Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. Patient & Inquisitive
     … That’s where you use your ingenuity.” That’s where your curiosity has to be focused—because the suffering is in the details—and the solution is in the details. The purpose of the Dhamma as the Buddha set it out is to point your attention toward the right spots, and to get you to start asking the right questions. A famous author once … 
  3. The Buddha’s Metaphysics
     … He focused on the metaphysical issues that you can actually put into use and that can actually be known through the meditation. It’s hard to imagine what kind of experience you have in meditation that would let you know whether things are empty or not, whether you have a permanent self or no permanent self, or no self at all, or how you … 
  4. Strength from Within
     … This means not focusing on the values of the people around you. One of the values of our society is the desire to please people. There’s a tendency nowadays for people to think that Buddhism is all about adapting itself. Well, that comes from the fact that most of us have learned about Buddhism in school. And in schools what can they talk … 
  5. Hold a Mirror to Your Mind
     … to those results?” He found that that question gave a more useful answer, because not only did it give insight into the pattern of action in shaping the world, but also focused in on, “What am I doing that’s causing suffering?” That’s the beginning of the four noble truths. It’s not just actions from the past, it’s actions in the … 
  6. Learning How to Learn
     … With desire, of course, the desire has to be focused on the results—what do you want out of this? But then, noting what results you want, the next question is, how do you get there? You have to turn around and look at the means: “What do I do to get to where I want to go?” This reminds you that concentration is … 
  7. Cause & Effect
     … So this simple practice of focusing on the breath, making it comfortable, and once it’s comfortable allowing it to spread throughout the body, so that that sense of comfort saturates the body: It’s basic instruction in cause and effect. And it’s pursuing this practice to ever subtler levels of refinement that leads to the kind of insight that we want. Insight … 
  8. The Not-Self Discourse
     … In the first part of the sermon, he focused on how none of the aggregates lie totally under your control. You can’t have them always be the way you want them to be. Now, you can control them to some extent, which is why we can turn them into the path. But even with concentration, where you’ve got the aggregates as solid … 
  9. Off to a Good Start
     … If the pain gets really bad and you can’t avoid focusing on it, tell yourself, “Okay, I’ll sit with this for five minutes. Then I’ll change positions.” The five minutes is so that you can be mindful and alert, and not give in to your pains all the time. You also realize that the pain is not killing you. We haven … 
  10. Cooking the Mind
     … You’re going to be focusing on the expectations. Results don’t come from expectations. They come from very ordinary things—being aware of the breath; trying to be aware of the breath as continually as you can—though Ajaan Sao didn’t add even those explanations. If people asked, “What should I expect?” he’d just say, “Don’t ask. Just do it … 
  11. The Teacher Inside
     … Where are you focusing? Is this a good place to focus? If not, you can move. Be very deliberate in these steps, because when things go well in the meditation, you want to be able to remember what you did. If you’re just mucking around in the present moment and happen to hit something good, you can’t remember how you got there … 
  12. Basic Wisdom
     … You notice that some ways of focusing on the breath get better results than others. Or the way you relate to your object: In the beginning, you have to think about it again and again and again and keep reminding yourself to come back, evaluating it until it becomes comfortable. But once it gets comfortable enough, you don’t have to do that activity … 
  13. Sober Up
    Sober Up January 30, 2011 In English, when we talk about getting the mind to stay focused on something, we talk about its “settling down.” And in one way that’s right. The mind tends to be flying around all over the place. If it can focus on one object, it’s like a flock of birds that finally settle down on one spot … 
  14. The Dhamma Bucket List
     … I heard of a woman general in the army here in the States who made a habit everyday of making a list of the ten most important things that needed to be done that day, and then crossing through everything except one and two, and focusing on those. Now, maybe you can’t make a list of what your unskillful habits are, but try … 
  15. No Mistakes Are Fatal
     … a focused state of mind. Now, “simple” doesn’t mean “easy.” As I said, there are all these other currents going on in the mind. But as you keep coming back, coming back, you’re coming back to these building blocks on a simple level. Keep it basic, but be very observant. One of the reasons things don’t stay basic in the mind … 
  16. In Your Right Mind at Death
     … So she focused on the space element and she didn’t feel threatened by the fire in the house at all. Then, when she later came back to the body, everything had settled back down to normal. And she learned an important lesson: If you can access space in your meditation, you don’t feel so threatened when the body pushes you out, and … 
  17. How to Look, How to Listen
     … I’m focusing on the wrong perceptions,” that’s when you learn. In other words, you look at how you’re fabricating things in an unskillful way, because this is how dependent co-arising gets set into motion. You’re fabricating in ignorance. You’re putting together your experience, right here, right now, and you’re hardly even aware of how you’re doing … 
  18. Making a Difference
     … You’re really focused on this. You pay attention. When you’re with the breath, you try to be as sensitive as possible to how the breathing feels. The more sensitive you are to detect the slightest little bit of tension or tightness and work through it, then the more comfortable the breath becomes, the more absorbing it becomes. It feels really good just … 
  19. Feeding Instructions
     … In fact, as the Buddha said, often our clingings and cravings aren’t focused on where we think they are. You may think you love the person, but actually you love the feelings, you love the perceptions, the thought constructs that surround your sense of that person. You see this especially when the relationship changes. Say, the person is beginning to suffer from dementia … 
  20. True Friends
     … Start with a couple of good long, deep in-and-out breaths, and notice where you feel the breathing in the body, because that’s what we’re focusing on: the rise and fall of the abdomen, the rise and fall of the chest, anyplace in the body where you can tell that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going … 
  21. Genuine Goodness
     … What kind of breathing feels best? In focusing on the breath, you’re also learning about the mind. As Ajaan Lee says, the breath is like a mirror for the mind. When you put the breath in good shape, it requires that the mind be in good shape as well. You’re putting the mind in good shape because you’re learning to be … 
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