Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Worry
     … As you focus on the breath, then when you meet up with pains in the body, you don’t let yourself get chased away from the present moment. You stay here. You face them—and you have tools to deal with them so that the pain doesn’t scare you. You can breathe through the pain. You can breathe around the pain. If the … 
  3. You Are Not Redundant
     … The Buddha was very clear that what you choose to do right now—what you choose to focus on, what you choose to think about, which intentions you choose to act on—is of prime importance. He started Rahula, his son, on the path of the Dhamma by having him look at his actions to see the extent to which his actions do have … 
  4. A Frame for the Day
     … You begin to notice that you begin to give rise to feelings of pleasure—a sense of ease in the body, ease in the mind—all because you made up your mind to focus on a particular topic and to stick with it, and to do it as skillfully as you can. Eventually, we’re trying to develop a sense of disenchantment with fabrications … 
  5. How the Breath Helps You to Die Well
     … There are all sorts of useful side skills that you can develop as you focus on the breath. And all of this is meant to teach you a lot, not only about the body but even more about the mind and how it relates to the body. As the mind gets really, really still, things begin to separate out. As you begin to meditate … 
  6. Ajaan Suwat’s Gift
     … So when the Buddha says to focus on the issue of why you’re suffering, he’s saying to focus on this area of your awareness, the area that you don’t share with anyone else. And look in here as well for the cause of the suffering, and also for the solution. In other words, it’s not the case that we suffer … 
  7. Hold on to Your Frame of Reference
     … You remember, then you focus again on the breath. You notice whether the breath is comfortable. You notice whether the mind can stay with the breathing, what kind of breathing is easy to stay with. Sometimes, when the breath gets too subtle, it’s hard to stay with, so you want to start out with breathing that’s strong enough. Ajaan Lee recommends taking … 
  8. Karma as an Island
     … If you look at it, it says: “We’re owners of our actions, heir to our actions, whatever we do for good or for evil, to that will we fall heir.” And you can focus either on the good or the evil. Karma is scary. There are a lot of things we do that are unskillful and will bear results, one way or another … 
  9. Strength for Stillness
     … If you want them on your side, you’ve got to draw on their memories, things they’re fond of, things they believe in, things they hold dear, or fears that you have in common, to get them to focus their will on the direction you want them to go. So in this way, when you’re trying to get the committee of the … 
  10. Concentration as a Skill
     … When things come together like this, you can drop all the evaluation and then focus on just maintaining the sense of what you’ve got here—the breath, the well-being, the sense of refreshment—keeping in mind that your focus and your intention are the causes. When the causes are focused properly, then the well-being, the refreshment, will come on their own … 
  11. Three Stages in the Practice
     … The mind gains greater focus, steadier focus. And so on through the different levels of concentration. But in dealing with skillful qualities, it’s not just a matter of giving rise to them and then maintaining and developing them. There comes a point where they’re fully developed and you have to let them go as well. In terms of the practice of mindfulness … 
  12. An Auspicious Night
     … You focus on what’s arising here in the present moment—right here, right now—and ardently do your duty there. This means that you’re not here in the present moment only to be in the present moment. The Buddha never said that being in the present moment was the goal, or that your present-moment awareness was somehow the goal. Some people … 
  13. Delight in the Dhamma
     … The fourth one is to delight in seclusion—finding a space for the mind where you can put down your burdens, where you don’t have to deal with all the issues of other people, and you can focus on your own issues. Even if there are a lot of issues in the mind, the fact that you can focus on them and you … 
  14. Memory & Motivation
    When you focus on the breath, you’re trying to stay in the present moment. But the present moment is not an isolated thing. It’s connected with the past, connected with the future. So even though your primary interest is right here, still there are times when it’s useful to think about the past, think about the future. This is to make … 
  15. Perfect Breathing Isn’t the Goal
    We focus on the breath, we work with the breath, to give the mind a good place to settle down. If you want to be here for a long time, there has to be a sense of well-being. You try to create that well-being by focusing on the breath, by adjusting the way you breathe, by adjusting your perceptions of the breath … 
  16. Medicine – Timely & Timeless
     … While you’re here practicing concentration, focus in on your breath. What keeps you with the breath? A perception, a mental label that says “breath.” And a lot of the concentration practice is learning how to gain a perception of breath that you can hold in mind for long periods of time with a sense of ease, a sense of wellbeing. You test different … 
  17. The Dhamma Wheel in the Heart
     … So ask yourself, “What’s comfortable in the body right now?” Focus there. As for the pains, you can let them go for the time being. Focus on the things that’ll give you strength, give you a sense of belonging here and enjoying being here. It may be in a simple place. Just relax your eyelids or relax your hands. And then just … 
  18. Joy & Discontent
     … The way you prepare for things in the future is to focus on the skills you can develop in the present—in terms of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency—that will enable you to think quickly and on your feet when something unexpected happens in the future. All too often, we’re told to focus on the present moment for its own sake: It’s … 
  19. How to Really Depend on Yourself
     … Some focus on the breath, some focus on Buddho, some on the contemplation the body. But there are some features that they all have in common. You have to remember that each of the monks was out in the forest alone, often for months at a time. When he came up with a problem, he had to figure a way around it. It was … 
  20. Taking Charge
     … where you focus, how you focus, how you manipulate the object, like the breath, to get the mind to settle down further. When you know that you’ve reached the point where you don’t need to manipulate it any more, that you can just be with the breath: All of this requires discernment. So if you look carefully at all five of these … 
  21. Mental Experiments
    Mental Experiments October 14, 2005 Meditation is like running a series of experiments in the mind, trying to see what happens when you focus it on one thing for long periods of time, trying to see what happens when you really take seriously the idea that the way you use your mind may be causing unnecessary suffering. So you want to see clearly what … 
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