Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 60
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. Death World
     … We should stop and think: “What will be the consequences if I give in to this desire? Or if I focus on things that would give rise to the desire, in such a way that aggravates the desire? The consequences are not going to be good.” Seeing that is what enables you to step back from the desire and not identify with it—or … 
  7. Mindful All Day Long
     … You don’t have any distractions from outside, so you can focus entirely on what you’re learning how to do. But you don’t practice just to practice. You practice so that you can perform. In the same way, when you meditate, you don’t practice only when you’re sitting with your eyes closed. You want to be able to carry that … 
  8. Trust in Heedfulness
     … But as you really focus on this task—and this is where the ardency and the persistence come into the practice, as strengthening factors, based on heedfulness—the clearer the focus becomes. And you really see that it is possible to satisfy your most important desire, which is the desire for a harmless happiness that doesn’t change. Almost every other account you read … 
  9. How to Leave Concentration
     … what to let go of as you leave the world outside, how to focus, how to work with your breath, and how to work with your mind, your awareness right now, so that it’ll be willing to settle down. It’s very rare, though, that we talk about how to leave concentration, but it’s an important skill as well. The Buddha listed … 
  10. Effort against the Hindrances
     … This is where you have to use the Buddha’s second technique, which is to focus on their drawbacks. And you notice that each of the hindrances has a different set of drawbacks. With sensuality, the drawback is that you waste all your time, thinking about pleasures that, when they actually come, are not nearly as good as you make them out to be … 
  11. Commit & Reflect
     … The implication here is that you want to focus not only on the present moment but also on developing skillful qualities in the present moment, because that’s what the four noble truths are all about. You see that you’re suffering because of a lack of skill in terms of your craving and ignorance. In fact, the word ignorance means, “lack of skill … 
  12. Speech for the Sake of Stillness
     … Where do you sense that energy? Focus there. And allow it to have some freedom. Don’t clamp down on it, because that’ll make things uncomfortable, and it won’t be pleasant to be here. The whole purpose of this is to get the mind in a comfortable place, give it something comfortable to focus on, so that it’ll be happy to … 
  13. Right View Tells You What to Do
     … trying to focus on the breath in and of itself, putting aside any thoughts that have to do with the world outside. Those are the two activities: focusing on the breath, and clearing out other things that get in the way. And then we bring three qualities to this practice: ardency, alertness, and mindfulness. Ardency is trying to do it well. If you’re … 
  14. A Refuge from Death
     … It’s very easy to focus on all the cruel or harmful things you did. So ultimately, meditation is needed to deal with all four fears. One, bring your mind under control, so that it doesn’t go wandering off into things that are harmful and hurtful. It’s important to remember that when the Buddha talked about precepts, when he talked about karma … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. The Raft of Jhana
     … We focus on a topic and make comments on it in our minds. Then, of course, we break into speech. To get into jhana we have to learn how to take the language of our comments, the way we frame issues, how we interact with our thoughts, and the ways in which we evaluate things, and make them more skillful. This is one of … 
  17. Events as Events
    When you establish mindfulness, the Buddha says that you focus on the body in and of itself, putting aside all greed and distress with reference to the world. The body in and of itself means precisely that—not the body in the world, but just the body as you have it right here. The body in the world would be thinking about the body … 
  18. Unlearning Helplessness
     … Coming across Ajaan Lee’s instructions where you’re allowed to focus anywhere in the body, and to breathe in any way that you like so long as it’s comfortable, felt good for the body, good for the mind. “Comfortable” sometimes means energizing; sometimes it means relaxing. Sometimes it means having a sense that the body is being very solid. Sometimes it has … 
  19. The Light of the World
     … This is one of the reasons why this is the focus of conviction in the Buddha’s teachings, because as you can get to better and better states of mind as you meditate, you might be afraid: “Maybe this is as good as it gets. If I let go of this, there will be nothing, or I’ll fall back.” But then you remember … 
  20. Inner Wealth
     … So as you wonder about what you take with you as you go in this wandering around, focus not so much on things you have to carry, but on the qualities you build into the mind. Then you find that wherever you go, that’s the kind of mind you have, that’s the kind of mind you bring to each situation. That’s … 
  21. Generating Desire
     … How do you get there? Focus on the causes, and see the path as something doable. You might tell yourself, “I can’t manage this path. I won’t be able to get to the end.” But think about this: When you develop the path, you’re going to change as a person. The path will turn you into someone who is capable of … 
  22. Load next page...