Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Take Nothing for Granted
     … You can’t focus on the results, although you keep them in the back of your mind. The things you really have to focus attention on are the causes: directed thought, evaluation, and singleness of preoccupation. Now, directed thought and evaluation are nothing mysterious or mystical. They’re things you’re doing all the time. To direct your thoughts means you choose a topic … 
  3. The Seven Factors for Awakening
     … What potentials for skillfulness are there in the mind? What can you focus on that’ll give rise to energy? Sometimes this means moving your focus around. If you find that just focusing on one spot in the body tends to make you sleepy, move your focus around. If the breath seems too light to focus on, make it heavier. In other words, you … 
  4. Self-Correct
     … One of the ways of focusing on the body in its own terms is to focus on the breath. When you breathe in, where do you feel it? Focus your attention there. And be alert to the fact that this may not be where you ordinarily might think you should be feeling the breath. We know the air comes in through the nose, goes … 
  5. Finding Balance
     … Keep your focus on one thing exclusively. Just stay with the breath and focus on one spot. You may think of your awareness of the ease spreading out from that spot, but keep your focus as centered as possible as a way of calming things down. You’re not going to allow it to go wandering out anywhere at all. And try to develop … 
  6. Pleasing to the Noble Ones
     … You focus on an aspect of the body in and of itself, and you put aside greed and distress with a reference to the world. That’s what the formula says. You’re doing two things. One is trying to keep focused on the sensation of an aspect of the body, like the breath. The other is that if anything else comes up to … 
  7. Resources for Endurance
     … If you focus on the difficulties, it just makes it harder and harder to deal with the situation. Focus instead on what good potentials you have. Recently—I don’t know why it is—in the past couple months, people have been asking me what was the hardest part of the practice for me when I was over in Thailand. I really had to … 
  8. Off to a Good Start
     … So, to counteract that tendency, we focus on the breath because it’s very close to the mind. Sometimes an intention will go through the mind and you may not even know that it’s there. But if you’re sensitive to the breath, you’ll notice something’s wrong, something’s happened. So we focus on the breath as a way of training … 
  9. Bases of Power
     … In other words, if the pain is on the right side, focus on the left. If it’s in front, focus on the back. If it’s in back, focus on the front. As you start dealing with your sense of the body as you feel it from within, you begin to realize that there are certain things that you thought were in back … 
  10. Painful Thinking
     … In this case, you change how you focus on the breath to see what effect that has on the breathing. Your focus can be too hard, and it can be too light. How do you know which is which? Well, try different strengths of focus on the breath. Focus on different parts of the body. See where you like to stay focused, where the … 
  11. Questions in the Practice
     … Are you skillful in staying with the breath? What is the most skillful way of focusing on the breath and maintaining that focus? Part of it has to do with the way you focus: where you put your attention, how much pressure you apply. But it also has to do with the question of how you are breathing. You really do have the choice … 
  12. Keep It Simple
     … It’s hard enough to maintain this kind of focus, but all the elaboration doesn’t help. You want to keep things basic, simple. That way you maintain your focus, which is what it’s all about: getting the mind to be really solidly focused on one activity over and over and over again. Thinking about the breath, being aware of the breath, reminding … 
  13. A Quiet Spot
     … You can’t take on everything, so you have to focus on what’s important. Have a sense of priorities, not only in your life at large but also in where you focus your attention, where you focus your energy, right here, right now. So focus on the breath. There are lots of other things you could focus on right here, right now, but … 
  14. Complexities of Karma
     … But you have to ask yourself, “Where can I focus that will get the best results now and on into the long term?” You focus on the breath, which means that you have to pay no attention to the other things. They’re there. It’s not the case that your ears grow deaf or your body gets numb when you get concentrated. It … 
  15. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … If you’re sitting here thinking, “I wish those insects would stop,” well, why? You don’t have to focus on the sounds. They’re there in the background, but you don’t have to focus on them. You can focus on the breath. Think of the sound as just going right through you. You’re not putting up any resistance, and the sound … 
  16. Three Levels of Concentration
     … That’s the kind of concentration you start out with when you focus on the breath, or focus on buddho, or whatever your meditation object is. You find the mind slipping off but you bring it back. It slips off and you bring it back. There’s kind of a rhythm to it, like music: You play a musical phrase, and then you pause … 
  17. Attahi Attano Natho
     … No one else can focus your mind on the breath. I can stay here and keep repeating over and over again, “Stay with the breath, stay with the breath,” but that doesn’t focus your mind on the breath. It gives you an idea of maybe what to do, but it’s up to you to exercise your mindfulness and alertness, and to make … 
  18. A Magic Set of Tools
    A Magic Set of Tools August 10, 2004 As you’re sitting here, there are a lot of things you could focus on in the present moment. You could focus on the sound of the crickets. You could focus on the sound of the bombing practice off to the west, the temperature of the air — all kinds of things. The question is: Which thing … 
  19. Working Through the Breath
    People sometimes ask why we focus on the breath and they often have their opinions as why we shouldn’t be focusing on the breath. One is that you want a place for the mind to stay as it goes through aging, illness, and death. And, of course when you die, the breath won’t be there to focus on after death. So they … 
  20. Basics
     … But your main focus should be on what you’re doing right now. Once you focus your desire here, make your desire more mindful, more alert — not in a general sense, but more precisely mindful right now, more precisely alert right now. And then the next moment, and then the next. Try to focus your desire on making the practice continuous. As I said … 
  21. Adjusting the Flame
     … That much extra work will help give the mind something to focus on in addition to the breath because sometimes that’s the problem: You focus on one thing and you wander off. Another way to deal with sleepiness is to focus on two spots at once. Think of the middle of the head or the base of the spine, and think of a … 
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