Search results for: "Focusing"

  1. Page 74
  2. True Friends & False
     … A lot of traditional medicine in Asia focuses on the breath energy in the body as an important element in your health, which means that if you breathe in a way that’s good for the body, it’ll have all kinds of good effects. And it turns out that comfortable breathing—energizing and relaxing at the same time—is the kind of breath … 
  3. Intelligent Design
     … If the chant lasts for about four hours, three of those hours are focused on the nine months of pregnancy — the months of morning sickness, the months of something kicking in her stomach. And then there’s birth. They say that the most extreme pain that a human being can endure is the pain of giving birth. And it’s no fun for the … 
  4. An Exercise in Sensitivity
     … You get into what Ajaan Lee calls delusion concentration, where everything is very pleasant, very misty, but you’re not really sure where you are, what you’re focused on. It’s like someone who takes on a job, gets a paycheck, and then quits the job to enjoy the paycheck. It’s pleasant for a while, but then you’re hungry again, and … 
  5. Issues of Control
     … So you stay focused on the breath. Any other thoughts that would get in the way of the breath, you put them aside. And for the time being, thoughts of jhāna might count as thoughts related to the world because all too often you want to come out and say, “Well, I got this jhāna, I got that jhāna…” I noticed that when Ajaan … 
  6. Craving & Clinging
     … We’re focusing on other things. That’s basically what craving is—the mind going out after something else and not being very aware of itself. That’s why there’s ignorance in the craving. Then it lands on something. When it lands on something, the relationship is very complex. To stay, it has to cling. In other words, it has to keep going … 
  7. Helping Yourself by Helping Others
     … Sometimes Theravada is criticized for being focused solely on getting your mind in shape and not caring about others, but that’s not the case. From the Buddha’s point of view, there is no clear line between the goodness you do to your own mind and the goodness you do to others. They nurture one another. So try to develop goodness in both … 
  8. The Importance of Being Truthful
     … As when we’re sitting here right now focusing on the breath: You’ll find the mind wandering off. As soon as you catch the mind wandering off, you have a choice. Will you allow it to wander a little bit further to see what it can dig up, to overturn a few stones? Or are you going to get right back to the … 
  9. Conserving Your Strength
     … It’d be better to live your whole life focused on what’s important. This is why you should remind yourself of the normalcy of death. It’s all around. As Ajaan Lee says, it can hit you at any time. We can die so easily. A little piece of blood clot starts wandering around your body, gets lodged in your heart, and that … 
  10. Doing Favors & Making Merit
     … It’s interesting that when the Buddha introduced the topic of karma, the two areas he focused on were generosity and debts of gratitude. It’s because we have freedom of choice that generosity means something. If we had no freedom, the fact that you gave something to someone else would have been forced on you by the stars or whatever influences are coming … 
  11. We’re All Learning the Ropes
     … Right now we’re focused on our breath, we’re working on the inner work, but it’s good to keep in mind some of the outer things we do. As the Buddha said, there’s no way you’re going to get into right concentration if you’re stingy, there’s no way you’re going to get into any of the noble … 
  12. Strength of Mindfulness
     … Of the various qualities of the path, the Buddha focuses on mindfulness as your refuge so that all the other things you’ve learned about the path will be there at your fingertips. Otherwise, the things you’ve learned wash away, wash away, and they serve no purpose. But if you can store them away in the drawers of the mind and keep yourself … 
  13. Identifying Weeds
     … If you’re feeling irritated and want to find a good reason to get angry, be careful to look for the good side of whatever you’re focused on. In other words, try to be a person with two eyes, not just one. When you can begin to read your mind while your eyes are open, it gets a lot easier to read it … 
  14. Feelings Not of the Flesh
    Feelings Not of the Flesh August 23, 2012 When the Buddha talks about focusing on feelings as a frame of reference, he talks about two main kinds: what he calls feelings of the flesh and feelings not of the flesh. The distinction doesn’t have to do with the difference between physical and mental feelings. Feelings of the flesh can be physical or mental … 
  15. Free for the Time Being
     … You want a center at some point in the body to keep you focused, but at the same time you want to enlarge your range of awareness so that it fills the whole body. If there are parts of the body that you’re not consciously occupying right now, other things can slip in, or other things can hide out. You don’t want … 
  16. The Pleasure of Concentration
     … So I focused on the area immediately around it and treated it very gently. In cases like this, you don’t go barging in to straighten things out. You listen and then try things out very gently. And you listen again. This is in line with the Buddha’s general principle for how the Dhamma is nourished. He says you commit yourself to it … 
  17. Cleanliness is Next to Mindfulness
     … learning how to be focused on that activity, learning to be strict with the mind when it starts wandering off. That way the mind is right there; you learn how to keep it right there no matter what you’re doing. And when the time comes to sit down with your eyes closed, well, you’re right there. You don’t have to go … 
  18. Peace of Mind
     … And even though it may seem like a simple thing, being focused on the breath, still the qualities you develop around it are important. Just like going down to the gym: They ask you to lift some weights. What does it accomplish, lifting weights? It doesn’t generate electricity. It doesn’t do anything. It just goes up and down, but strength of the … 
  19. Beyond Sound-bitten Dhamma
     … Have some compassion for them.” So Ajaan Maha Boowa realized that he had to look at things in an all-around way—not just be focused on one thing at a time. I’ve told you the story about Ajaan Fuang talking to a young monk who was scheduled to disrobe. His parents and his fiancée had come to pick him up. They were … 
  20. Meditators at Work
     … In the Canon, when he talks about focusing on the present moment, it’s always in the context of death contemplation: that there’s work to be done, and you don’t know how much time you have, but you do know you have the present moment, so this is where you focus to do the work. And what is the work? As Ajaan … 
  21. The Breathing Game
     … If you want, you can use a meditation word to go along with the breathing to help keep you focused. A traditional one is *buddho. *It’s the title of the Buddha after he gained his awakening. The word means “awake.” Use bud- with the in-breath, dho with the out-. Buddho, buddho. No matter how many times you fall off the breath, just … 
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