Search results for: "Focusing"

  1. Page 87
  2. A Slave to Craving
     … Now, that could mean focusing on the breath, it could mean going through those 32 parts of the body, realizing you’ve got this human birth, you’ve got this human body, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to let it be a tool for your sensuality, or are you going to learn to look at what you’ve … 
  3. Fabrication Theory
     … Even though you’re focusing on the breath, you’re actually training the mind, training it to be more mindful: in other words, more able to keep one topic in mind continually. And more alert, noticing what you’re doing, along with the results of what you’re doing. But what makes all the difference is ardency, which is the attempt to do it … 
  4. Heedful of Death
     … Or if there’s a pain in one part of the body, and focusing on the pain or trying to bring the breath to the pain doesn’t seem to help, bring your focus to the breath to the opposite side of the body. Or you may notice that some parts of the body are doing all the work in your breathing, and they … 
  5. Self-Control
     … Because we are so busy focusing on other things, we neglect the true power in our lives. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha teaches us not-self, to tell us to look around to see what really does lie under our control, because the sense of control or the idea of control is essential for our idea of who we are … 
  6. Interested in the Breath
     … When you’re focusing on the breath, how much pressure is just right? How much is too much? How much is too little? If it’s too little, the mind just slips off, slips off. If it’s too much, the breath is going to feel confined. How do you know what’s just right? There’s no meter to measure it. You have … 
  7. The Challenge of Right View
     … All the stages of concentration up to dimension of nothingness are all called perception attainments—as when you’re focusing the body right now. Learn how to perceive the sensations of the body as breath sensations and view how they relate to one another in that sense. All the way down to the little physical sensations: See them all as breath, look at their … 
  8. Infinity
     … So it was with that understanding that, in the third watch of the night, he focused on his present mental actions. What kind of views, what kind of intentions would lead outside of the cycle? As part of his second knowledge, he had seen that the cycle just goes around and around. It’s not really a circle. It has a lot of complex … 
  9. Animals in the Mind
    As we sit here focusing on the breath, we’re developing what’s called mindfulness immersed in the body. You keep the body in mind and you try to fill the body with your awareness, allowing your awareness to spread out and be filled with body. Don’t squeeze off your awareness of the body, which is something we normally do an awful lot … 
  10. Skills to Make a Difference
     … You learn how to vary your offerings. ** So as you’re sitting here meditating, focusing on the breath, notice what kind of breathing you like. And remember that the breathing you like right now may not be the breathing you’ll like in five minutes, so keep on top of it. Another image the Buddha gives is of an archer who’s able to … 
  11. Against the Stream
     … If you’re focusing on that energy, it’s there in the body already. All you have to do is to tend to it, and if it feels like it’s full and it doesn’t feel like it needs to breathe, you’re okay—the perception allows this to happen. So that’s a perception you want to hold onto. What you’re … 
  12. Monotasking
     … If you find that focusing on one spot in the body is not enough, focus on two at the same time. I knew a retired schoolteacher in Thailand whose technique for getting into concentration was to, as she said, “Think of hooking up a battery to two spots.” One spot was in her head; the other spot was in her tailbone. And it was … 
  13. Dhamma Medicine
     … The problem too often with our effort is that we’re focused on the results. We think, “I want this, I want this, I want this,” but we don’t stop to think about what’s going to be needed in order to get what we want. We put all our energy in trying to clone what we want without looking after the real … 
  14. As Days & Nights Fly Past
     … the ability to stay focused, the ability to detect unskillful currents in the mind and then say No, the ability to maintain your right view, that your actions really are important.” And you remind yourself: Even though you may have some bad karma from the past, it doesn’t have to take over. Some people, at the moment of death, see bad places opening … 
  15. The Dhamma Wheel
     … So right now, we’re developing concentration, focusing on the breath. That’s working on the duty with regard to the fourth noble truth. Everything in the path can be found in the four noble truths and their duties. Simply knowing about the four noble truths—even though we may know them thoroughly and say, yes, it’s true what the Buddha said—is … 
  16. Patience & Tenacity
     … At first you have to be focused on doing this in spite of all the other noise and all the other stuff that’s going on, but as you are really single-minded in pursuing this, things really do begin to quiet down. If there’s pain in the body, you have a place to focus that’s not in pain. As for the … 
  17. Self-Reliance
     … This is one of the reasons why we meditate, focusing on the breath. That gives you a place to step back. When you’re with the breath, you’re outside of all the words flying around in your head. If you can establish this as a good solid basis, you’re less likely to get sucked in by the more seductive ideas. So focus … 
  18. The Freedom to Give
     … It focused on how much you can understand about a society by the way people give gifts, the gestures with which they give gifts, the expectations that surround gift-giving. It tells you a lot about how that society is organized. The same idea applies with the principles of the Buddha’s teachings. He created a culture of gifts so that the practice of … 
  19. Perception
     … Instead of focusing on the mist, you can focus on the space between those little bits of sensation, and all of a sudden you’re with “space.” If you can hold onto that perception of space long enough, it’s going to change your experience of the present moment, your sense of what it’s like to have a physical body here. The potential … 
  20. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … When you’re focusing on the breath, the very first question is: Is the breath comfortable or not? That’s asking you to see: When does the comfort come, and when does it go? In what ways, what kind of desire to make it comfortable actually is going to make it less comfortable? In what way do you focus the desire to make it … 
  21. The Stakes Are High
     … This is why we meditate focused on the present moment, so that we can see the mind in action, see what it’s doing, and learn to do it more skillfully. When you stay here with the breath, it’s a kind of karma. If you develop the right attitude as you’re working with the breath—the patience to sit with things for … 
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