Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Seeing with the Body… This is why the Buddha focuses you back on just the suffering in and of itself. Don’t ask who’s doing this. Don’t ask how you’re involved in it. Just ask, “What’s happening here?” Look at things in and of themselves as events, as processes. Start with the breath in and of itself. That’s pretty neutral. And ask yourself …
- Put the Other Person’s Heart in Yours… When there are some things you can’t change, then if you’re focused on the things you can’t change and get frustrated and upset about them, you waste your energy. There are things in the world you can change that you can make better, but you waste your ability to be helpful there if you focus on the things you can’t …
- What’s Real… So when you’re sitting here focusing on bodily fabrication, i.e., the breath, and you’re directing your thoughts and evaluating the breath, that’s verbal fabrication. Then there are the perceptions of the breath. How do you perceive the breath? Is it just a little bit of air coming in and out of the nose? How about thinking of the body as …
- Noble Treasures… Compunction, which goes along with shame, basically focuses on the results of the actions. You realize, “I can’t be apathetic. I care about the results of my actions. I want to make sure I don’t do any harm.” Then there’s learning, here meaning the knowledge of the Dhamma you get from listening to Dhamma talks and from reading. You might try …
- Fear of Death… This is why the Buddha focuses so much attention on the issue of death. The first reason is to remind you that there’s a lot of work to be done before you go, so that you become more and more heedful about how you spend your time, because you don’t know when it’s going to happen. It’s not the case …
- Equanimity & More… That gets you focused.
- Cut Through the Narratives… Instead of focusing on what they mean to you, he says to focus on what they do to you. Certain pleasures, when you pursue them, just don’t happen. Some do. The pleasure comes and you pursue it. Sometimes pains come and you pursue them. But what happens to the mind when you focus on these things, when you hang around with them, identify …
- Dangers Outside & In… And start your goodwill there, focused on them. We’re often told to start goodwill with yourself, then go to people you like, and then people you’re neutral about, and then people you don’t like. But in a case like that, you may not have any time. So, goodwill for the bandits and then for the whole cosmos. Because even if they …
- In the Driver’s Seat… What you’re doing right now is going to have an effect right now, so the way you’re focusing on the breath, for instance, will have an impact on how you experience the breath. Where you focus, how strong your focus is, what kind of image you have in the mind of how the breath is going to go—that will have an …
- Pain… You’re trying to keep the mind focused, and the body’s doing everything it can to fall apart. Yet you’ve got to maintain that focus. So that first step is not one that you just skip right through. It’s teaching you an important lesson. You’ve got to maintain focus despite the fact that things are not working. When the Buddha …
- Taking the Long View… So, paradoxically, by taking the long view, the focus gets focused right back here, right now. But then again, that’s how the Buddha gained his awakening. He took the very long view. He saw the cycles of rebirth that beings can go through. Then his immediate reaction was to turn around and look at the mind right here in the present moment, realizing …
- Your Territory… It’s one of the ways in which we modulate from being focused on the breath into other states of becoming and we go traveling around. But here you don’t want to travel. You want to settle in. Because states of becoming are places you can’t really stay. You travel for a while and then they run out. Either they simply disintegrate …
- Remembering Luang Lung… He belonged to a generation that wasn’t wealthy—they had had to live through a war—so he focused on what he did have to be generous with: He had his energy; he had his strength. He was very slight of build but he had a lot of energy of will, so he was generous with that. I owe him a lot. He …
- Undividing the Mind… What’s the appropriate thing right now? How much is just right? How much is properly focused effort? As with any practice, it’s not just the amount of practice, but it’s when you’re practicing, what you focus on. There’s a book on learning to be a good swimmer that makes the point: It’s not a matter of how many …
- Victory in Battle… That’s when the practice gets a lot more focused. But in the beginning, it’s like a mother hen trying to gather all her chicks under her wings. She gets this chick and that chick and ah!—the first little chick runs away. Gets that one, ah!—another one’s gone away. It can be frustrating at times, but as they say in …
- Looking Inward… And what are you doing right now? Where is your mind right now, where is it focused? Ajaan Lee says that good meditation is composed of three things. One is the right intention: You make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath for the hour. And the second is the right object: the breath. So—where is the breath right …
- Finding Your Own Balance… If they’re not getting along, what can you do to change? For the breath, not only is there the question of how long or short or heavy or light the breath is, but there’s also the question of where you’re focusing. There’s the question of how you’re conceiving the breath. These are things you have to adjust and get …
- Understanding Goodwill & Equanimity… the realization that you’re not giving up on the search for happiness, simply that you’re focusing it on areas where it’ll have an effect. The primary effect, of course, is going to be in your own actions. If you find that you’re doing something unskillful, that’s not an area where you can have equanimity, to be content with it …
- Your Quiet Corner… He has us look directly at the world of our experience, and focuses on the big problem in that world of experience, which is the suffering that comes from the way we engage with that world. Now, to deal with the suffering in this world we have here, we need to find a quiet corner. That’s what we try to create as we …
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