Search results for: "Focusing"

  1. Page 69
  2. Mind Your Own Business
     … If you find yourself focusing outside, then it’s a sign that you’re abandoning and neglecting some of your duties. So try to have a clear sense of what is your business here. If each of us were looking after his or her own mind properly, there wouldn’t be many issues aside from the issue of why there’s a mouse in … 
  3. Lean into the Present
     … Where in the mind right now is the craving focused? Where is the suffering located? You’ve got to stay with the breath to give yourself a good place to stand, to watch, and ask these questions. But be confident that everything you need to know is right here. And if one line of questioning doesn’t get to the answer, you might try … 
  4. A Mind Bigger than Pain
     … At the same time, realize that you don’t have to be focusing on the pain all the time. It’s good to try to create a much larger state of mind that’s not overwhelmed or overcome by the pain. Think of the Buddha’s image of the lump of salt. If you’ve got a lump of salt and you put it … 
  5. Encourage Yourself
     … We often think meditation means not thinking—just focusing on the breath and coming back, coming back, coming back. But there are times when that just doesn’t seem to work and you’ve got to sit down and encourage yourself. A good part of meditation is skillful thinking: how to think when you’re angry to get past the anger. How to think … 
  6. A Friend When You’re on Your Own
     … That’s not just a matter of focusing on the breath or being mindful as you do walking meditation. It’s a matter of how you talk to yourself and how you talk yourself into doing skillful things and out of doing unskillful things when you’re on your own.
  7. A Light in the Darkness
     … I wish it was the way it was years ago.” You have to put those thoughts aside and say, “Where is it right now? What are my abilities right now? What issues are presenting themselves right now?” If you get used to handling what’s here right now, you’re focused on the right spot. You’re developing the habits you need. After all … 
  8. Discernment Fosters Concentration
     … It gets concentrated—in other words, solidly focused—and you maintain that focus. As the sense of rapture begins to get too strong, you tune in to a more refined level of energy right at the same spot. You don’t have to move. If the rapture’s going to do its thing, it can do its thing. You don’t try to hold … 
  9. Things as They’ve Come to Be
     … Which means that when we’re focusing on these immediate forms of bodily, verbal, and mental fabrication right here, right now, we’re at the source of our karma. In dependent co-arising, these things come even prior to intention. But they actually are a form of intention. When you do something with your body, you have to start with the breath. Otherwise your … 
  10. Negative Emotions
     … For example, when lust comes, you have to learn how to let go of the object you’re focused on and turn around to look at the lust. When anger comes, let go of the object of your anger, turn around to look at the fact of anger in the mind—what it’s like to be angry. The same goes for other emotions … 
  11. Discerning Actions
     … So we’re focusing on our actions. And where do our actions come from? They come from the mind, activities in the mind. This is why we have to train the mind to develop the mindfulness and the alertness it’s going to need to watch its actions and really see what we’re doing and the results of what we’re doing. Then … 
  12. Concentration Food
     … Here your alertness is focused on what you’re doing and the results you’re getting. Then finally there’s ardency, which is trying to do this well. These’re all things you develop. Your consciousness is there, but it’s constructed. If there’s clinging to it, that’s part of the first noble truth. It’s to be comprehended. But mindfulness is … 
  13. The Primacy of the Mind (2)
     … Which is why we meditate by focusing inward. If the causes of suffering were outside, we’d be sending you outside to search them down. But they’re here, inside. We have to keep that point in mind. The Buddha’s teachings on breath meditation underline this. We’re not watching just the breath, we’re watching the process of fabrication, the processes of … 
  14. Contemplating the World You Create
     … That’s why we’re focused right here, because this is where the problem gets solved.
  15. The Opportunity to Be Quiet
     … This is another reason why you should be focusing on getting the mind really still. Because actions come out of where? They come from your intentions. Your intentions come from where? They come from the mind. And if they come from an erratic mind, you really can’t trust them. If they come from a mind that’s really still, solid, secure, then you … 
  16. The Wisdom of Incongruity
     … to get things focused, to get things centered. In the beginning, we actually have to use that ability to think around things from various angles to help get the mind settled in on the breath in a comfortable way. If the mind has a tendency to think, well, try to have it think about the breath. Think about evaluating how comfortable it is, where … 
  17. Not-self in Context
     … Here he’s focusing it on parts of the path. But after all, the path is something originated. It is going to pass away some day. So before it passes away, you want to make use of it and then get beyond it, while you can. That’s when the teaching on not-self becomes something you apply everywhere, all around. So it has … 
  18. Cooking the Present Moment
     … You could be sitting here, focusing on your pains right off from the start, and then your breath will get constricted by the pain. You breathe right up to the edge of the pain and then stop right there. But if you perceive the pain as porous, or if you focus on the areas around the pain, you find that the breath can go … 
  19. Five Precepts, Five Virtues
     … Even with something simple like this, focusing on the breath: Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths, and try to stay with nothing but the breath. In other words, the sound of the crickets, the sound of the wind, the sound of the crows: You don’t have to pay them any attention. They’re there, you know they’re … 
  20. The Buddha Respects Your Potential
     … Have some respect for the potential of a mind focused on the breath with a sense of the breath filling the whole body, the pleasure of breathing filling the whole body, your awareness filling the whole body, and learning how to maintain this state. There will be a lot of voices in the mind that say, “Hey, you’re not thinking about anything right … 
  21. Recollection of the Buddha
     … After all, he gained awakening while focusing on his breath. And that’s the technique he taught more than any other. But even if you do find it easy to settle down with the breath, it’s good to stop and reflect every now and then on the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha as a way of maintaining your energy, keeping your practice … 
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