Search results for: "Focusing"

  1. Page 68
  2. Painful Feelings, Hurtful Words
     … And even when you’re focusing on the body, you’ve got to learn how to put aside certain parts of the body that you cannot make comfortable. Focus on the parts that you can, and use that as your space here in the present moment. As for the words of other people, try to develop a state of mind that allows the words … 
  3. Don’t Get Discouraged
     … How did you do that? Usually you focused either on how much you wanted the results or how much you were afraid of what would happen if you didn’t master the skill. Then you learned how to channel both the desire and the fear into practical action. And ask yourself: What did you do to maintain yourself, to keep yourself going even when … 
  4. The Steadiness of Your Gaze
     … Why is the mind causing itself suffering? Why is it causing itself stress in ways that don’t have to be there? In the context of the Three Characteristics, the Buddha does point out that anything fabricated is stressful, but in the Four Noble Truths he focuses more on the issue of the stress of clinging and craving. The craving causes the clinging, and … 
  5. The Gift of Discernment
     … It keeps focusing you back on your actions and the results you’re getting from them. This is what the four noble truths are all about. You’re suffering? You can’t blame it on the weather. You can’t blame it on the economy. You can’t blame it on the political structure. Those things may be miserable, but you don’t have … 
  6. To Depend on Yourself
     … So here’s a good Dhamma, and it keeps focusing you on what you can do. It’s putting the power in your hands. A lot of us, when we find we have that kind of power in our hands, realizing that it really will make a difference what we do and say and think, want to abdicate that power to somebody else. But … 
  7. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … You can start at the back of the neck, you can start at the navel, any place where you find it easiest to stay focused for a while, then move on, on, on, till you’ve been through the whole body, all the way down to the tips of fingers, all the way down to the tips of the toes. There’s plenty to … 
  8. The Dhamma Eye
     … that you can. And the Buddha was right: This really is the ultimate happiness. That fetter of doubt is gone. So how do we get there? By doing what you’re doing right now: focusing on the breath, trying to keep the mind alert, still, and mindful all at the same time, so that we can begin to understand what’s going on inside.
  9. Concentration Work
     … dealing with the body at all. However, when the time came to settle on the true path, he started with a form of concentration that was very much with the body: focusing on the breath, giving rise to a sense of ease and wellbeing, refreshment, and rapture. Then he worked the pleasure and rapture through the body in the same way that you knead … 
  10. A Graduated Discourse
     … That teaching actually downgrades the attention that we pay to our actions, and it focuses attention on getting in good with whoever’s making the real decisions. But if you realize that your actions are what determines everything, you’re going to pay a lot of attention to your actions: what you’re doing, saying and thinking. Try to be really careful about it … 
  11. How to Really Depend on Yourself
     … taught in *Keeping the Breath in Mind—*these are at the end of the book Awareness Itself— whatever the problem is, it’s usually because one of those steps is missing: focusing on the breath, starting out with long, deep in-and-out breaths; working with the word Buddho,; dropping the Buddho to analyze the breath; working the breath throughout the body. Find a … 
  12. Taking Charge
     … So regardless of the quality that needs to be developed in the mind, or whichever one you’re focusing on, you’ve got to keep coming back, coming back, coming back, to make sure that it’s strong, that it really has become a new habit, a new skill. This requires mindfulness, keeping in mind what you’ve got to do. Mindfulness is always … 
  13. A Message for the Universe
     … As the Buddha said, inappropriate attention looks at the same things as appropriate attention, but it focuses on different details. The details may be true, but they’re not helpful. You’ve got to look for details that are true, beneficial, and timely. Remember the Buddha’s standards for what would be right speech, the kind of speech that he would say: It had … 
  14. Seclusion
     … The purpose of equanimity is to keep us focused on where we’re unskillful so that we don’t get distracted and pulled away in other areas which really have nothing to do with our lack of skill. In fact, the way we allow ourselves to get pulled away: That’s a lack of skill right there, something we’ve got to work on … 
  15. Cause & Effect Right Now
     … Just keep asking yourself, “What am I doing now? Why am I doing this now? What’s necessary about this now?” You have to keep your attention focused right here in the present moment, not because it’s a wonderful moment, but because what you’re doing right now to create stress right now in the mind is happening right now. And you can … 
  16. It’s Good to Talk to Yourself
     … The important thing is that you keep your conversation focused right here.
  17. Fires of the Mind
     … You’ve got one spot in the body where you’re focused. It’s like setting fire to something that you’ve got to protect. In the beginning, as you light the flame, it’s going to be very small. But then as you protect it, it begins to grow. So whatever little sense of stillness you can find as you focus on the … 
  18. Elemental Energy
     … You notice that there’s a pattern of breathing that goes along with it, and you can get around it by focusing on the breath. Often you don’t know where that particular feeling comes from, and in some ways it doesn’t really matter. Learn how to deal with it as a present event rather than trying to trace it back into the … 
  19. Frustrated Desires
     … He goes back and he looks at the formula—there is someone subject to, say, death, not wanting to die—and he focuses on the first part. Can you make yourself not subject to death? Can you make yourself not subject to birth, aging, illness and death? Where are the germs of these things? Can you get rid of them? Well, the germs of … 
  20. Something Good to Cling to
     … Delusion concentration is when you’re still, but you’re not really quite sure where you are or what you’re focused on. You come out of it and you’re not really sure whether you were asleep or awake. It wasn’t quite asleep, but it wasn’t quite awake either. The mind was in a blur. That’s because it left the … 
  21. Grasping the Snake
     … They’ll be right there, available so that when you sit down to meditate and you get focused on the breath, a lot of good associations will come along with the breath. You’ll be ready to practice and get the mind to settle down. Right effort and right mindfulness are the qualities we need to develop in order to get the mind into … 
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