Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. The Five Aggregates
     … That’s fabrication, the fabrication of appropriate attention. So you learn to ask these questions, you learn to develop these perceptions. Again, they’re part of the path. But still they’re khandhas themselves. The final break is when you incline the mind to the deathless, to the unfabricated. Here again, you start out by using perceptions to remind yourself that there is an … 
  3. Up for the Challenge
     … mind down? How can you release the mind from things that are burdening it? When you think about it, the Buddha’s instructions for breath meditation are basically questions, focusing your attention on possibilities to look for as to what can be done. All too often, he doesn’t give very precise instructions. This is why we look, say, into the teachings of the … 
  4. Conviction & Persistence
     … Well, if you’re bored with it, it’s because you’re not paying careful attention. Come back and look at it more carefully. Or if you’re feeling discouraged, you have to keep reminding yourself that this is a long-term project. Everybody who’s been on this path has gone through periods of discouragement, periods when it didn’t look like they … 
  5. Faith in Karma
     … So we practice equanimity not just to give up on things, but basically to channel our attention, channel our efforts in a fruitful direction. So regardless of what the world is doing, of what the world says, we know that these assumptions are good assumptions. And you want to act on them. Years back, I was writing an article for Tricycle, and I was … 
  6. Remember This
     … If you learn how to apply your attention to the breath in the proper way, you can create what the Buddha calls “pleasure not-of-the-flesh.” This doesn’t happen on its own. There may be moments when it comes and goes, but you’re not here just watching the moments. You’re trying to develop the ease and pleasure that comes with … 
  7. Focused on Your Duties
     … This is why, when the Buddha teaches about being in the present moment, focusing our attention on the present moment, it’s always in the context of mindfulness of death, with the realization that there are duties that need to be done before you die, and you don’t know how much time you have to do them. You could die at any time … 
  8. The Most Important Thing to Be Doing
    Try to gather all your attention right here, right here at your present awareness, your awareness of the breath. And do what you can to keep any outliers from wandering away and unraveling your concentration. You’ve got to remind yourself that this is the most important thing you can be doing right now. As far as you’re concerned, this is the most … 
  9. The Good Fight
     … If you’re very attentive to how the breathing works, you can figure out a way to breathe that feels really solid and nourishing. You’ve got a sense of well-being you can tap into at any time. A lot of the hunger to take more than you really need from the Earth, or more than you really need from the people around … 
  10. The Boundaries of Mindfulness
     … There are proper and improper places to focus your attention. He gives several analogies. One is of a monkey who goes into areas where he shouldn’t go. If he stays in the forest, he’s safe. But if he goes to areas where both monkeys and human beings go, then human beings tend to set out traps. The monkey gets caught with his … 
  11. Honest & Observant
     … You can focus your attention on another part of the body. If there’s a pain, say, in your knee, you can focus on your other knee. Or if both knees are in pain, you can focus in your chest around the heart. Try to find some part of the body that’s not in pain. As Ajaan Lee once said, if everything in … 
  12. Training Your Inner Critic
     … Learn how to breathe, learn how to pay attention to the breath in a way that gives rise to feelings of pleasure, feelings of ease. Of course, there are other instructions in the Canon where he talks about the bodily, verbal, and mental fabrications that he advises you to follow on the large scale: the kinds of actions to avoid, the kinds of actions … 
  13. Patience & Tenacity
     … The thoughts keep coming back again and again and again like stray cats and dogs because you feed them i.e., you pay attention to them. Even getting upset about them when you’re trying to chase them away, they’ve got you. You’ve given them food. So let them be there, but you don’t have to be with them. If you … 
  14. Talking Among Your Selves
     … We’re not paying much attention to what we’re actually doing right now, so to look at that requires a different set of questions. Think in terms of the aggregates. Where are the intentions? Where are the perceptions? What exactly are the feelings right now? Are the feelings the same as the breath? Is your awareness the same thing as the breath? There … 
  15. Encouraging Perceptions
     … what you sense in your world of experience, both inside the body and around you; where you’re going to focus your attention and what you’re going to do with it; your sense of your possibilities, of what can be done. Again, if you think of the breath as simply the air coming in and out of the lungs, there’s a limited … 
  16. An Island in the Flood
     … It’s when you’re not paying careful attention to the breath that it can get rough, harsh, or restricted. So you want to stay continually. This is where the ardency comes in again. It’s one thing to be mindful. You can remember anything. You can be alert to anything. But ardency reminds you that you want to be mindful of things that … 
  17. Frame Your Questions Well
     … You focus your attention on the breath, and try to breathe in a way that’s comfortable. Then you try to spread that comfort so that it fills the body, so that your sense of breath fills the body, and your awareness fills the body. You want all of these three things to come together, each filling the others. That’s the world of … 
  18. Part I : Basic Instructions
     … They’re the crucial ones, so give them a lot of attention.
  19. Eight Principles
     … How do you relax them? Well, you pay attention to them. Ajaan Lee talks about how your breath and your mindfulness—and here by mindfulness he means both mindfulness and alertness—are like a medicine. As you survey the body, you’ll find some spots that are tightened, obstructed, too solid. Just focus on them very gently and develop a sense of just how … 
  20. Chopping Off Thoughts
     … If your attention slips away, things will tense up again immediately if that’s your normal way of doing things. So you’re reeducating the body in how to breathe, and at the same time reeducating your mind, getting the mind to stay in the present moment consistently without flitting off after other thoughts. No matter what other thoughts come in, you really have … 
  21. Part V : Finding a Teacher
     … It could be clinging, it could be craving, it could be feeling, intention, attention, verbal fabrication, mental fabrication, or bodily fabrication like the breath. When you think about dependent co-arising and all the various ways that suffering and stress can arise in the mind, it’s useful to know that whatever the factor that’s coming or contributing to that, all you have … 
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