Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Persuasion
     … It’s important that you focus on the long term. Have a very live sense that, yes, it’s going to be you down the line who’s going to suffer from the unskillful things you do now. But there’s also you down the line who will benefit from the skillful things you do. Now, the problem is that your old powers of … 
  3. Pushing the Three Characteristics
     … A good way of testing the principle of stress is to see how much ease you can get as you focus the mind. And the way of testing the principle of not-self is to see how much control you can exert over the breath and the mind. The Buddha often brings up the issue of control as a central part of your sense … 
  4. Friends with the Breath, Friends with the Buddha
     … Its focus is on what you’re doing. Be very clear about that. Then ask yourself: Are the results the results you want? If they’re not, what can you change? Give the teachings a serious try. They’re not all that mysterious. They’re very straightforward, simply that sometimes they ask you to stretch your boundaries, to push the envelope about what you … 
  5. May You Forever Be Well
     … What is that grounding deep inside the ground? Part of it is a mind that can focus inside and not get shaken by things outside. So whatever skills you’ve learned as you sit here and meditate, try to figure out which ones you can take with you as you go through the day. And as for the skills that require that you sit … 
  6. A Passion for the Path
     … Then you want to develop the right resolve that goes along with it, the resolve that makes up the mind to focus on a happiness that doesn’t involve sensuality, doesn’t involve harm to anybody. Where are you going to find that? Well, in concentration. And all the other factors of the path contribute to this. Right effort tries to generate the desire … 
  7. Working Ourselves Free
     … And these are the skillful qualities you want to focus on: your alertness, your mindfulness, your concentration, and your discernment. Underlying all this is a sense of heedfulness, that what you’re doing is really important. As soon as you’re the least bit careless, all kinds of things can come crawling up out of the cracks in your mind. So it’s not … 
  8. Free Like a Wild Deer
     … The good things of the mind come when you pare down your concern for material things, you pare down your concern for the world outside and your position in the world outside, and you focus more on what good qualities you can develop. Sometimes you develop these qualities in the context of society at large, and sometimes you develop them when you’re out … 
  9. Immediate Knowledge
     … So the beginning point for certainty lies right here as you focus on the breath, as you begin to explore the breath. Try not to let your thoughts wander too far away from here, because when they wander away, they wander into uncertainty. Try to familiarize yourself with this spot right here. This is where the mind and the body meet: right at the … 
  10. Freedom Through Painful Practice
     … After all, as you practice, even though you may be listening to a Dhamma talk or living with a teacher, still the teacher can’t get into your head and say, “Okay, do this, focus there.” If you’re lucky to have a teacher who has the ability to read your mind, that’s one thing. But even then, the teacher’s not going … 
  11. Seclusion
     … Just what does it feel like to be in the body right now? Focus on that. Be mindful. Be alert. And develop a quality called ardency, that you really stick with it. There’s work to do here. As you meditate, you’re working in a sense of ease, in a sense of seclusion, but it’s still work. The work here is being … 
  12. No Happiness Other than Peace
     … The things you focus on have to change, which means there’s no more pleasure in being there, so the mind has to change to keep staying happy. But again, things have to change in a very, very particular way for the mind to be content with the change. And all too often the change doesn’t go the way we want it to … 
  13. Patience & Hope
     … It makes it a lot easier to live with the things you can’t change, and focus on the ones you can. You could make a case that the Buddha’s reflections on kamma are very un-American, if we define “American” as being in line with the Declaration of Independence. There’s no creator, there are no rights, and we’re not born … 
  14. Two Kinds of Cross-Questioning
     … We focus on the breath, learn to be sensitive to when it’s long, when it’s short, and how it feels when it’s long and it’s short, to see which feels better. Then you can try working with deep and shallow, heavy or light, focusing the breath energy in different parts of the body. There’s lots to play with here … 
  15. The Pleasure of the Middle Way
    Focus on the breath. Experiment with the breath to see what kind of breathing is comfortable right now. Sometimes it’s short breathing, sometimes it’s long, deep, shallow, heavy, light. It’s often good to begin with some long, deep in-and-out breaths just to emphasize the feeling of breathing in the body. And as long as long breathing feels good, you … 
  16. Elemental Normalcy
     … You don’t focus on the bad things that are happening around you; you focus on the things that you have some control over that you can make pleasant. This way, it’s not simply a matter of bearing up, bearing up, bearing up against something that’s difficult. You’re got some friends inside. And when we say that you can bring this … 
  17. A Wealthy Memory
     … Knowing how to focus on the breath, keeping the breath comfortable in the midst of different circumstances, and reminding yourself that it’s important to do that: These are all forms of wealth. So is the realization that your mind is a lot more likely to think of the right thing to do or say when it’s inhabiting a comfortable body. When your … 
  18. Progress & Regress
     … So remember, it’s not just a question of technique—what you do with the breath, where you focus on this, that, and the other thing—it’s also a question of your attitude toward the technique, your attitude toward success and failure, mistakes and the good times and the bad times. Remember that there’s nobody who’s hopeless. Even in the case … 
  19. Defilements with Their Bambi Eyes
     … So before you focus on the breath, it’s always good to think about why you want to get out of your thinking, particularly sensual thoughts. Concentration requires that you be secluded, as the Buddha said, from sensual thoughts. In other words, your mind is not totally devoid of them, but at the moment, you’re not going to be getting engaged with them … 
  20. Self-Knowledge
     … So that’s the issue you want to focus on. Whatever habits you have, look for where they’re unskillful and see what you can do to change them. That’s what self-knowledge is all about: seeing where you are and getting a sense of the possibilities of where you can go in causing less suffering, less harm, through your thoughts, your words … 
  21. Training Your Minds
     … If you followed a particular line of thought, where would it lead you? Do you really want to identify with that? Another way to deal with these things is to focus on a meditation topic you find interesting. One of the reasons I liked the Ajaan Lee method was because it made the breath interesting. Prior to that, the breath was just in out … 
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