Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Respect for the Breath
     … To see these things clearly, you have to be really consistent, very steady, unwavering in your focus, so that you can be more sensitive to the breath. If you force the breath too much, it’s going have bad consequences both in the body and in the mind. As Ajaan Suwat once said, a well concentrated mind is both soft and hard: soft in … 
  3. Timeless Dhamma
     … The “in and of itself” here means that you simply look at the fact that you’ve got a body here, and you can focus on any one of its aspects. Like right now: You’re focusing on the breath coming in, going out. You’re not concerned with how your body manages in the world, whether it’s good-looking or strong enough … 
  4. To Certify Yourself
     … As your concentration deepens and outside disturbances don’t have much of an impact, you begin to see that the way you focus on the breath may not be as easeful as it could be. It’s like a little child learning how to walk. You notice that when a child is first walking, it’s not sure which muscles are necessary to walk … 
  5. Accepting Yourself
     … But it helps to focus not so much on your sense of who you are, whether you’re a person who should accept yourself or a person who should be upset with yourself, and to look instead at your actions, at your intentions. The Buddha was so wise in teaching Rahula precisely this issue from the very beginning, because your intentions are something you … 
  6. Factors for Awakening
     … where it’s clearest, where it’s easiest to focus on. Let your attention settle there. Then you can allow the breath to find a rhythm that feels comfortable. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If not, you can change. Short in, short out; or short in, long out; or long in, short out. Heavy, light, fast, slow. Coarse or refined. Deep … 
  7. Together but Separate
     … But wherever you’re especially sensitive to how the breath feels, try to focus your attention there and ask yourself, “What kind of breathing would feel really good? What would nourish the sense of well-being at that spot?” As that spot gets comfortable, keep on breathing in a way that maintains the sense of comfort. Then let your awareness encompass the whole body … 
  8. The Karma of Narratives
     … Then, from that larger point of view, he was able to focus in on the present moment and look at the four noble truths as they were showing themselves in the present moment. Where is the stress right now? What’s causing the stress right now? What can be done right now to put an end to stress? But notice that pattern. He got … 
  9. Learning from Labor
     … Where do you focus your attention? How do you create a consciousness that fills the whole body and yet is well anchored? These are things you have to explore from within. As you explore them from within, you begin to see that this is how you create mental states, this is how you create physical states in general. You become more sensitive as you … 
  10. Get Attached to Jhana
     … That’s the kind of focus you want, right here in the midst of the body as you allow yourself to be surrounded by the breath, bathed by the breath, surrounded by the sensation of breathing. Think of the breath as a whole-body process and explore aspects of the breath. When Ajaan Lee talks about the different kinds of breathing, the fascinating part … 
  11. The Path of Action
     … So the focus is on the doing. One of the things we’re told to reflect on is, “Days and nights fly past, fly past. What are you doing right now?” Because it’s the doing that makes all the difference. Again, this includes not only bodily acts but also verbal acts and mental acts, the things you’re thinking. All this comes down … 
  12. Exploring Fabrication
    Exploring Fabrication August 29, 2011 The Buddha once told the monks that they should practice breath meditation, and one of the monks said, “I already do practice breath meditation.” So the Buddha asked him, “What kind of breath meditation do you practice?” The monk replied, “I focus on the breath, let go of any hankering after the past, any hankering after the future. I … 
  13. From Dependence to Independence
     … If we trust that the Buddha knew what he was talking about, we can trust that we can focus all our attention on the simple elements in the pattern that he pointed out: that is, if you do skillful things, if you act on skillful intentions, the results will be good; if you act on unskillful intentions, the results are going to be bad … 
  14. The Need for Right View
    As you focus in on the breath and try to stay with the breath, you’ll notice that there’s a commentary going on in the background. It might be as simple as the reminder: “Stay with the breath. Stay with the breath.” Or it may be more elaborate. And as much as we’d like to think that there’s a simple, pure … 
  15. Slogging Through Difficulties
     … Just focus on whatever the issue is right now, whatever problems you have relating to the breath, relating to the body, relating to the dry patches in your meditation. Remind yourself that patience and equanimity are perfections. Equanimity is also a factor for awakening. Patience, as the Buddha said, is the ultimate austerity, the fire of austerity that burns away the defilements of the … 
  16. Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom
     … So as a meditator you want to focus on what you can change. You want to take advantage of your ability to fashion your experience in a positive way. In fact, a lot of the path of the practice is learning how to shoot yourself not with arrows but with pleasure, to shoot yourself with wisdom. One of the ways we fabricate our experience … 
  17. The Walls of Ignorance
     … In other words, you don’t focus on whether or not you’re a good or bad person, which could tie you all up in knots. You focus simply on the actions and their results, and on learning from them, which is a lot more manageable. These principles apply not only to your physical actions, but also to your words and thoughts. They also … 
  18. Samvega
     … It’s for these reasons that the mind doesn’t like to focus on the present and is always finding reasons to focus someplace else. It keeps deceiving itself, “Think about this over here! Think about that over there!” A thought comes in and, instead of looking at it simply as an event in the present moment, we’ve programmed ourselves to think of … 
  19. Healing Skills
     … To get the mind in position you focus on the breath. Notice where you feel the breath coming in, or where you feel going out. Now, getting the body and mind in a position isn’t difficult. The difficult part is keeping them in position. You want to stay in one posture as long as you can. If you find that the posture is … 
  20. A Mental Fortress
     … Bring some discernment to what you choose to focus on and how you approach things. After all, it’s not the case that the mind is perfectly still and perfectly calm, and then all of the sudden things outside come in and stir it up. All too often, we’re out there looking for trouble. So you have to look and see: When you … 
  21. Momentum Through Restraint
     … One is the things you bring in through your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind—in other words, the things you focus on coming in through the senses. As you go through the day, you look at something, you listen to something, and if you see that the way you’re looking or listening will create greed, lust, anger, or delusion in the … 
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