Search results for: "Attention"

  1. Page 61
  2. Refuge
    Try to focus your attention right here at the breath. Wherever there are sensations in the body that tell you, “Now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out,” try to stay with those sensations. Try to be as consistent as you can in staying here because it’s only when you stick with the breath consistently that you’re going … 
  3. The Middle Way
     … All too often, we desensitize ourselves to the breath because we have other, what we think are more important things to pay attention to, and we don’t want to be bothered with breath issues. The breath gets pushed into the background. We get less and less familiar with it. This is the time to get more familiar, because you’re going to be … 
  4. Not Siding with the Hindrances
     … That’s the kind of interest, that’s the kind of attention you’ve got to develop. That part of the mind is there—the part of the mind that doesn’t need to be entertained, that just wants to know, to be aware. That’s the part you want to activate, to learn the skill required to keep it going. Don’t let … 
  5. The Buddha’s Currency
     … the internal principle that the Buddha said is the most important one for gaining awakening, and that’s appropriate attention, yoniso manasikāra. As you look at your actions, you realize that whether you like to do something or not is not the issue—it’s what the long-term consequences of that action are going to be. That’s what you should be thinking … 
  6. Look Around as You Follow the Trail
     … As you do that, you start seeing things in the mind, different activities of the mind, in terms of how it pays attention to things, how it maintains an intention, how it forgets its intentions and has to remember them again. Doing this, you begin to get a lot of insight into the mind that you wouldn’t get just simply reading about it … 
  7. The Human Condition
     … What the Buddha wants us to do is to turn our attention to what he calls renunciate grief, renunciate joy, renunciate equanimity. Renunciate grief is when you reflect on how you haven’t attained what you want in terms of freeing the mind from suffering. You haven’t reached the goal of the path. Renunciate joy is the joy that comes when you have … 
  8. Dhamma Is a Quality of the Heart
     … So focus your attention here, at the heart. That’s where all the work is going to be done, and where the solution to the problem will be found.
  9. Immersed in the Body
     … Some people complain that it’s asking too much of them to pay attention to the events of the day and to the breath at the same time. Well, if you’re sitting in the back of your head watching the breath in the body and watching things outside, it does add an extra burden: You’ve got two things to watch at any … 
  10. Lift Your Mind
     … Center your attention there. The Buddha doesn’t say that you focus on any particular part of the body. But wherever the breath is obvious—wherever you have sensations that tell you, “now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out”—stay with those sensations. Again, there’s no narrative here. There’s no other context, just being with the breath … 
  11. Skills Needed at Death
     … Give your full attention to mastering them. This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration, to give the mind direction. That’s the most important thing you’re going to need at that point: a direction. And you’ll need to be able to stay in that direction. So learn how to fight the mind’s tendency to be switching direction so … 
  12. Grief & Regret
     … So these are reasons why we should have respect for concentration, to give it our full attention while we’re doing it, and make as much time as we can in our lives to keep this practice going.
  13. Hindrances Based on Delusion
     … In the texts this is called appropriate attention: raising the right issues and then examining things in terms of cause and effect. Where’s the stress? What leads to the stress? Where does stress end? And what do you do to make stress end? This takes the issue of skillful and unskillful and turns it into questions around the four noble truths. The only … 
  14. Willing to Learn
     … I want to master these skills.” And you can have some confidence that as you master the skills and are paying careful attention, with that desire to learn you’re going to become a different person, a person who feels at home in this new world. What does it mean to be willing to learn? The Buddha lists three types of discernment that you … 
  15. A Promise to Yourself
     … The way the mind maintains that state of stillness contains all kinds of aggregates and mental events, acts of attention, acts of intention. There are many levels of conversation going on inside. You get one level still, and then in the stillness you begin to realize there’s another conversation going on, more subtly. “I’ve got to look into that”: That’s the … 
  16. Bases for Success
     … The third base for success is to pay careful attention to what you’re doing. You’re really intent on staying focused, trying to be as sensitive as possible to what you’re doing. These three qualities—desire, persistence and intent—are supposed to exist in every state of concentration. They differ simply as to which is most pronounced. In some cases, concentration is … 
  17. Tranquility & Insight with the Breath
     … If the attention is too narrow, you can build up a lot of tension in other parts of the body, and you come out of the meditation feeling tired, because you were tensing everything else up so that you could stay focused on your one spot. To prevent that, you want to be able to be aware of everything, all around. This also enables … 
  18. Learning by Doing
     … If there’s an imbalance in the body—too much pressure, say, in the head—how do you bring your attention down so that you’re not making the pressure in the head worse? Don’t think that you have to focus only at the nose. You can focus anywhere in the body where there’s a feeling of energy. The energy may be … 
  19. How Right Mindfulness Leads to Right Concentration
     … In this case, you don’t feed the thought with your attention, and eventually it’ll go away. The mind will begin to settle down with a sense of ease. This is where you have to be very careful, because once there’s ease, we tend to wallow in it. We drop the topic of our meditation and just go for the ease. But … 
  20. A Good Mood to Meditate
     … You just confine your attention to that one little spot and hide out there. It’s like going through a storm. If you have a little tiny shack, and there’s a big storm outside, you just stay inside your little shack. You don’t go venturing outside. Try to find a place that’s safe from the wind and the rain, and just … 
  21. Be Prepared
     … You pay attention to what you’re doing now, but you also think about the long-term consequences. If you see that in the future there are potential dangers, okay, you prepare for them. And how do you prepare for them now? Getting to know your breath really well, getting to know your sense of the body, the breath energies in the body, and … 
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