Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 71
  2. Heart & Mind
     … These things are directly related to the breath energy, which is why the Buddha not only has us focus on ideas of right view, but also encourages us to reclaim the body, so that we can fill the space of the body with our awareness. That way, we know what’s really going on and can exert some control over it. We may not … 
  3. Patience & Consistency
     … A centered and broad awareness lasts a lot longer and is also more helpful in gaining insight than a very narrowly focused one, because a narrow focus gets confining after a while. And it’s easily knocked off center. But when your awareness is broad and covers the whole body, you can maintain this centered but broad state of mind in all your activities … 
  4. Mental Movements
     … If your focus, for instance, is on a physical pain, ask yourself, “Okay, which part here is the physical pain, and which part is mental pain?” If you can’t see the distinction right away, use the breath to deal with it. If the way you breathe changes the pain, okay, that’s the physical element in the pain. But as you work with … 
  5. Equanimity
     … If you can make a difference for the better, that’s what you focus on doing. Leave equanimity for the areas where you really can’t make a difference. The other principle is that there are some things in the mind that respond just to your watching them. In other words, certain kinds of greed, aversion, or delusion come up, and when you recognize … 
  6. Factors for Awakening
     … Whatever parts of the body feel calmer than others, focus there after you’ve been energized. When a sense of rapture seems to have done its job to give you energy and now is beginning to feel tiresome, you can tune in to a level of energy that’s more calm. It’s like tuning the radio in. You’ve been listening to hard … 
  7. Guarding Against Trouble
     … Instead, you focus on what you’re doing—less on what you are and more on what you can do. When you focus on what you’re doing, you realize after a while that even your sense of self is something that you do, and there are times when it’s useful to do, and there are times when it’s not. You also … 
  8. The Buddha’s Good News
     … After all, the four noble truths focus on suffering. You look at his worldview, and there are a lot of hells. The possibility of falling to the realm of the animals, hungry ghosts, is a possibility. But then you look at the people who listened to the Buddha’s teachings when he was alive. They found those teachings to be good news. The good … 
  9. Insights
     … get a spot that’s okay. That’s when you can settle down. So in the beginning in the meditation, you find yourself having to circle around the body. Focus here a bit. Focus there a bit. Work on different patterns of tension in the different parts of the body, because as long as you’re here working with the breath energy, working with … 
  10. Addictive Thinking
     … So in the meditation, we have to have a technique, something to focus on, and another way of thinking to remind us there are other ways of reacting to feelings of pain, feelings of discomfort, feelings of loneliness, feelings of depression—everything by which we tend to harm ourselves. So focus on your breath, because this is the way out. When anything comes up … 
  11. Strength of Mind
     … So focus on your breath. Think thoughts of goodwill for yourself and for other people. Remind yourself that’s what you’re here for: a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody. And you have goodwill for yourself, which is why you’re here. Then you focus on the breath with the conviction that this is going to make a difference. Conviction is one of … 
  12. Values
    When you focus on the breath and try to stay focused on the breath, it’s partly a matter of technique and partly a matter of your values. The technique can be explained in just a few pages—Ajaan Lee’s seven steps take just two or three pages. And they cover a lot of the territory in the technique: focusing on the breath … 
  13. Evaluation
     … She had to sit with Ajaan Fuang, and he would tell her, “Okay, now you do this; now you do that, focus here, focus there. Drop this. Drop that.” She couldn’t think of it on her own because she was so totally focused on the one object. We found out later that she would visualize the different elements in the body—with breath … 
  14. All Winners, No Losers
     … There are some particular relationships that can get pretty nasty this way, where you focus on the feeling that you can’t find happiness until you’ve gotten back at this person. This animosity contains not a small touch of revenge. And, of course, this feeling doesn’t lead to any genuine happiness. So one of the purposes of our practice is to get … 
  15. The Challenge
     … You focus on the breath because that helps you step out of your usual dialogue inside the mind—although “dialogue” is too small a concept. There’s a big discussion going on in there, and we go around taking on one voice and then taking on another voice. That’s been the pattern of our minds for who knows how long. So you settle … 
  16. The Value of Effort
     … This is why there’s so much emphasis on developing a sense of ease and well-being as you focus on the breath; and on allowing that ease and well-being to spread throughout the body—pervade, suffuse, permeate every part of the body —every little cell. Give the body and mind some nourishment. Settle in and, as the Buddha says, indulge in that … 
  17. Strength to Be Good
     … The breath is the primary one you want to focus on because it’s the most responsive to what you want to do. All you have to do is think, “longer breathing,” and it’ll breathe a little bit longer; “shorter breathing,” it’ll be a little bit shorter; “deeper,” “more shallow,” "heavier,” “lighter.” It’ll respond to your thoughts. And you can take … 
  18. A Home & a Mobile Home
    One of the standard terms for concentration is *vihara-dhamma, *which can be translated as “a home for the mind.” As you focus on the breath, you want to get the mind so that it feels at home here, in a home that’s solidly built and a good place to stay. Otherwise, the mind goes roaming out looking for scraps outside to give … 
  19. More than a Slice of Mindfulness
     … As for putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world, there are lots of contemplations you can do to give rise to a sense of dispassion toward the world while you’re sitting here meditating, trying to keep your focus on one thing. That’s what it’s all about—keeping focused on one thing as your frame of reference, not just … 
  20. Clear of Defilement
     … When we focus on fostering lust, we pretend that these things are not there. We block them out of our minds. So learn to unblock them, to see that the object itself isn’t really all that attractive. But that’s just the first line of defense. After all, the object is not the problem. The problem is in the mind, the mind’s … 
  21. Maintenance Work
     … When the time comes for insight, one of the topics that you’ll want to focus on is the artificiality of that concept, the artificiality of the perception that creates the state of concentration you’ve been living with. For the time being, though, just file it away for future reference. If you question things too early, everything gets short-circuited, and you’re … 
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