Search results for: "Focus"
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- Dwelling in Emptiness… Sometimes it means changing your focus. If your mind is not ready to settle down with the breath, what things do you have to think about first to get it in the proper mood where it’s willing to settle down? These are all parts of exploring stress, learning about that first noble truth. So even when the mind is not settling down, treat …
- Monologue on the Breath… So here we’re trying to focus both the directed thought and evaluation on one thing: on the breath. Just keep thinking about breath, breath, breath, and then notice when it’s coming in, notice when it’s going out, notice where you feel it, and notice what the feeling feels like. Is it warm or cool? Comfortable or not? If it’s not …
- The Limits of Interconnectedness… And as you die, as you go towards death, for focus is going to be forced more and more into this area right here, right now, i.e., your direct experience of your mind, your direct experience of your body, how body and mind feel from within. You want to make sure that you’ve developed the tools from within, so that when you …
- More than Just Letting Go… There are a lot of kinds of suffering in the world, and the Buddha says you have to focus on the kind of suffering where you can make a difference. It’s the same principle applied inside. The suffering in terms of the three characteristics—in other words, the fact that things depend on causes that are unstable and will have to change, which …
- Getting Out of Karmic Debt… So we try to develop the attitude that whatever food we get is good enough, whatever we get in terms of clothing and shelter, that’s good enough, so that we can focus on the real work, which is being not content with the quality of our minds. The Buddha identified that as the secret to his awakening: that however skillful he was, if …
- Complacency… time you have to practice, it’s going to swallow up everything. You have to keep pushing back, pushing back, realizing that what is most pressing is not always most important. Focus on the really important things: the state of your mind, the state of your actions, the state of your words, and particularly, the solidity of your mind. How solid is it? How …
- How Much Concentration Is Enough?… You’re more and more continuous in your focus. At the same time, the range of your awareness gets broader and broader until your concentration fills the body. So as you’re here, trying to stay focused on the breath, the first thing you want to keep in mind is that everything you’re going to pay attention to for the next hour has …
- Enlarged Awareness… In other words, even though your focus is at one point, your range of awareness fills the whole body. From there the Buddha has you going to calming the breath fabrications. In other words, as you’re aware of the whole body, you begin to be sensitive to the way you pull the breath in, pull the breath out, all of what they call …
- Interdependence… You focus on the things that you can exert some power over and use that discernment to examine your conviction, virtue, and generosity, so that you can be circumspect in how you practice these things. Sometimes conviction in the principle of karma can get you really worried about what kind of bad karma you might have in the past. I had a lot of …
- Going Out of Your Way… What makes it special is when you decide you’re going to focus in on one thing and get the mind to stay there. Now, in some forms of concentration there’s not much ingenuity involved. Simply repeat a word over and over again, and force the mind down, beat it down. But the way the Buddha teaches breath meditation requires that you think …
- Realities Right Here… sometimes it comes from inside. Where does the movement originate? Sometimes it seems to start down around the naval; sometimes it seems to start around the heart, or in the head. Focus where it seems to start. Then let it spread smoothly from there. Remember, you’re not just watching things here. There’s that element of fabrication. The observer is one important part …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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