Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Wisdom Through Doing
     … You should focus on the breath. Anything that’s not related to the mind and the breath together, just let it go. Give the mind some time to be by itself. You’re not concerned about anything else but just this awareness in the present moment, anchored in the breath with a sense of well-being. Of all the elements in the body, the … 
  3. Joyous Endurance
     … One of the best ways of developing endurance is not to focus on the difficulties but to focus on the things that you can make comfortable, that you can move in the right direction. Right now with the breath, you can breathe in all kinds of ways. What would be a really satisfying way to breathe? Energizing if the body is tired, calming if … 
  4. Justice vs. Skillfulness
     … Or, if you focus on solving the wrong problems, you end up regretting it later. For example, sometimes we’re told that the Buddha’s main purpose in teaching was to put an end to all suffering. Well, yes, but his approach to accomplishing that end was very specific. Instead of running around trying to right all the sufferings caused by the injustices of … 
  5. Looking for Trouble
    We meditate with our eyes closed so as to cut down on distractions, so that you can focus all of your attention at the work in hand, which is being with the breath, being sensitive to the breath in the body. When the breath comes in, know it’s coming in. When it goes out, know how it feels when it’s going out … 
  6. Relaxing into the Body
    Sometimes it’s useful, before you focus on the breath, to just scan through the body. Notice where there’s any tension and relax the tension. What you might do if you don’t see clearly where the patterns of tension are—in other words, everything seems to be a mass of tension—is to compare different parts: your left hand with your right … 
  7. Moods Are Not-Self
     … bodily fabrication—the way you breathe; verbal—the way you talk to yourself; and then mental—the perceptions you hold in mind and the feelings you focus on. Those are the things that went in to create the mood you’re in, so you can change them. There are lots of ways you can change them. Think about those lists of topics the Buddha … 
  8. Disenchantment & Dispassion
     … You focus on dispassion, then you focus on cessation. What are you ceasing? You’re ceasing your participation in creating these things. It’s not that you have to come back and browbeat yourself. You just simply stop. Like a child who grows up enough to no longer be attracted to playing with dolls or with little toy cars: They lose their appeal. You … 
  9. Here Be Tigers
     … Why the breath? Because the breath is the closest thing to the mind that you can focus on. We’re here to understand our minds, but first we need something close to the mind to focus on, to gather all the thoughts and all the feelings and perceptions in the mind into one place. The breath is good because it’s always there, and … 
  10. Victory
     … You focus primarily right now on the body in and of itself, but the feelings are going to be right there, too. Your mind should be right there—and if it’s not right there, then the mind is the problem. Or maybe the breath is the problem. Or maybe the feelings are the problem. These are the three areas where you can check … 
  11. No Who or Where
     … I’m here to benefit from this.” But try to set your primary focus on, “What’s going on here? What are the processes? What are the steps?” This is why the Buddha focuses so much on these steps. As for the world, he does have a *sketch *of a worldview, but it’s only a sketch. Even in the longest list of all … 
  12. Fear & Anger
    Fear & Anger April 3, 2009 One of the reasons we focus on the breath as the foundation of our meditation is to give us a good place to stand. Lots of different emotions, lots of different ideas, can come washing through the mind, and if you don’t have someplace outside of the mind where you can take your stance, you get washed away … 
  13. Stop Squirming
     … When there’s physical pain in one part of the body, you can focus on the breath energy in another part of the body. This is how we build our powers of endurance: by giving ourselves a place of well-being, even in the midst of a difficult situation. There’s someplace we can hang on to. Otherwise, we’re not going to be … 
  14. Your Actions Are Yours
     … One of them is you have to have desire, but you have to learn how to focus the desire. If you simply sit there wanting to have a good dish come out of the kitchen, it’s not going to happen. You have the desire and then you actually do the actions that have to be done to produce that dish. And you have … 
  15. To Be Worthy of the Dhamma
     … So you focus in on the space between the droplets of mist, and you begin to realize that the space permeates everything—permeates your body, permeates the area around your body, goes through the walls of the sala, out in all directions. There’s space everywhere, with no sense of boundary. That’s a very calming perception. Even more calming than space is “knowing … 
  16. The Gatekeeper Doesn’t Just Note
     … This is why it’s important to focus your mindfulness on one thing and try to keep it there as much as you can, because the Buddha’s instructions for mindfulness are not just for noting. They’re basically—and this is where the analogy breaks down—they’re basically the Buddha’s instructions for how to get the mind into concentration. For example … 
  17. Endurance with a Purpose
     … Where does the energy flow seem to be good right now? Don’t focus on any area where there’s a pain. Focus on the parts that you can make comfortable by the way you breathe. You can try long breathing, short breathing, fast, slow, heavy light, or any combination of those. See what feels best and stay in the comfortable spots. It’s … 
  18. The Buddha’s Questions
     … Those are the questions he asks you to focus on. Look at other questions he encourages: When you go to see a teacher, one, ask yourself about the teacher. Is this the sort of person who would tell a falsehood, pretending to know something he didn’t know because of greed, aversion, or delusion? Would he try to get someone to do something that … 
  19. The Brightness of Life
     … We focus on the breath and then we reflect on the way we’re focusing. What’s involved in the focusing? Dōgen the Zen master talks about just sitting, but his version of just sitting isn’t that you just sit there. You ask questions about what’s happening while you’re sitting. Is the mind sitting in the body? Is the body sitting … 
  20. Mindful of Death
     … And the Buddha recommends not only that you focus on the breath, but that you also bring in other themes when necessary. If you find yourself getting a little lackadaisical or careless about the practice, one of the themes he recommends is you think about the fact of death. For most of us, death is a scary thought. We like to push it away … 
  21. Drowsiness
     … In other words, you lose your topic of concentration because you focus instead on the pleasure that’s beginning to arise, and you zone out. This is why Ajaan Lee would have you start the meditation with long deep in-and-out breaths to energize yourself. And why the Buddha describes steps in the concentration where you do work, because working with your concentration … 
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