Search results for: "Focusing"
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- The Languages of Right View… When you think about your meditation and its ups and downs, and you start focusing on the downs, that’ll have one impact on the mind. If you say simply, “Okay, there’s something wrong here, there’s a problem to be solved,” and thinking of it in terms of, “Is there mindfulness? Is there alertness? Is there ardency?”: That changes the whole discussion …
- Weathering Karma Storms… If you’re able to sit here without too much of an invasion from past actions, you can give all your attention to what you’re doing right now—focusing on the breath, talking to yourself about the breath, holding in mind a perception of the breath that makes it easy for feelings of well-being to spread through the body. There are other …
- All of a Piece… Keep focusing the mind on the breath whether you feel like it or not. At the same time, stay away from distractions whether you want to follow them or not. You have to develop the attitude that your wants and your likes are not reliable, especially when you see that they lead in the wrong direction. You’ve got to learn strategies for saying …
- A Fool for Sensuality… And you start out by focusing on this analysis of the body. This enables you to track out where the other strands of these delusions are that have you so tied down in the narratives, in the fantasies, in your role in the fantasies, in the crazy desires you have around sensuality. Think of King Pasenadi. He had his queens. He was deluded enough …
- Intro to Breath Meditation… You can focus on the breath at any one point in the body where it’s easy to stay focused. It can be the tip of the nose, the middle of the chest, or any place where you can easily sense the process of breathing, where you can keep your focus comfortable and that spot of the body comfortable as you breathe in, breathe …
- A Skillful Attitude… Getting the mind into position means focusing it on the breath. Wherever you sense the breath or the process of breathing, focus your attention there. And allow yourself to think of the concept of breathing in a wide way. It’s not just air coming in and out of the lungs. It’s the whole energy flow in the body. And wherever in the …
- Desire for Happiness… But if you close off the water courses, that keeps the current focused, and it builds up a momentum. The further it goes down the hillside, the stronger it gets. It’s the same with this quality of consistency in your practice. Once you learn to be sensitive to the breath, in touch with the breath, then allow it to expand through the body …
- Skillful Desire… You can put it aside.” The problem with desire, of course, is that sometimes it can get in the way if you’re focused too much on the results and not enough on the causes. That kind of desire can be an obstacle. It’s like driving to a mountain on the horizon. If you focus on the mountain all the time, you’re …
- Tuning Your Lute… If you can’t get the mind focused in a broad way, okay, focus on a small part of the body, but make it really strong. Do whatever it is needed to lift your level of energy. Then you can retune your lute as you play. It’s important that you understand that analogy. It’s not the case that everything goes up together …
- Guiding Truths… They do this by focusing our attention on the immediate issue: What is the suffering right now? What are you doing that’s aggravating the suffering? Can you stop? What do you need to do in order to stop? Those are the questions you can apply to any issue at any time. They focus directly on your own experience, the part of your own …
- The Buddha’s Secret Weapon… When you’re focused on the breath, that’s directed thought. So you’ve got the three causal factors of the first jhana right there. Then the results will come: a sense of ease and well-being or pleasure; a sense of refreshment, sometimes to the point of rapture. It feels really, really gratifying breathing in, breathing out. It seems to satisfy the body …
- The Making Of… While you’re doing this, there may be some thoughts in the back of your mind that you are the person doing it, but primarily you’re focused on your actions—how to do them well. You want to learn to keep thinking in those terms. The same with name and form: That’s another one of the factors of dependent co-arising that …
- Delight in Conviction… You’re focusing on your mind in the present moment because your mind in the present moment has a lot of potential power, and you want to learn how to use it well. There are a lot of potentials you have here for understanding yourself, understanding your breath, understanding the way you talk to yourself, understanding the perceptions you hold in mind—even the …
- What Are You Doing?… In dealing with the issue of the unattractiveness of the body, why is it that you can be focused on the unattractiveness of the body for an hour or so and then suddenly switch? All of a sudden the body is attractive again. What happened? The body didn’t change. It was your perception that changed. The same with the pain. Sometimes you come …
- Shelter Through Restraint… That means you can take things apart more carefully because you’re more precisely focused, and even though there’s a narrowing of the range of where the mind is going to go, it opens a world inside, a world of understanding, seeing all of the different tricks the mind plays on itself. This is one of those cases where a habit you learn …
- Look at Yourself… That’s where the training is focused: on straightening yourself out—and it’s a hard lesson for us to learn. We spend our time looking at other people because we think that’s where the problem is. Yet you can look at the rest of the world and try to straighten out the rest of the world as much as you like, but …
- Daily-Life Dhamma… You’re true in focusing on your object. You make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath and abandon all other thoughts: Well, stick with that. Be true to that. And it’s easier to be true in your meditation when you’ve learned to be true in your daily life. Self-control: Whatever irritations there may be in the …
- A Load of Straw… When you have the right perspective, it’s a lot easier to keep focused on the path.
- Skill… For example, if focusing at the breath in the nose doesn’t seem right, you can focus at other places as well. If long breathing doesn’t feel good, you can try short breathing. You can try deep or shallow, heavy or light, broad or narrow. There are lots of ways of playing with the breath. You can think soft breath or heavy breath …
- Mindfulness Immersed in the Body… In personal relationships, you might think you want the other person, but usually your craving is focused on an image of the other person. Then you’re upset when the person doesn’t fit in with the image. The same principle applies to a lot of things, both outside and in. So we do these practices to locate exactly where those cravings are found …
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