Search results for: "Attention"

  1. Page 73
  2. The Limits of Old Kamma
    Focus your attention on the breath and see how it feels. Where do you notice it in the body first? Where does it seem most prominent? You might notice the passage of the air through the nostrils, the rise and fall of the chest, the expansion of the rib cage: There are lots of different places in the body where you can sense the … 
  3. More than a Sliver of Mindfulness
     … Seeing this context, you pay more attention to one of the lists inside the description of right mindfulness. In this, the Buddha talks about the different kinds of feelings. This is relevant to right concentration, because the stages of right concentration center on their feeling tones. When you read the list of feelings under right mindfulness, it seems as if you’re just aware … 
  4. Between Either & Or
     … You engage in them only when you’re confident that your intention is skillful, when you have to speak harshly with somebody to get that person’s attention, when you have to warn people about someone who could take advantage of them, or when you have to engage in friendly chatter to keep the group going smoothly. But those are areas where you have … 
  5. Working Hypotheses
     … Even something as simple as deciding what to focus on, where to put your attention, what to ignore: There’s an intentional element there. Which means we’re always making choices. We’re always trying to decide which choice is the best choice, and there may be a lot of uncertainty around it, but that’s the basic nature of a choice. You choose … 
  6. Significance
     … You want to be attentive while giving it, and have an attitude of respect and sympathy for the recipient. Your motivation might start at the lowest level: “I’ll get this gift back some day; or by being generous, I’ll get other people to like me.” But then, from there, the motivation can rise to higher levels: “It doesn’t seem right that … 
  7. A Leap of the Heart
     … Something else grabs your attention, you totally forget what the original issue was, and you’re off running with something else. So you look for that moment of disinterest when those things stop. Seeing the origination and passing away of these things gives you an insight that’s really important: that they are separate from you. If something really were you, you wouldn’t … 
  8. A Handful of Leaves
     … In the same way, if you want to understand your mind, you have to be in a position where you can set up your attention right where there’s suffering and yet not get scared off by it. This is why we use the breath and develop the breath so that it gives rise to a sense of well-being in the present moment … 
  9. Who Are You Trying to Please?
     … You’re not paying any attention to the ridges and hollows. He says it’s like taking an animal skin and stretching it out with a hundred pegs so that it’s totally flat and smooth. No more wrinkles. You can hold earth in mind that way. As you can settle in, as he says, to enjoy and indulge in that perception, you can … 
  10. Why the Breath
     … The whole question of intention and attention, the Buddha points out, is lying at the basis of so much of our suffering. It’s right here in our actions. What things do we attend to? How do we look at things, and then how do we make up our minds to do things? And when we make up our minds to do things, what … 
  11. Four Noble Questions
     … He’s saying that suffering is the problem that requires our primary attention. Many of us will agree with him there, but then he goes on to analyze the problem in ways that many of us might not agree with right off the bat. It’s only when we put his approach into practice that we begin to see how right it is: that … 
  12. Your Highest Aspiration
     … And what it comes down to, as the Buddha says, is inappropriate attention, not seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. Now, this doesn’t mean just not knowing about the four noble truths. It means not really looking at our experience in terms of those truths, in terms of those categories, and not developing the skills based on those categories. The … 
  13. Ingenuity
     … Give all your attention to that cool sensation, and let everything else go. Then think of the coolness spreading. When you’re feeling dizzy and faint, focus on the solidity of the body. Where do you feel solid sensations? The heavy sensations? Focus there. This is useful not only when you’re feeling dizzy or lightheaded. I’ve known people who tend to be … 
  14. The Wisdom of Self-regulation
     … There are relative levels of skill in both cases, because sometimes the thoughts that tell you to stay with the breath shout at you, and they shout at you for a good reason because your mind is going to slip off into something really unskillful if you don’t pay careful attention. At other times they shout at you in a way that gets … 
  15. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … So Ajaan Mun turned his attention to helping the nun. One afternoon, the nuns came for some instruction. He asked them if they were observing their eight precepts; they were. Then he told a story of Lady Visakha seeing groups of people observing the eight precepts and she wanted to know why. So she asked a group of old people, “Why are you observing … 
  16. Right View
     … The Buddha basically said that “there is suffering.” It’s one of four things you’re going to encounter in life that you should pay attention to. You could argue with the idea that life is suffering, but you can’t argue with the idea that there is suffering. You see it all around you. You see it inside you as well. The Buddha … 
  17. The Fabrication of Pain
     … Focus your attention there for the time being and work with the breath in that area. Then, as the cocoon of energy begins to settle down and smooth out, you can go back to the body and you’ll find that there are some spots where you can make a beachhead. In other words, your landing force comes into the body and it’s … 
  18. Mindfulness of Death
     … So mindfulness of death is a guardian meditation in the sense that it focuses our attention right here, right now, and it encourages us to do the work that needs to be done right here, right now. It’s interesting that, in modern Buddhism, the present moment is seen as an end in itself: We practice to get into the present moment, then to … 
  19. Why Train the Mind
     … The whole reason why the mind creates pain for itself, creates suffering for itself, is because it’s not paying attention to what it’s doing right here and now. You want to get clearer and clearer about what you’re actually doing here in the present moment. For that, the first thing, of course, is to get focused here. Just be careful not … 
  20. Stepping Out of Yourself
     … Which parts of the body are very sensitive to the breathing process, in the sense that when you breathe in it feels good right there? Focus your attention there. See if you can maintain that sense of your sensitivity being satisfied. It’s an important part of the concentration to have a sensation that you focus on that feels really good: a place where … 
  21. The Power of Truth
     … where is the stress right now, what’s causing the stress? This called appropriate attention—seeing things in these terms—and this is the internal quality the Buddha said is most important in gaining awakening. This is how you gain insight, looking at what you’re doing, because that’s what insight is supposed to get you focused on: what you’re doing that … 
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