Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 87
  2. Respect for the Training
     … So try to focus on what you need to do in order to respect the training, what the training requires of you, and be willing to learn the lessons it’s going to teach you. Often there are lessons you don’t like to learn, there are lessons you didn’t expect you had to learn, but they’re there and they’re good … 
  3. Facing Danger & Hardship
     … So it goes beyond whatever those dangers were as long as you don’t focus on the dangers, making a big issue out of them and letting the state of your mind fall because of them. So to recollect the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha is basically to take on a fighter’s attitude—the attitude of a warrior. And a warrior wants … 
  4. A Full Life
     … The Buddha says also to delight in seclusion—the opportunity you have to focus direct attention on your mind with a minimum of distractions. That, too, is part of the skill of a good life. Then there’s the meaningful life: The last two objects of delight, the Buddha said, are delighting in the unafflicted and delighting in non-objectification. These are two names … 
  5. Helping Others
     … and say, “I don’t have any time to practice at all.” They’d respond, “Well, do you have time to breathe?” “Yes.” “Okay, then you’ve got time to practice. Focus on your breath when you can.” Remember what the Buddha had to say on the topic: As you do your practice, you’re like an acrobat who can maintain his or her … 
  6. The Flood of Views
     … We need to focus on the views that will get us across: such as the view that skillful actions need to be developed, that unskillful actions need to be abandoned. Suffering and stress should be comprehended, their cause should be abandoned, their cessation should be realized, and the path to their cessation should be developed. Those are the views that get us across. As … 
  7. A Clear Sense of Priorities
     … It’s for people who want to stop and evaluate their lives, to see what really is important and what’s not—and to focus more and more of their time on the areas that really are important, that really deserve top priority. When you begin to ask those questions, you find that the practice starts making deeper inroads in the mind and really … 
  8. Breathaholic
     … But to get the mind settled down, you focus your attention completely on the breath to begin with. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “You have to be crazy about meditation if you want to do it well.” You really have to be addicted to it; you want to cling to it for a while. They say that alcoholics, when they walk into a … 
  9. A Good Example for the World
     … We can either make that a source of suffering or we can decide that we have to accept that fact and then focus on what we can accomplish. After all, the Buddha couldn’t teach everybody. There were lots of people who would listen to him and didn’t agree and went off their own way. But he did something really remarkable. Instead of … 
  10. Giving Meaning to Life
     … They clear away all the distractions and focus on what’s really important. And it’s good that they do that, but it’s sad that they had to wait for a death sentence before they do. We have to remember we are all here with a death sentence. It’s simply that we don’t have the days marked out for us, how … 
  11. Equanimity Isn’t Nibbana
     … Our present decisions, what we’re going to do with the mind, what we’re going to focus on, how we develop it: That’s the kamma we witness as we meditate. So you want to focus on doing things that help you understand what’s going on in the mind right now. What is this process of intention? How does the mind create … 
  12. Four Mountains Moving In
     … The media will divert our focus other places, but we have to hold firm in our conviction that what we do is important, what we do is going to make the difference between danger and lack of danger. Because it is possible to get to the end of danger, this interconnectedness of ours. Sometimes we call it inner-being, but it’s basically inter … 
  13. Ready to Evacuate
     … We focus on what we’re doing right now and hold on there. And that’s an important point. Ajaan Suwat liked to emphasize this a lot. The Buddha says that so many things are not-self, not-self, not-self, but your actions are your own. Or as the passage from the Canon says, “We’re the owners of our actions.” Those are … 
  14. A Position of Strength
     … Where in the body does it feel best to focus? It might be right between the eyes, in the forehead, at the palate—“breath” here meaning not just the air coming in and out of the lungs, but the whole energy flow in the body. It could be in the middle of the chest or right over the navel—any spot in the body … 
  15. Mindfulness
     … keeping in mind what you know about what’s skillful and what’s not, and reminding yourself that you really do want to focus on pursuing the skillful path and avoiding the unskillful one at all costs. This is why mindfulness and discernment usually go together. In fact, in Thai they have a term, sati-pañña, mindfulness-discernment, which is their word for intelligence … 
  16. Determined on Goodwill
     … What we have to learn how to do is bring that same focus to a happiness that’s good for us and good for others. So when we talk about basing our determination on discernment, we have to include that quality of goodwill as well. We open our minds to the possibility that there may be opportunities in our lives that we hadn’t … 
  17. In Control
     … As we’re living here at the monastery, we don’t have too many tasks, so we can focus our attention on each task as we’re doing it as a way of developing our mindfulness and alertness. But in the outside world often you have so many tasks that you have to decide which ones are worth doing well and which ones are … 
  18. Refuge in the Dhamma
     … In other words, developing your powers of memory so that they’re useful on the path, providing you with the right framework for looking at states of mind, remembering how to be alert to what you’re doing, and how to focus your ardency to stop suffering. That way, when you get in a bad state of mind—and it seems to settle in … 
  19. When Things Seem Dark
     … And the best way to develop those qualities is to focus not on how difficult things are, but on where your strengths are. And to look at things in a way that allows you to maintain your hope. So take an inventory of your strengths. That’ll differ for each of us. But then look at the images you hold in mind. There’s … 
  20. Rightly Directed
     … It gives you a good focus. So all these qualities are strengths. The virtue comes under conviction, together with persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. This is what keeps you strong in doing good. And if you can maintain that strength all the way through death, then a good destination can be hoped for. It all depends on what you’re doing right here, right … 
  21. When Your Will Is Ill
     … You have to remember—for the sake of training your mind, for clearing up your own discernment—that you need to focus on the areas where you’re doing something wrong right now and you need to do something about it right now. Because it’s in the actions themselves: Whether they’re skillful or unskillful is what makes us happy or unhappy. We … 
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