West, we don’t talk about breath going through the body, whereas in Asia they do. But it’s a possible sensation that you … 
  4. Virtue
     … This is because our desires are not all that satisfying, yet we don’t know anything else, so we don’t really pay much attention. But the Buddha said, when you take your desire for happiness really seriously and stick to the kind of desires that really can lead to happiness, you begin to realize how valuable they are. You begin to treasure them … 
  5. Skilled in Leaving Concentration
     … When the bell rings, you’re going to maintain your full attention in the body. You’re going to be immersed in your body. Think of that phrase, kāyagatāsati—mindfulness immersed in the body. You want your full awareness immersed in the body. You’re in the body, inhabiting it fully, as you get up, as you move around. Try to minimize your conversation … 
  6. Concentration that Bears Great Fruit
     … As soon as the desire is fulfilled or you give up on the desire or something else takes your attention, you move on to another becoming. As the Buddha said, this is the process of rebirth, although he doesn’t use the word “rebirth.” He uses the word “birth,” but basically it’s further becoming or renewed becoming. It’s what happens not only … 
  7. Circumspection
     … Your attention was someplace else, or you were asking other questions. Or maybe you weren’t even asking questions at all. As the Buddha identifies it, this factor of circumspection is another way of saying “discernment.” It’s good to remember that discernment has this quality. It’s not simply a matter of agreeing with the Buddha that things are inconstant or stressful or … 
  8. Strength from the Basics
     … If you find yourself getting into an unhealthy breathing rhythm, where can you focus to get out of it? Focus your attention on the areas that are far, far away from the unskillful patterns. This may involve going into your hands and your feet, and just being conscious of what it feels like from the inside to have a hand, what it feels like … 
  9. Verbal Fabrication
     … This is something you have to pay attention to. When the Buddha talks about directed thought and evaluation as factors of the first jhāna, they’re not just an unfortunate wobbling in the mind that can’t settle down yet. You’re using your inner speech to get things comfortable inside, to get the mind to be happy to be with its object by … 
  10. Refuge
    Try to focus your attention right here at the breath. Wherever there are sensations in the body that tell you, “Now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out,” try to stay with those sensations. Try to be as consistent as you can in staying here because it’s only when you stick with the breath consistently that you’re going … 
  11. The Middle Way
     … All too often, we desensitize ourselves to the breath because we have other, what we think are more important things to pay attention to, and we don’t want to be bothered with breath issues. The breath gets pushed into the background. We get less and less familiar with it. This is the time to get more familiar, because you’re going to be … 
  12. Not Siding with the Hindrances
     … That’s the kind of interest, that’s the kind of attention you’ve got to develop. That part of the mind is there—the part of the mind that doesn’t need to be entertained, that just wants to know, to be aware. That’s the part you want to activate, to learn the skill required to keep it going. Don’t let … 
  13. The Buddha’s Currency
     … the internal principle that the Buddha said is the most important one for gaining awakening, and that’s appropriate attention, yoniso manasikāra. As you look at your actions, you realize that whether you like to do something or not is not the issue—it’s what the long-term consequences of that action are going to be. That’s what you should be thinking … 
  14. Look Around as You Follow the Trail
     … As you do that, you start seeing things in the mind, different activities of the mind, in terms of how it pays attention to things, how it maintains an intention, how it forgets its intentions and has to remember them again. Doing this, you begin to get a lot of insight into the mind that you wouldn’t get just simply reading about it … 
  15. The Human Condition
     … What the Buddha wants us to do is to turn our attention to what he calls renunciate grief, renunciate joy, renunciate equanimity. Renunciate grief is when you reflect on how you haven’t attained what you want in terms of freeing the mind from suffering. You haven’t reached the goal of the path. Renunciate joy is the joy that comes when you have … 
  16. Dhamma Is a Quality of the Heart
     … So focus your attention here, at the heart. That’s where all the work is going to be done, and where the solution to the problem will be found.
  17. Immersed in the Body
     … Some people complain that it’s asking too much of them to pay attention to the events of the day and to the breath at the same time. Well, if you’re sitting in the back of your head watching the breath in the body and watching things outside, it does add an extra burden: You’ve got two things to watch at any … 
  18. Lift Your Mind
     … Center your attention there. The Buddha doesn’t say that you focus on any particular part of the body. But wherever the breath is obvious—wherever you have sensations that tell you, “now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out”—stay with those sensations. Again, there’s no narrative here. There’s no other context, just being with the breath … 
  19. Skills Needed at Death
     … Give your full attention to mastering them. This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration, to give the mind direction. That’s the most important thing you’re going to need at that point: a direction. And you’ll need to be able to stay in that direction. So learn how to fight the mind’s tendency to be switching direction so … 
  20. Grief & Regret
     … So these are reasons why we should have respect for concentration, to give it our full attention while we’re doing it, and make as much time as we can in our lives to keep this practice going.
  21. Hindrances Based on Delusion
     … In the texts this is called appropriate attention: raising the right issues and then examining things in terms of cause and effect. Where’s the stress? What leads to the stress? Where does stress end? And what do you do to make stress end? This takes the issue of skillful and unskillful and turns it into questions around the four noble truths. The only … 
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