Search results for: "Attention"
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- Modest, Unentangled, Unburdensome… It’s going to involve developing external qualities that place some restraint on us, but that simply focuses our attention where it should be focused: If there’s restraint on how you behave outside, you have to turn your eyes around. If you’re going to find true happiness, you’ve got to look inside. So these restraints are for the sake of freedom …
- Sensuality… That makes it easier to put aside the obstacle of sensuality, at least for the time being, so that you can really give your full attention to the breath, to the sense of the energy of the body as you feel it from within, and give it a chance to grow.
- Basic Stuff… breath in mind, alertness by watching over the breath, watching over the mind—and then there’s the third quality called ardency, which means you really do this with your full attention, you try to do it as well as you can. When you catch the mind wandering off, you bring it right back. You don’t wait. You don’t say, “Well, I …
- Your Own Karma… You know that that kind of thinking is there in the background of your mind but you can focus your attention someplace else. Let the thought continue chattering as long as it wants, but you don’t have to get involved. It’s like dealing with a group of chattering people you don’t want to get involved with. The chatter is in your …
- Honesty & Integrity… He said, “All this attention on what you’re doing here and what you’re doing there, cause and effect: Why not just open up to the Buddha nature that’s already there, that’s unmade and unfashioned? You’re distracting yourself from the real point.” But I remember noticing, in the course of the retreat, the person’s girlfriend was there at the …
- Clinging & Its Cure… What that comes down to is that you notice how, when a thought comes into the mind and it grabs your attention, there’s going to be a little pattern of tension someplace in the body that’s your marker for keeping that thought in mind. If you can locate that pattern of tension and release it, the thought goes away. Some people have …
- A Path Rooted in Desire… Where is it most prominent right now? Focus your attention there. Stay there. Then ask yourself if the breath is comfortable. You can experiment for a while. See what kind of breathing feels best—whether long or short, fast or slow, deep or shallow, heavy or light. Take some time to get to know the breath—how you feel the breath from within. Then …
- The Elephant in the Clearing… Pay careful attention. But at the same time, realize it’s not all sweat. After all, what are we doing as we get the mind in concentration? Rapture and pleasure are born of seclusion: That’s your energy along the path. That’s your food along the path. And you’ve got some footprints that lead you to look for more. In other words …
- The Karma Snake… And although it may seem as if the teachings on karma focus your attention a lot on the past and future, the Buddha would always bring the issue back into the present, because the future and past are very much intimately connected with what you’re doing in the present. It’s not as if the present is something that stands outside of time …
- Our Sense of Self… Don’t wait until they get really blatant before you suddenly turn your attention to them, because by that time, your sense of self has probably latched on to them. Notice them when they’re small. Notice them when they’re just beginning. And be very conscious about reminding yourself, “That’s not me. That’s just a pain.” Part of mind will say …
- Defabricating Anger… Then you begin to realize this is how it shapes these experiences all the time, just that we’re not paying attention. We just go with the flow. As a result, we just get the same old results over and over and over again. Our problem is that we see the drawbacks of anger when we’re outside of the anger. You have to …
- Strategies for Happiness… And as for purity, as the Buddha told his son Rahula, really paying careful attention to your actions and their results, and resolving not to repeat mistakes that cause suffering for yourself or for other people: That’s how people attain purity. So compassion, wisdom, and purity — the qualities we associate with the Buddha — come from taking our quest for happiness seriously. Good things …
- Think… Our attention, for the most part, gets directed outside, outside, outside. Even when we’re practicing meditation, we’re watching certain events in the mind, but who’s doing the watching? The observations about what you’re watching: Do they apply to the watcher as well? They do. That’s where the mass of ignorance is, so turn around and look there. If you …
- Physical Pains & Painful Words… The question as to which one you’re going to pay attention to most depends on the issues that come up. In the beginning, you do want to focus on the breath and get used to being with the breath, because the ways of working with the breath are going to be essential for dealing with problems that come up in terms of feelings …
- Humility… Humility requires being attentive, watchful, not assuming that you already know, that you’re already good, realizing that there’s always room for improvement. You have to delight in that fact, to delight in actually making the improvements, letting go of the unskillful qualities in the mind, developing the skillful ones. This is how we follow the customs of the Noble Ones. And that …
- A Safe Harbor… We pay too much attention to other things. But if you want to see cause and effect, the first things you’ve got to see are the causes, and particularly the causes you’re making. What are you actually doing? If you know the effects but you can’t remember what you’ve done, and you weren’t watching what you’re doing when …
- Step Outside the World… For the most part, people just let themselves get sucked into whatever comes up and attracts their attention. They go with it without asking where it’s going to go. It’s like getting onto a train without asking where the train is going to go. Just jump on the train and go wherever it takes you. That kind of living is dangerous, yet …
- What’s Relative, What’s Constant… So the question is, how are you conditioning your consciousness right now? What are you focusing on? What are you paying attention to? How are you talking to yourself? Your inner conversation: Have you ever stepped back and just said, “Well, this is just a bunch of directed thoughts and acts of evaluation,” and looked at it simply in those impersonal terms? When thoughts …
- Body & Mind from Within… This is why we have to borrow the Buddha’s wisdom, what he calls appropriate attention: looking at things in terms of the four noble truths and their duties, because ignorance is defined as ignorance of the four noble truths. It’s important to note that the word for ignorance, avijjā, doesn’t mean just not knowing. It’s the opposite of vijjā, which …
- The Basic Medicine… Give ninety-nine percent of your attention to the breath; leave one percent for the talk in case something good comes by that’s actually relevant to what you’re doing. Otherwise, don’t let the talk distract you from the meditation. Allow the mind to settle in. You want to develop a quality where awareness and the breath become one, where you’re …
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