Search results for: "Focus"
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- Do Jhana… You focus your desire on the causes. You try to fine tune your efforts so that they’re just right. You’re intent on what you’re going—you’re not just going through the motions. And you learn how to be judicious in figuring out, if the mind is getting entangled in something, how to untangle it. If the focus of the mind …
- Refuge… But actually it enabled him to focus on the present moment with a lot more understanding, realizing that it wasn’t just his suffering. Everybody has a narrative where there’s a lot of suffering. That enabled him to look in the present moment with a lot more objectivity, a lot more understanding. So it’s good to think about all living beings, the …
- Ignorance… You’re not distracting yourself from the unconditioned as you focus on these things; you are actually sensitizing yourself to the area in your awareness where eventually the unconditioned will be revealed. As the Buddha said, you touch the deathless with the body. In other words, the same place where you’re experiencing the body right now is where the deathless will be touched …
- Mindfulness, Discernment, & Peace of MindWe meditate to gain peace of mind, and part of that means finding something soothing for the mind to focus on. If all you can think about are problems and distractions, then there’s not going to be much peace. The mind is going to feel frazzled, rough, raw. This is one of the reasons why we start with the breath, because you can …
- Why Now… What this means is that you focus on the sensation of breathing as you directly experience it. As for other concerns of the world outside, you put them aside. Whether they’re going to be good or bad, you don’t have to take them up right now. We carry the world around with us so much, both in our minds and in the …
- Perceptions of the Breath… This means that when we focus on the breath as energy, we’re focusing on something that’s very light, very quick, and very pervasive. It also helps to think about the breath as something that comes in and out of the body very easily. Even when you’ve got a stuffy nose or congestion from a cold, there’s still a subtle energy …
- Ingenuity… Perhaps he’d read too many stories of the young student who goes to see the old master and the old master says, “Ah, yes, you need to focus on this.” That’s all the student has to do, just focus on that and, bonk, guaranteed awakening. But if meditation did have foolproof methods like that, we’d still be fools, even after awakening …
- Single-minded… Those qualities require focus, they require your attention, they have to have top priority. In other words, you have to be single-minded about what you’re doing. It’s like playing chess. If you want to win, you have to sacrifice some of your pieces—and you have to be willing to sacrifice them. The main difference between chess and training the mind …
- Advice for a New Monk… Try to maintain your focus on those sensations and just let the thoughts pass through. Think of body is being like a big window screen. The breeze flows through the screen because the screen doesn’t catch it. It goes right through. Thoughts can go right through. You don’t have to catch them, you don’t have to look at them, turn them …
- The View from the Mountaintop… They suddenly decide to abandon all the things that are really frivolous in their lives and focus on things that are important. Well, it’s good that they do that, but it’s a shame that they had to wait until the last couple of weeks. As Ajaan Lee liked to say over and over again in his Dhamma talks, we’re like people …
- Samvega… It’s not the main focus, though. When the Buddha describes mindfulness of death, the thought of death is always in the background. The foreground focus is on what needs to be done right now. If you’re doing something unskillful, how can you change what you’re doing? How can you have a change of heart to make yourself realize it’s important …
- Renunciate Grief… So the focus is back on you, but in a new way. What are you going to do now? The proper response to samvega is pasada: the conviction that there’s got to be a way out. That’s why there are those five reflections that we chant so often. We’re subject to aging, illness, death, and separation. That’s all samvega. Then …
- Visakha Puja – Shaking the Earth… You focus on the breath. That’s called directed thought. And then you see if you can stay with the breath for long periods of time, because you’re trying to develop concentration. As the Buddha once said, that’s the heart of the path. All the other elements he awakened to in the path serve as its requisites, serve as its supports. The …
- Meaning & Becoming… As we focus in that direction, that’s what gives meaning to our lives. And when you get there, you realize you don’t need meanings any more. The ultimate happiness is that satisfying.
- A Home for the Mind… So you want to learn how to focus your actions in a skillful direction. And finally, there are what are called the sublime abidings, reminding us that, in our search for happiness, we want to make sure to keep the happiness of other beings in mind as well. We want a happiness that’s harmless. Then, feeling compassion and empathetic joy for other beings …
- Maintaining Stillness… You just focus on your breath, and there you are. But to make it more than just one breath, there comes the maintaining. That’s where you need to use your powers of endurance, your powers of ingenuity, all your mental abilities to learn how to keep the mind here with the breath in the present moment in a way that you can maintain …
- Factions in the Mind… One part of the mind decides to focus on the breath, but other parts of the mind want to go other places and couldn’t be bothered with anything as ordinary as the breath. So in the beginning, you have to learn how to strengthen the side of the mind that wants to stay. You can do this in lots of different ways. First …
- Learning by Doing… So, focus on staying with your breath. Take a couple of good, long, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in your body, because when we talk about the breath, it’s not so much the air coming in and out of the nose—it’s the flow of energy in the body. It’s the flow of energy that keeps …
- Cooking Skills… You focus on the breath and you realize there are lots of different ways of breathing: You can breathe in ways that are constrictive and unpleasant, or you can breathe in ways that are more wide open, more nourishing. So why choose the constricted ways? Usually, it’s because we’re not paying attention. We’re thinking about something else. So here we’re …
- Furnishing Your Home for the Mind… When you focus on the path, remember it’s one step at a time. Right now, the next step is the next breath, and then the next breath and then the next breath. If you find yourself wandering away from the breath, drop whatever it is and you’ll be right back at the breath. You don’t have to pull yourself back. This …
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