Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 61
  2. A Touchstone at the Breath
     … Just focus on this one question: “Where’s the suffering right now, and how does this teaching help me to understand it, help me understand how to put an end to it?” Now, that may seem like a lot—he’s essentially asking people to bring right view to the talks, even before they’ve probably heard of right view. But, as he said … 
  3. Look in the Mirror
     … As you focus on the breath, you’ll notice that if you’re putting too much pressure on the breath, the breath feels uncomfortable. You want to give the breath as much freedom as possible to flow throughout the body—and that requires a light touch. Even though he talks about working with the breath energies in the body, spreading them here, spreading them … 
  4. Right Next to Ignorance
     … You focus on: This is what it’s like to have a body right here. One of the ways you can do that is by focusing on the breath, simply watching it as a process on its own. As you do, you’re going to see how it’s connected with other events in the body and other events in the mind. But that … 
  5. Merit: Goodness of the Heart
     … The feelings you focus on developing; the perceptions you focus on to anchor you with the breath. As you meditate, you get more sensitive to ways in which these choices are having a good or a bad impact on the mind. You get more sensitive to the kinds of things you might do based on the thoughts you dwell on. And you realize that … 
  6. Meaning & Importance
     … So we’re not totally abandoning memory as we focus on the present moment. Instead, we’re learning how to use it well. It’s just that there are other memories that come up as we meditate. From the point of the view of the practice, we have to learn how to see them in light of the Dhamma as to whether they’re … 
  7. The Role of Attachment
     … You sit down and focus on the breath, and there’s a slight sense of ease, a slight sense of relaxation. It’s not impressive, but at the very least you’ve let go of your outside entanglements. You’re just there with the breath. Right there is the potential for the first jhana: the happiness, the ease, the pleasure that comes from seclusion … 
  8. Cultivate a Limitless Heart
     … There are other little things, though, that you tend to overlook because they seem so minor, and yet you really should focus on them—because this power of endurance, this limitless heart, doesn’t start at the edge of the universe and work in. It starts here and moves out. One way of starting here is to look around you and see what needs … 
  9. Guiding Truths
     … They focus directly on your own experience, the part of your own experience that nobody else can know. This is why the Buddha said the Dhamma is paccatam , individual. It’s universal in its truth, but very individual and very direct in how you’re experiencing it right now—which is why the truths are also opanayiko pertinent, relevant all the time. They’re … 
  10. Respect
     … In other words, focus your desires on the causes: the causes here being mindful of the breath, being alert to the breath, and being ardent in keeping that mindfulness going, keeping that alertness sharp. Once you’ve got the causes down, the results will have to come. All too often, we focus our desires on the results. We’d like things to turn out … 
  11. The Making Of
     … But they’re also the things we focus on as we create a state of concentration. You focus on your breath. You think about the breath. Ask yourself, “Where is the breath comfortable? Where is it uncomfortable? How is it fitting in with the mind? How is the mind fitting in with the breath?” And when there’s a sense of ease, what do … 
  12. What Are You Doing?
     … There is an emphasis that’s developed over the centuries in different branches of Buddhism to focus on how things are empty or are marked by the three characteristics, saying that the problem is that we want them to be permanent but they’re not, we want them to have substance but they’re not. Well, permanence and substance may be issues sometimes, but … 
  13. Daily-Life Dhamma
     … Because the trick to stamina and endurance is not to focus on the things that are irritating but to focus on the areas where your strengths are, where things are actually going well. And you want to make goodwill one of your strengths. We often hear of the practice of goodwill as being something soft and gentle. But you read about the forest ajaans … 
  14. Change Your Mind
     … Be aware of where you focus your attention, where you focus your desire to develop something. All too often we water the seeds that simply reflect our cravings. When we come to the practice, we try to use right effort: generating the desire to prevent unskillful states from arising, or if unskillful states already have arisen, to try to put an end to them … 
  15. Fabricating Around Pain
     … So focus on what you can see most clearly. Focus on a spot that seems most congenial. Then notice if the breath is comfortable. If your breathing feels labored, think of the breath coming in and out through all the pores of the skin. You can experiment with different rhythms and textures of breathing: long in, long out; short in, short out; long in … 
  16. Guided Meditation
     … This is probably the most counterintuitive spot to focus on the breath, but it’s also the most important, because the neck tends to be Tension Central. So think of the breath working through any tension connected with any muscle, connected any vertebra in the back of the neck. Now from this spot, you can conduct a survey of the rest of the body … 
  17. The Fortress
     … Where do you feel it most prominently? Focus your attention there. That’s getting the mind in position. Now, once the body and mind are in position, you want to keep them in position. This is where it gets difficult. When the body’s sitting here without moving, sometimes there’s going to be a pain here or a numbness there. But you have … 
  18. Breath Meditation When It’s Hard to Breathe
     … He had learned already that you can focus on the breath up in the head. He began to realize there was more. There’s the breath that goes down the spine, the breath that goes down the legs, down the arms. So he took advantage of that. Working with the breath energies in the body, he was able to pull himself together and at … 
  19. Before Your Face Was Born
     … You can focus simply on the question of whether your happiness is true. Think back on the forest tradition. It was started by sons of peasants up in northeast Thailand, which is the poorest part of the country. And one of the issues Ajaan Mun found himself dealing with again and again was students feeling that they didn’t have what it takes to … 
  20. The Missing Fabrication
     … Verbal fabrications are defined as directed thought and evaluation—how you talk to yourself, the way you focus on a topic and then ask questions about it, make comments, decide what to do with it. That type of fabrication is not mentioned in the steps of breath meditation. There’s no talk about becoming sensitive to verbal fabrications or calming verbal fabrications. But if … 
  21. Protection for the Holidays
     … As the Buddha said, there’s an element of fabrication in terms of which feelings you’re going to focus on, and which ones you’re going to ignore. When you focus on certain potentials, you actually turn them into full-fledged feelings. So how are you going to fabricate something skillful out of the pleasures of being home? xx That’s what the … 
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