Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 84
  2. The Saints Don’t Grieve
    The Saints Don’t Grieve January 28, 2005 One of the most difficult but important principles in the practice is what the Buddha called, “Learning to see renunciation as freedom.” For most of us renunciation seems to be a restriction — as when you’re getting the mind to focus on the breath. Before you make up your mind to do that, the mind doesn … 
  3. Directly & Indirectly to the Breath
     … And then rearrange your perceptions around that, so if it feels like the breath begins in the navel, okay, focus on its beginning in the navel. You don’t have to think about the air coming in and out of the nose. Or if it feels like it’s coming from around the area of the heart, think that breath energy is flowing from … 
  4. Noble Happiness
     … for the mind, though, there’s a question: Does it have to feed or can it be independent? So we look inside to see. We start out with something really basic. Focus on the breath. Notice when the breath is coming in; notice when it’s coming out. Think about the breath. Keep the breath in mind. That’s mindfulness. And then be alert … 
  5. Expanding Your Awareness
     … When you focus on looking at things in such way as to give rise to lust or anger or greed, you narrow your awareness down to very small details, the little things that excite lust, the little things that provoke your anger. You lose sight of the larger picture. Expanding your awareness helps to keep that larger picture in mind. At the same time … 
  6. Why We Train the Mind
     … Where does it feel good? Focus on that and see if you can stay there. Ardency is what helps keep you there. Ardency is another term for right effort. Right effort has many aspects. As the Buddha said, it starts by generating desire to do away with unskillful mental qualities and generating desire to develop skillful ones. The quality of desire there is important … 
  7. Appropriate Attention
     … In the Forest Tradition, they focus a lot on perception, because the labels we apply to things really color everything else in the mind. So you might want to start with that. See if there’s some way that you can develop dispassion for the things you’re clinging to. So this principle of appropriate attention starts with the ordinary, everyday issue of skillful … 
  8. It’s up to You
     … Or you can focus on the perception of breath. Think of the breath energy spreading everywhere. Or think of the fact that everything all around you is earth. Just earth. You don’t have to think of its being trees or rocks or whatever. Just the earth property. Those perceptions of breath and earth have a lot less of disturbance than the perception of … 
  9. Ingenuity
     … This is one of the reasons why Ajaan Lee would focus on getting the spine cleared up as the first order of business. If energy does come up the spine, it doesn’t get blocked, it doesn’t get diverted off to one side or another. At the same time, you’ve got to keep that sense of the energy coming down through the … 
  10. Growing Up Inside
     … But the task here gives you some focus: how to get the mind to settle down, and step back from its thoughts. This is an important part of growing more mature. You see certain identities that you’ve been taking on, and you step back from them, and say No. A while back I was reading a book by a psychologist who had focused … 
  11. Wide-open Awareness
     … You don’t have to shut them off, but you don’t want to shift your focus to them, either. Keep your focus right here on the breath. You can choose any spot in the body where it’s easy to see that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. And try to maintain that spot with a sense … 
  12. How to Be Alone
     … They give you a good measuring stick for how things are going as you’re alone; they give you something specific to do, a task to focus on, so as to create a sense of purpose over time, and of wellbeing in the present moment by being with your breath. At the very least, you learn how to approach from the physical side whatever … 
  13. The Ennobling Path
     … We want to focus on this issue. This is where you focus: simply what you’ve got, right here right now, without adding anything, without taking anything away, just looking at things as they’re directly experienced. For most of us, we can stay here for a little while, but then our old habits kick in. We start creating this issue, start creating that … 
  14. The Inner Saboteur
     … At the very least for this hour, let’s really get together and focus our attention on trying to do something about the mind, learning how to bring it to its object, how to keep it there, and really paying attention to what’s actually going on in the mind.” These, you might call them traitors inside you, the parts of you that sabotage … 
  15. How to Use the Teaching on Kamma
     … That’s why we focus right here, right now. Also, the fact that things are not totally determined by the past is also why we focus right here, right now, because what we do right now can make a big difference. So for simply understanding what you’re doing while you’re doing it as you meditate, the teachings on karma are really important … 
  16. Look Around
     … Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about how when Ajaan Mun would see him getting a little bit too narrow in his focus. He was very proud of the fact that he was holding to the dhutanga practices, the various ascetic practices, when the monks around him were not. Ajaan Mun saw that holding to the practices was a good thing, but being proud about it … 
  17. Fear of Death
     … Some things carry over, but you have to focus your energies on the mind if you want to have good things to carry over. Otherwise the things you carry over are bad. This is why our effort here is aimed in two directions. One, if you can gain total release, this is the path to total release. Two, if you don’t gain total … 
  18. Truths That Are Noble
     … This was the focus of his teachings. As Ven. Sāriputta once said, just as all the footprints of all the legged animals in the world can be encompasses by the footprint of an elephant, in the same way, all true Dhammas are encompassed by the four noble truths. So when you know these truths, you know what’s important. Anything that was not related … 
  19. Selves with Skills
     … As the Buddha pointed out, we construct our experience of the present moment through the way we breathe, through the way we talk to ourselves, through the feelings we focus on, the perceptions we use—in other words, the mental labels and images we use to identify things. We use these processes, what he calls fabrications, to put together the raw material that comes … 
  20. Potentials for Awakening
     … One thing you can do as a little trick is to focus on your hands. As you breathe in, breathe out, think of your hands relaxing, every muscle in each hand. Nothing tenses up as you breathe in, and the muscles maintain a sense of sameness throughout the in-breath, throughout the out-breath. Everything’s relaxed. When the muscles relax like that, then … 
  21. Breath by Breath
     … Try to make the focus of the mind just right—in other words, not too heavy, not too light. If it’s too heavy, it’s like holding a chick in your hand and squeezing it so hard that it dies. If it’s too light, you’re holding the chick so loosely that it flies away. So try to figure out exactly how … 
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