Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 66
  2. How the Dhamma Protects
     … And you can focus on making sure that regardless of what you’ve got in terms of karma from the past, you know that you’ve got skillful intentions here in the future, intentions that don’t aim at harm, don’t aim at attachment, don’t have anything unskillful. That’s your protection. So work on developing the powers of mind: the mindfulness … 
  3. Energy Channels
     … You focus on developing certain qualities of mind. You develop your concentration; you develop mindfulness. As you focus on doing these things more skillfully, it just so happens that you find something valuable. It may not have been precisely where you thought it would be, it may not have been precisely what you thought it would be, but you find it. That’s the … 
  4. Acceptance
     … So the Buddha has you focus on the skills that you can use right now. You learn how to get the mind into concentration, how you get the mind to become more mindful, more discerning: all these skills that we work on as we meditate. So when we find that the mind is not getting concentrated, we don’t just sit there and accept … 
  5. Fabricating against Defilement
     … In other words, you learn how to think in a different way, focus on different issues. And actually talk yourself out of the anger, talk yourself out of the lust. This depends in turn on the mental fabrication, the feeling and the perception that go along with the original defilement. This means first actually perceiving it as a defilement. This is one of our … 
  6. Practice All Day
     … You exercise restraint in your actions, you exercise restraint in what you take in, what you focus on. You choose what to let it and out, and what not to let in or out. I was talking this evening to someone who was saying that he noticed that when he walks down the street, he’s usually looking for all the pretty girls, passing … 
  7. Bare Attention
     … Just focus on one topic. Get the mind in good strong concentration. That’s how he got on the path: by beginning to see the difference between cause and effect, skillful and unskillful, by focusing on the actions of his own mind. This means that to develop appropriate attention in our own practice we’ve got to look in our own minds for what … 
  8. Of Past & Future
     … The proper reflection is, “If I had just one more breath, I could make good use of it.” So where does that reflection focus you? On the present moment. You do have this one more breath, so make good use of it. Have a sense of the value of each breath as it comes in, each breath as it goes out. Have a sense … 
  9. Battling Darkness
     … This is why we have to focus our energies on one issue, and that issue is: Why does the mind create suffering for itself? Everything we do, we think we’re doing it for the sake of happiness, for the sake of our wellbeing, and yet we end up doing things that cause suffering, both for ourselves and for those around us. Many times … 
  10. A Home for the Mind
     … You can choose to focus on any of those aspects. The liquid and the breath energy are the good ones to focus on, because they can change. The breath, in particular, has no obstacles. If tighten up the arm, that’s usually the liquid. In other words, the blood gets locked up in some spots and doesn’t flow is easily as through others … 
  11. To Comprehend Suffering
    When we compare the Buddha’s teachings to other teachings of his time, what’s really striking is his focus. Other people started with descriptions of the world. “This is the nature of the world,” they say. “It’s eternal, not eternal, finite, infinite.” Or, “This is the nature of the soul or the self: eternal, not eternal, finite, infinite.” He started with a … 
  12. When Aging Closes In
     … But the implications turn around and focus on you. The Buddha was a human being; he was able to do this with a human mind and a human body. He was younger at the time but still there were a lot of older people who gained awakening in the Buddha’s time and all the way up to the present. Even those that don … 
  13. Right View, Right Attention
     … And it’s up to us to decide which ones we want to focus our attention on. So it’s good to have some ideas about what’s worth focusing your attention on and what’s not. If you were working on a project that required a lot of ingenuity, a lot of creativeness, creativity, you might say, “Okay, I’ll be open to … 
  14. Contentment
     … Just focus on this one little thing, the breath coming in and going out. As you get to know it, you begin to realize that there’s a lot there. When we talk about contentment, it doesn’t mean that you sit there and do nothing and say, “Well, everything is fine just as it is.” That’s not the kind of contentment we … 
  15. The Equanimity that Doesn’t Give Up
     … That’s when you focus your anxiety in a way that actually becomes something skillful: compunction combined with heedfulness. So remember what’s unskillful in the mind; remember what’s skillful. You’ve got lots of voices in the mind that sound very much like you, because they have been you at different times in the past. Simply learn to recognize which ones in … 
  16. Fear of Missing Out
     … Verbal fabrication is how you’re talking to yourself as you focus on the breath, asking yourself questions about it, trying to come up with answers as to how you can get the breath to settle down so that it’s smooth throughout the body, how you can get the mind to settle down so that it’s smooth throughout the body and they … 
  17. Be Heedful & Think
     … I couldn’t figure out why until I realized that the very moment when I decided that I was going to focus on the breath, I would tense up the little tiny muscles in the blood vessels. Once that tension got in place, it was hard to get it out. But once I saw myself in the act of doing it, I could undo … 
  18. A Handful of Leaves
     … We all may like the gentle teaching, but you have to see what impact it has on your mind when you focus on it, realizing that different teachings will be useful for you at different times. We have to counteract the tendency to want to take on the whole body of teachings all at once. It’s worth noting that what the Buddha taught … 
  19. Virtue
     … After all, the things that destroy your meditation, the things that destroy you focus in the course of the day, are not just the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and tactile sensations that come from outside. A lot of them come bubbling up from within the mind. In fact, sights, sounds, etc., on their own can’t destroy your meditation. It’s … 
  20. Skilled in Leaving Concentration
     … He maintained his focus—even what for most of us would have been a huge gap. We sit here meditating. As soon as the bell rings, we jump up and drop the concentration. If it were made out of glass, you’d hear the sound of shattering glass all over the room. We have to decide that when the bell rings, we’re going … 
  21. Concentration that Bears Great Fruit
     … You can focus on the parts of the body, the 32 different parts we chant about so often: hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, flesh, skin, on into the bones, into the different organs. This is not necessarily as pleasant a topic, but some people find it really riveting. We’ve been living with this body so long, taking care … 
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