Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. A Sense of Duty
     … You can keep up your spirits by focusing more on the good qualities you’re developing. Like the people in the expedition: Their main aim was to do something no one had ever done before, which was to walk across the continent of Antarctica, but that didn’t happen. What did happen was that they cared for one another, saw one another through. And … 
  3. Chew Your Food Well
     … And it’s interesting to note that when the Buddha talks about kamma, the first two things he focuses on are gratitude and generosity. If you don’t see the virtue, the value of gratitude, if you don’t see the value of generosity, it’s hard to do anything else on the path. You have to appreciate the good that other people have … 
  4. The Humble Way to Awakening
     … What he saw was that if you focused on this one issue, all the other issues get cleared up. Either you find that they get answered or you realize that they weren’t worth answering to begin with. It’s important that we realize this as we practice. Some people say that our suffering is such a small selfish issue to be dealing with … 
  5. A Victory that Matters
     … Learn to see that defeat as a warning that you’re focusing on the wrong battles. Then use that realization to set your heart on gaining a victory over your greed, aversion, and delusion; your craving, ignorance, and clinging—so that this very personal suffering that you’re causing yourself can finally stop. Nobody else needs to praise you for this. Nobody else needs … 
  6. The Luminous Mind
     … This is why the Buddha, when he was giving instructions to his son, focused on just this issue, telling him, “Look at what you’re going to do, look at what you’re doing, and look at what you’ve done. Try to be very clear about the results of your actions.” That reflection is how you begin to see through the clouds of … 
  7. Return of Wisdom for Dummies
     … It’s more focused on where your actions were dumb, and now you don’t have to repeat them. Ajaan Lee makes this point in one of his analogies. He says some people think they’re smart. They learn that there’s gold ore in some rock. They don’t want the rock, they just want the gold, so they take a little toothpick … 
  8. Generating Power
     … I’m going to focus on doing what needs to be done right now and I’m not going to try to provide for alternative things to fall back on.” In other words, when the time comes to be focused and concentrated, that’s all you do. Give yourself to it totally. Have a sense of conviction, a sense of confidence in the practice … 
  9. A Divine Seat
     … When a negative emotion comes up, how does it change the way you breathe? Can you change it back to something good? And how are you talking to yourself? What images do you have in your mind? What feelings in the body and feelings in the mind are you focusing on? Can you change the focus? Can you change the inner conversation? You’ll … 
  10. Samvega & Pasada
    Focusing on the breath, trying to get the mind to stay with the breath, can sometimes be a very chastening experience. On the first level, there’s the simple difficulty of getting the mind to stay with one thing: something as simple and nearby as the breath, and yet you find it slipping off, slipping off, slipping off. You start out with the best … 
  11. Stay
     … Try to find a spot in the body where you feel most easily able to stay focused. Then, as you focus there, you’ll find patterns of tension building up as you try to keep it there. Okay, learn what you can let go of without losing your focus. When the Buddha talks about spreading ease and rapture through the body, sometimes it’s … 
  12. The Story behind Impatience
     … What I have brought out to teach is like the leaves in my hand.” And he focused on the four noble truths as being the leaves in his hand. There are other passages where he boiled down the basic insight he gained in his Awakening even further: It’s a simple principle of causality. When you think of all the amazing things he could … 
  13. Inner Discontent
     … You may wonder, “What am I doing here, just working with the breath, keeping my mind focused on this one little thing, when there are so many bigger issues in life?” Well, you need a mind well trained in order to deal with those bigger issues. Remind yourself of that. You need more mindfulness, more alertness. So you just keep coming back to the … 
  14. Investing in Noble Wealth
     … Shame here is the healthy sense of shame that focuses on realizing that dishonorable action is something that you would be ashamed to do. That sense of shame is wealth. It’s not saying that you’re ashamed at yourself for thinking of it, or that you’re a bad person because you may have thought of it. But you realize that it’s … 
  15. Head, Heart, & Gut
     … And the mind all too often focuses on seeing this as a deprivation. You hear the word “renunciation,” and you think of being imprisoned, starving. But it’s better to see it as a trade, and it’s a trade up. We’re trading things of lesser worth for things of greater worth. There’s that passage in the Dhammapada where the Buddha says … 
  16. Respect
     … And what are those blind spots? What are they but ignorance? So we use the breath to open up to the entire body, and then we use the process of staying focused on the breath, being alert to the breath, to open ourselves up both to the body and to the mind. Simply on the level of concentration, that’s quite a lot right … 
  17. Don’t Clap Hands with Pain
     … She focused on the space around the body, the space inside the body. When you hold this perception in mind, there may be sensations of body, but you don’t have to be there to meet them. You know that Zen image of the clapping hand? Usually a sensation comes up and our awareness goes right to it. That’s the sound of two … 
  18. Sensuality
     … When you’re focusing on something you really like about a sensual object or a person, you tend to focus on certain details, and you have to block out lots of other details. So there is a built-in blindness in the act of indulging in that kind of pleasure. Whereas the pleasure of jhana doesn’t have any drawbacks, it doesn’t harm … 
  19. Seeds of Becoming
     … So, this is why we keep focusing back in at the present, the present, the present. We talk sometimes about the future, we talk sometimes about the past, but the main point is to focus on what you’re doing right here, right now. Everything you’re going to need to know is right here, right now, so really get to know this spot … 
  20. Don’t Hang Around Your Corpse
     … Ajaan Suwat introduced the topic by talking about a woman who had studied with Ajaan Funn and was meditating, repeating the word “Buddho” to herself and focusing on her breath. All of a sudden, she had a vision of a corpse lying right in front of her. She didn’t want to be near the corpse so she moved back. The corpse moved closer … 
  21. Dissolving Narratives
     … Then focusing on the back of the neck, go down through the shoulders, out to the tips of the fingers. Then go down the back and out the legs. Get really acquainted with the body right here, because it’s right here that you’re going to learn how to see the movements of the mind clearly if you maintain this frame of reference … 
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