Search results for: "Attention"
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- Breathing Easy… In other areas of life, we learn how to stay focused on something even though there are other things that seem to be clamoring for our attention. I remember when I was young, I’d be reading a book, and my mother would come in, and she wanted to talk, but I wanted to read my book. So I learned how to read the …
- The Buddha’s Questions… The asking of the questions is meant to open up your attention to an area where there’s been a gap, where there has been something missing in your knowledge. As you learn how to fill in that gap in your knowledge, then you can let go. This is how awakening comes. It comes through questioning, having a sense of these gaps—gaps in …
- Unskillful Habits… That’s because you’ve narrowed the range of your attention. Your mind has been tunneled, so you can see only one thing that seems the obvious thing to be done, the obvious thing to be said. That’s because you blocked off all your sense of shame, all your sense of concern for the results of your actions. So as you step back …
- Free from Buddha Nature… Directed thought is when you focus your attention on a particular topic to keep it there. Evaluation is checking to see: “How does this feel? Does this feel good? Does this feel right? Is this a comfortable place to stay? Is it an uncomfortable place to stay? How about my mind? Is it ready to settle down right now, or does it need a …
- Breath Meditation: The Third Tetrad… Where do feelings come from? You get some feelings from the way you breathe and pay attention to the breath. So if you find that the mind is feeling sluggish, depressed, or discouraged, what can you do to gladden it by the way you breathe to create good feelings and by the perceptions you hold in mind? In some cases, these perceptions might be …
- Sending Happiness… in line with the Dhamma? One of the monks who stayed with Ajaan Lee toward the end of his life noted that even though Ajaan Lee would focus a lot of attention on the breath, it wasn’t the only meditation method he taught. He would teach recollection of the Buddha, goodwill, the unattractiveness of the body, mindfulness of death—all kinds of topics …
- Right Next to Ignorance… One of the reasons why so much attention is given to understanding feelings of pain is because a lot of your inner conversation and your inner perceptions are going to hover around pain. Which means that there’s going to be ignorance hovering around them, too. This is one of the reasons why we focus right here, because all these things are right here …
- The Reality of Your Thoughts… We forget where the dots were, and we pay more attention to the lines or the threads that we use to connect them. But as the Buddha said, the seamstress here is craving, and how much can you trust your craving? If it’s blind craving, then the seamstress is blind and just sews whatever together, and you end up with all kinds of …
- The Role of Attachment… Look at the other things for which you might let this go, when you focus your attention on other issues when you go back home: What have you got? You’ve got straw; you’ve got flax. If you carry those things around, you’re crazy. The nature of the mind is that—as long as it’s not totally free—it’s got …
- Shoulds & Ideals… The important thing about ideals is that once you’ve chosen a good one and you understand it, and you understand how to get there, then you focus your attention on the steps: what you have to let go of, what you have to do. You read Ajaan Lee’s autobiography and you find that he would make vows many times. And it’s …
- When it’s Hard to Settle Down… What you see at any one moment are the seeds that are sprouting—and particularly, the ones that you’re watering with your own attention, your own interest in them, whether they’re good or bad. So the fact that something bad is sprouting right now doesn’t mean that everything in the field is bad. It’s simply the current crop. And how …
- Adjusting the Flame… There’s perception, there are feelings, there’s directed thought and evaluation, there are intentions, there are acts of attention, where you frame questions, look into things. Where you’re going to see all those factors most clearly is as you’re getting the mind to settle down. When the Buddha talks about dependent co-arising, it’s not something he just thought up …
- A Good Foundation… different spots in the body where you can focus your attention, different images of where the breath energy comes in the body when you breathe in, and how it flows through the body. Or you could change it around: Think about the fact that the breath energy actually originates inside. When Ajaan Lee talks about the resting spots of the breath, those are also …
- The Steps of Breath Meditation… You work at not moving your attention, at not letting it shrink. You work at not taking on other responsibilities. With time, though, the work becomes more natural, more second-nature. You feel more and more settled and at home. As the mind settles in, its usual nervous energy begins to dissolve. The body actually needs less and less oxygen, because the level of …
- Respect… Encourage yourself in doing it, stick with it, pay careful attention to what you’re doing. If things don’t work out, use your ingenuity to find other approaches. These are the basic principles that work in any skill, and they apply here, too. Notice when desire is helpful in the practice; notice when desire is not helpful, when it gets in the way …
- Be Bigger Than Your Pains… We have to make our mind larger than they are so they don’t consume all our attention. Think about other beings: They have their sufferings as well. They want happiness as well. So in one sense, we’re all in this together, and you have to think about how your sufferings fit in with the rest of the sufferings of the world. To …
- Change Your Perceptions… Ask the questions of the four noble truths: “Where is the suffering right now? What am I doing that’s causing the suffering, and how can I stop? How can I abandon that cause?” When you ask those questions, you bring appropriate attention to the breath, because the breath is one of the forms of fabrication that is influenced by ignorance, but it can …
- How to Be Happy… to take your desire for true happiness seriously, not in a grim way, but with a lot of attention and care.
- Timeless Practice… That’s where we focus our attention: on the path. It starts with right view and goes to right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. These are things we try to develop. In the course of developing them, we learn how to comprehend suffering and we learn how to abandon craving, so the focus is on the …
- Comprehending Suffering… Why is that? Sometimes it may be because you paid attention someplace else. Sometimes, though, it may be because you had a perception in mind, and the perception happened to pass away. Before you pick it up again, you might notice: There’s a sense of ease that wasn’t there when the perception was in place. What you’re trying to do here …
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