Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Noble & True
     … Pay close attention to the breath; pay close attention to getting the mind to settle down and be with the breath. As for any thought that comes up, no matter how interesting or enjoyable or alluring, you’ve got to say No right now. It’s in your ability to say No that nobility lies. And also, to stick with the No – that’s … 
  3. Dhamma Books & the Actuality
     … And it’s only by giving full attention to developing the path, full attention to the breath right here, that you’re going to see through to the actual truths the Buddha talked. After all, he didn’t learn from books; he learned from his own experience. And his teachings are simply pointers to get us to look at our own experience and be … 
  4. An Island above the Flood
     … You’re applying appropriate attention. Bare attention, by the way, is not appropriate. Bare attention is just aware of what happens but doesn’t think about doing anything about it. Appropriate attention realizes there are things you’ve got to do. When you’re focused on the breath, anything that would pull you away from the breath is something you’ve got to abandon … 
  5. In the Land of Wrong View
    Focus your attention on the breath. Notice, when you breathe in, where do you feel it? You may not be feeling it primarily in the areas where you think you should. But that doesn’t matter. In fact, when you notice that the breath is doing things you don’t expect, that’s when you know that you’re really watching it. Because the … 
  6. Four Bases of Success
     … To begin with, you have to want to do it; you have to put in some effort; you have to be really intent on what you’re doing and pay careful attention. Ajaan Suwat would emphasize this point a lot. He’d say repeatedly, “Don’t just go through the motions. Really pay attention to what you’re doing and what’s coming out … 
  7. Boring
     … So there are things going on all around you and inside you that you’re not paying attention to. As a result, you don’t learn from them. So when you find yourself feeling bored, ask yourself, “Is there some way I could pay closer attention? Is there something going on here that I’m not curious about or not learning how to question … 
  8. Learning from What You Do
    When you focus on the breath, start out by paying extra special attention to the places in the body where the breath is most obvious. That might be at the nose, but it might not be at the nose. It might be in the chest, the shoulders, the back, your abdomen—wherever you sense the breath most clearly, the sensations that tell you now … 
  9. To Sustain Your Practice
     … This is how you develop appropriate attention, the internal quality that helps keep you on the path. It’s from admirable friends that we learn about and develop appropriate attention inside, and it’s through appropriate attention that we have standards for recognizing admirable friends and following their example. In this way, these two qualities sustain each other as they help to sustain us … 
  10. The Seven Factors for Awakening
     … Whenever mindfulness is combined with appropriate attention, that allows you to look at the mind and figure out what needs to be done. So these three qualities are always essential: Mindfulness keeps something in mind, alertness, watches what’s going on, and appropriate attention gives you a sense of what needs to be done. Mindfulness on its own doesn’t know anything, what it … 
  11. Guarding the Truth
     … You decide either to pay attention or not to pay attention, and what questions to ask. Then there’s the question of what your intentions are with regard to your conversation with that person. What do you intend to do with that information? Sometimes you get into a conversation with someone who’s actually telling you the truth, but your attention is someplace else … 
  12. Appropriate Attention
     … He said appropriate attention, something we hardly ever hear of in Dhamma talks. “Attention” means how you frame the issue, how you frame the way you approach the present moment, how you look at things, the questions you ask. This attention can either be appropriate in terms of putting an end to suffering or inappropriate if it’s not effective at all, if it … 
  13. Immediate Knowledge
     … Yet for most of us, it’s a mystery, because our attention is out someplace else. We have all our theories about the world. We can explain all kinds of abstractions, things that are far away in space and time. Yet the things that are going on in the mind, what the mind is doing, all these activities, all the events in the mind … 
  14. Building on Certainty
     … Each breath feels really refreshing coming in because you’ve paid careful attention. And all that tense breathing you did in the past, it really wasn’t necessary. You did it because you weren’t paying careful attention. Now you give some attention to the breath and you begin to see its other possibilities, its other potentials. Then you apply the same attention to … 
  15. The Path Is in the Details
     … This is how our life gets transformed, by paying attention to the details of our actions, the details of our intentions, right here now. Don’t try to jump over the steps too quickly. This is why we have to pay a lot of attention. And our focus doesn’t have to go anywhere else. Your attention just gets more and more refined right … 
  16. Negative Emotions
     … So we have to turn our attention inward to look at where the source of these issues comes from. Our immediate reaction, of course, is always to focus on the things outside. So the very first step is to turn our attention around and just looking at the state of the mind that goes flowing out to those objects. For example, when lust comes … 
  17. Analysis of Qualities
     … You bring appropriate attention to qualities of mind to see whether they’re skillful or not, dark or bright. Now, analysis of qualities is the discernment factor in those factors for awakening. This means that you replace doubt not with belief but with discernment. In both cases—dealing with the doubt and developing the discernment—appropriate attention is how you do it. Appropriate attention … 
  18. Admirable Friendship
     … But ultimately it all points to that issue of admirable friendship leading to appropriate attention. Because appropriate attention goes deep down inside, into those parts of the mind where no outside relationship can touch. No matter how intimate we are—and anyone who’s lived with one other person for a long period of time will realize this—there are still large areas of … 
  19. Obstacles to Full-body Awareness
     … Your attention, however, tends to be more localized. That’s where your desires are, where your interest is. The rest of your consciousness tends to be blotted out. What you want to learn how to do is to get more in touch with the consciousness side so that the attention side is not so headstrong. Think of the focus of your attention dissolving back … 
  20. Peace on Earth
     … 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 part of peace, and you learn about harmony by experimenting inside. When you learn the quality of mind … 
  21. Mental Seclusion
     … Pay careful attention to what you’re doing right now. And look at the results of what you’re doing right now. You want to be on top of what’s actually happening right here, but not just anything that’s happening. Focus your attention on your own actions and their results. Here “actions” can also mean actions of the mind: your intentions, your … 
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