Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Don’t Worry, Be Focused
     … As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “When you meditate, you’re actually practicing how to die.” You drop all your other concerns and focus on the state of your mind. While you have a breath to focus on, you focus on the breath as a place to gather the mind, and then you try to make sure that it doesn’t go sticking its … 
  3. Issues of Control
     … You’re taking this mind, which is inconstant, and you’re trying to make it constant in its focus, which means giving it a focus that it feels good about, a focus that’s expansive. Think of hunters going through the forest. They’re looking for tracks, and they can’t just focus on one spot. They have to have what they call scatter … 
  4. Friends with Pain
     … If your back hurts, focus on the front of the body. If the left side hurts, focus on the right. In other words, learn to pull your attention away from what seems to be the obvious point to focus on: one, to give you a safe place so that you don’t feel threatened by the pain; and two, so that you can notice … 
  5. Transparent Becoming
     … You actually create the where through your focus on a particular desire, a particular craving. It’s something we do all the time, both on the cosmic level, as we go from one life to the next, and also on the immediate level, as we’re sitting here focusing on one object, losing interest, and then focusing on something else. And, in the focus … 
  6. Three Perceptions
     … In other words, as we look for happiness, we focus first on actions that don’t constitute ultimate happiness but can be used as the path: things like mindfulness, persistence, and concentration. At that stage, the Buddha doesn’t have us focus too much on these three characteristics. He has us focus primarily on the doing. As part of the doing, we hold on … 
  7. The End of Karma
     … So focus your mind right now. It’s hard to focus right away at the mind directly, so focus on something really close to the mind. Focus on the breath. Think of the breath not so much as the air coming in and out through the nose, but the flow of energy in the body. Some people say, “What flow?” The fact that you … 
  8. Rhythms of the Mind
     … For the mind to develop, you have to focus on what you’re doing right now, which is to get it quiet, to be with the breath. The instructions are there in the definition of the establishing of mindfulness: keep focused on the body in and of itself—in this case, the breath—ardent, alert, mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to … 
  9. Strength from the Basics
     … Focus on the basics, focus on the really important issues in life. Then, if there’s something you can’t manage, let that be in the area that’s not important. And notice that, after Ajaan Suwat had his accident, he suffered some brain damage and didn’t have much energy to give Dhamma talks, but when he did give a Dhamma talk, it … 
  10. Always Looking Inside
     … All these things require the mind to do some work, and the process of putting together a path is what we should focus our attention on inside. Our issues are our views, our resolves. To make them right, we have to pay attention to them. And where do they happen? They happen right here where the body in the mind meet at the breath … 
  11. The Origination of Suffering
     … You focus here, focus there, and around those little spots of focus—which act as nuclei—you create a world. Then there’s an idea of yourself in that world: That’s the becoming. The self can be the self as the consumer who’s going to enjoy whatever you desire, the self as the producer who can bring it about, and the self … 
  12. The Six Properties
     … Which spot in the body is the warmest? Focus your attention there, in the same way that you would focus your attention on the most comfortable spot in the body when you breathe. Then think of the warmth spreading from that spot to fill the whole body until you’re sitting there very still, very warm. Sometimes the warmth gets too much. I know … 
  13. Skillful Selfing
     … what you’re doing, your focus on what you’re doing, your ability to remember what you should be doing, and the fact that you’re trying to do it well. So with the breath, this means remembering to be sensitive to how the breathing feels in the body. The Buddha doesn’t say that you have to focus on the breath in any … 
  14. Dhamma Intelligence
     … You’re not going to see that when you’re dealing in abstractions, but you can see it as you focus on this path, focus on this skill. This is why the Buddha, when he illustrated the practice, often compared it to developing manual skills: how to be a good cook, how to be a good archer, how to be a good soldier. It … 
  15. The Range of Our Responsibility
     … But on the other hand, you have to accept that you can choose how to focus on things, you can choose where to focus, how to perceive it, what to do so that the mind doesn’t have to suffer. In other words, there is that element of freedom with every moment. And the more you take advantage of it, the greater your freedom … 
  16. Driving Lessons
     … You focus on the road. If you focus on the mountain, you drive off the road, you run into people, create all kinds of trouble. So you focus on the road. You know this is the road that goes to the mountain and you just focus there. You keep going, making the next step, the next step. Or if you’re driving, focus on … 
  17. Everything You Need
     … It also makes you focus very directly on your own actions. If you believe that what you’re doing right now doesn’t come from you—if it comes from some force acting through you or it’s something totally beyond your control—you’re not going to focus on your actions at all. You’re going to focus someplace else. Especially if you … 
  18. The Lessons of Equanimity
     … The concentration is not just a matter of the focus but it’s also a matter of the well-being that can come with the focus, and that requires some adjustment. This is why the Buddha says that the factors of the first jhana include directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to the breath and then you evaluate: Are you staying well … 
  19. Free to Choose
     … our ability to focus on this part of our awareness that we don’t share with anyone else, and to straighten it out so that we don’t have to feel the suffering that weighs each of us down. It’s an independence with a double meaning. One, you are free to focus on this issue. The universe doesn’t have any larger purpose … 
  20. A Thread into Awareness
    We focus on the breath to catch the mind. You can’t grab hold of the mind directly; you’ve got to give it something you can get interested in. And so we work with the breath to notice what way of breathing feels good, what way of breathing doesn’t feel so good right now. And sometimes it’s not a matter of … 
  21. Patience & Tenacity
     … The secret to patience is that you focus on your strengths. In the midst of things that are pretty miserable, you can at least focus on the places where there’s some amount of pleasure, the places where you’re relatively safe and that can act as a basis for your strengths. Focus on those. As you focus there, the whole idea of being … 
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