Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. The Dhamma Protects
     … All too often we’re focusing on the suffering caused by other people, other things, so we’re ignorant of what we’re doing. This is why the patience and the equanimity are needed, so that you can step back from what you’re usually doing to see that it’s optional. You don’t have to harm yourself in that way. This is … 
  3. The Four Biases
     … So this exercise we’re doing here, focusing on the breath, getting the breath to be comfortable, letting that comfortable breath sensation spread throughout the body, bringing all the different strands of the breath energy in the body into alignment: It’s a gift not only to ourselves, but also to the people around us. It’s our protection. They talk about taking refuge … 
  4. A Complete Training
     … The first was all about the pleasures of samsara, and the other was focused on the drawbacks of samsara. They seemed to be heading in different directions. But as you start actually practicing the Dhamma, you find that the two go together. You’re trying to understand your mind. The best way to understand the mind is to realize it’s not just mind … 
  5. Imagine
     … We’re not focusing just on in, out, in, out. It’s not just the air coming in and out of the nose. It’s the whole energy flow in the body. That’s something you can inhabit. That’s something you can make really, really comfortable. Really riveting. When the breath gets really full, it fills up the different energy channels that are … 
  6. Feeding on the Breath
     … In the same way, as you meditate, you get a sense of ease from staying focused on the breath and then you knead it through the body. So you have to figure out: Where are you going to get the sense of ease? Where are you going to get the rapture that’s supposed to go along with it? And then how do you … 
  7. A Thread into Awareness
     … You focus on the breath because the act of focusing on the breath is what causes that sense of fullness to be there. Don’t get the cause and the effect mixed up. Eventually, that fullness will begin to fade because the energy channels in the body get more and more connected. You finally get to the point when everything settles down and is … 
  8. Virtue Fosters Concentration
     … If you go around gathering up images of things you like to look at, or hearing about things that you hate to hear about, focusing on what’s attractive about other people or what’s really disturbing or upsetting about other people’s behavior: If you gather that up all through the day, it’s going to be sitting here waiting for you as … 
  9. The Lotus in the Mud
     … So use the concentration to get the mind in a position where it’s willing to look at its own drawbacks, instead of focusing on things outside. Ajaan Maha Boowa makes a comment about how we have a tendency, if there’s mud in our minds, to sling it around on other people: “There’s something wrong with this person or that person, the … 
  10. Freedom Undefined
     … This is why the Buddha focused his four noble truths on precisely this question, because that’s what the four truths are: an issue of skillful action, desirable result, unskillful action, undesirable result. They’re a way of sorting those issues out. As for the other questions — concerning the world, the oneness or plurality of the universe, the existence of a self, the nature … 
  11. Purity Comes Through Discernment
     … You need to understand it at least to some extent, so that it can stay focused on one topic without getting duped by its normal tendency to wander off. Once the mind gets more solidly concentrated, more solidly centered like this, then the tranquility gets greater, and the opportunity for gaining any insight gets sharper. The less you stir up the water of the … 
  12. Goodwill First & Last
     … It starts with his own narratives, moves to the larger picture, and then focuses in on the present moment. This is what we have to do as we settle down to meditate. You remind yourself that you’re here for the sake of goodwill, for the sake of true happiness. And you realize you’re not the only one out there who has to … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Technique & Attitudes
     … When there’s a sense of ease or comfort in the breath, think of it spreading out from the spot where you’re focused. You don’t have to leave the spot, just think of the boundary around that spot opening up and letting all the ease, relaxation that you can feel with the breath spread out to whatever part of the body it … 
  15. Dhamma Books & the Actuality
     … That’s the actual energy you’re focusing on. And you want to notice how it relates to different parts of the body. When you’re breathing in, which parts of the body tend to be overworked – the parts that are doing the breathing for somebody else in the body? Give them a chance to have a little breath energy of their own. To … 
  16. Analyzing Anger
     … So as you’re focusing on the breath and it seems to be far away from the big issues of life, remember, you’re learning to take things apart so that you can see how a lot of the big issues in life come down at these little tiny building blocks. If you can see the building blocks and see that you don’t … 
  17. What You Can’t Change, What You Can
     … So as you’re focusing on the breath, try to see what lessons you can learn about change and not-change; the stress you can’t do anything about and stress you can do something about. When you’re sitting here breathing, how much awareness do you actually bring to the breathing process? Is it clear? And when you breathe in and breathe out … 
  18. Between You and Your Eyes
     … Out attention is mainly focused someplace else—on our plans for the future, issues from the past—so that what’s immediately present is simply used as a means to something else. As a result, the important issues in life—the things that are immediately present to our awareness, the things we’re doing right now—we don’t really comprehend. Even something as … 
  19. Hold onto the Breath
     … We’re focusing on where the real problem is, which is inside, that we’re creating suffering, and we’re trying to solve it. It’s a message we don’t like to hear—that we’re the ones causing our suffering—but again, the Buddha offers us the sense of well-being that comes from being generous, a sense of well-being that … 
  20. Recollection of Hell
     … the most skillful path to make out of these potentials. The Buddha says the most skillful thing we can fabricate is the noble eightfold path, like we’re doing right now: focusing on the breath. That’s a form, one of the elements of form. You direct your thoughts to the breath and evaluate the breath: That’s a type of fabrication. You hold … 
  21. Strength of Mind
     … Sometimes, when we’re focusing on the breath and we’re told to stay with the in-breath and stay with the out-breath, we try to squeeze it a little bit at the end of the in-breath and a little bit at the end of the out-breath to mark it clearly. But that makes it uncomfortable. Think of the in-breath … 
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