Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Determined on Goodwill… It’s when you’re focused on something like that that opportunities appear. All too often, we use that quality of determination for unskillful things—trying to figure out how we can get money out of a situation or, say, with alcoholics, how they can get some alcohol out of a situation. The force of their determination actually opens up opportunities that might not …
- You Can Do It… You start focusing on the breath and you give into all the voices that say, “Who are you to be meditating?” Think of the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree. That was one of the questions apparently that Mara asked him: “Who are you to become Buddha? Who do you think you are?” Tradition has it that the Buddha touched the ground, and the …
- Stay… Basically, your awareness is focused toward the front. Try to change that around. Think of yourself backing into the body. When you’re aware of the hand, be aware of the awareness of the hand in the hand, the same with the chest in the chest, the foot in the foot, the head in the head. In other words, there’s an awareness already …
- Mindfulness as a Goad… Don’t wander off, stay focused right here, because this is where important things are happening. The problem is that sometimes they’re very subtle and they happen in a way that we don’t really notice. That means we have to get our concentration deeper. The more stillness you have in the mind, the more you’ll be able to pick up. It …
- Awe… That thought focuses you inside: What do you have? You’ve got just your awareness. You’ve got the mind. What shape is the mind in? Fortunately, the Buddha doesn’t leave us stranded here. All too often in the West, this sense of awe is left simply as an aesthetic sense or a vague religious feeling. But the Buddha gives you further instructions …
- Refreshment… So you have to ask yourself, “What kind of persistence would give rise to a feeling of refreshment?” Having that in mind gives you an idea of where your efforts should go as you’re focused on the breath. What kind of breath would be refreshing right now? What way of conceiving the breath would be refreshing? The Buddha says that you develop this …
- Peace on Earth… As you’re focusing on the breath, don’t push it too much but don’t wander away. Give it your undivided attention and see how it responds. If it responds well, stick with it. If not, you can change: Either change the breath or change the way you focus. The important thing is having a sense of harmony, because that’s an essential …
- On Top of Your Actions… So all these factors of the path, even the outside ones, are focused back in, right here, because right here is where you’re generating suffering and this is where you can learn how to stop it. So try to bring your attention to what you’re doing right now. Your ability to reflect on your state of mind, reflect on the actions of …
- Everybody Benefits… Sometimes when you read about the different teachers who emphasize just watching the mind or observing the mind, you might say, “Why are we spending so much time with the breath? Why aren’t we focusing directly on the mind?” Well, working with the breath helps expand your sensitivities, making you sensitive to areas of the mind you wouldn’t have known otherwise. If …
- The Quest for Inner Happiness… You’re actually exploring and choosing which kind of breathing feels best, which part of the body seems to be the best place to stay focused. You may settle at a place for a while and then decide that you don’t like it after all. Well, you can move again. This way, the meditation is not an exercise in clamping down on the …
- Dwelling in Emptiness… So how to bring the mind to concentration? Get it focused on one thing, like the breath while, as the formula for mindfulness says, you’re “putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” All those disturbances related to the world right now—you can put them aside. They yell at you about how important they are, but remember, the Buddha’s …
- Factors for Awakening… You start out ardent, alert, and mindful, focused, say, on the breath in and of itself, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. When you do that really well, you get the mind into the four jhanas. The list called the factors for awakening basically goes into the steps on how you get from right mindfulness to right concentration, up through …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Skillful Fears… So keep your attention focused here, for this is where all the necessary work gets done.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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