Search results for: "Focusing"
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- The Power is in Your Hands… This is what we’re here for, focusing on the breath so that we can bring some knowledge to the present moment because the breath is our anchor in the present. And it turns out that it’s one of the forms of fabrication that, if you do it in ignorance, is going to lead to suffering. So focus right here. That’s your …
- For When the World Can’t Help You… You’ll need your ability to keep the mind focused, along with strong sense that there is an awareness that’s not dependent on the body, and you want to find it inside. It’s something you can take as your refuge. We talk about taking the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha as our refuge, and refuge occurs on many levels. There’s …
- Practice All Day… As we go through the day, so much of our attention is focused on things coming through the other senses, especially the senses of sight and hearing. We have to share our time with the affairs of the world, but now you can give all of your time to the mind. The trick in learning how to meditate properly is learning how to balance …
- Mud Houses… There’s the feeling of pleasure you’re trying to create by staying focused on the breath. There’s your perception of the breath, the image you have of it that allows the breath to flow through the body and can direct the flow in the different ways you want it to go. There are your thought fabrications, starting with directed thought and evaluation …
- The Buddha’s Vipassana… You’re going to be talking to yourself about the breath and using perceptions—images you hold in mind about where the breath comes in; where it goes out; where you are focused in the body. Those are perceptions for the sake of giving rise to feelings of well- being and ease. As you get the mind to settle down, you find that other …
- Bare Attention… by beginning to see the difference between cause and effect, skillful and unskillful, by focusing on the actions of his own mind. This means that to develop appropriate attention in our own practice we’ve got to look in our own minds for what’s skillful and what’s not. That’s the gauge for everything in the practice. This is why the Buddha …
- The Buddha’s Standards or Yours?… Or maybe I shouldn’t hold onto that particular preference in this particular circumstance.” This is probably one of the reasons why the Buddha focuses on suffering, because it’s only when you see yourself creating suffering that you’re willing to change your ways. Otherwise, you just keep banging your head and complaining about the wall being in the way, without thinking, “Maybe …
- The Four Precepts… That gets you more and more focused inside, which is where the real issue lies. If you’re going to find a pleasure that’s true, lasting, and reliable, you’ve got to look inside. The restraints you place on the way you look for pleasures outside help maintain that focus. Purity of livelihood reminds you that you’ve got to consider the consequences …
- Asalha Puja… Right view, which was part of the path, was focused on the question of how to understand suffering. In other words—why is it that we suffer? Where is the cause? Then he set forth four noble truths. This is the right view of the path. He said there are four noble truths. What’s noble about the truths? It’s not that suffering …
- Deconstructing Suffering… a good place here in the present moment. Right concentration is a creation. It’s made out of directed thought and evaluation, which count as sankharas, or fabrications of the mind. Focused on the breath—which is a bodily fabrication—you’re dealing with perceptions and feelings, which are mental fabrications. What you’re doing is taking this process of fabrication and turning it …
- Controlling… You get more and more focused on the sensation of the breath, not as the air coming in from outside or even energy coming in from outside. After a while, the energy in the body gets full, and you’re more taken with the fact that you can sense the energy originating inside. So you hold that perception in mind. That allows the breath …
- Pain & Patience… The Buddha was unique in his time in that he focused on the question of pain, suffering, stress—that’s what the word *dukkha *is—as the main issue in his teaching. And it’s interesting that he never tried to define it. He didn’t try to pin it down. You see some of the commentaries where they try to define dukkha based …
- Precept Meditation… To begin with, it focuses your attention on your intentions, because you can break a precept only intentionally. This forces you to ask yourself, “What are your intentions? Why do you act? What’s the motive behind your actions and your choices?” When you’re forced to focus on these questions, you realize that one of the few intentions really worth sticking with all …
- One Thing Clear Through… The Buddha focused on the gratitude we owe our parents — that the good they’ve done for us is something of value. We really are in their debt. All that your mother went through just to give birth to you: Think about that. In Thailand it’s traditional for there to be a chant on this topic before an ordination. They hire somebody to …
- Greed & Distress with Reference to the World… Wrong concentration is when you get focused on sensual desire or ill will or sloth or anxiety or your doubts, and you just keep at those thoughts. You get obsessed with them. That is a kind of concentration, but it’s wrong. Any mindfulness that would keep those issues in mind is wrong mindfulness. Right mindfulness is safe. And although it may not seem …
- Intelligent Effort… use your imagination to give rise to skillful qualities, to create the mind state that wants to practice and finds it easy to settle down. The formula for right mindfulness is: focused on the body in and of itself—or feelings or mind states in and of themselves—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. It’s good to know, to …
- The Bureaucracy of the Defilements… Instead of focusing outside all the time, get it to fully inhabit your body. That way, all the little back corridors and basements in this bureaucracy you’ve got here become opened to your conscious awareness. All of the kamma that you’ve been creating in a semiconscious way becomes a lot more conscious—and your ability to bring consciousness and discernment to these …
- Bursting Bubbles… You can use the power of the mind to do this, just focusing on whichever element is weakest. You can strengthen it. In other words, when the weather is feeling hot outside, you can focus on the water in the body, and it cools you down. There are cool sensations someplace in the body, and you focus on those. You’re trying to make …
- Two Kinds of Middle… If you step back and looked at the lust, you’d realize you’re focusing only on a few things in a narrow narrative that includes a few details of the other person’s body—and your body—but the narrative excludes an awful lot. After all, there’s an awful lot of oppression that goes on even in a consensual sexual relationship, but …
- The Current News… As you sit here focusing on the breath, you can ask yourself: What would be the best way to breathe right now? Unlike the news outside, this isn’t anything you can discuss as a topic of conversation with your friends: “I had a really great breath last night.” But it is important for your internal well-being right now. That’s because the …
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