Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 89
  2. Truths Noble in the Heart
     … You can focus directly on the mind. But simply time, or time put in, doesn’t guarantee anything. Even if you put in 10,000 hours, it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to come out really good at the practice. It requires that you observe and that you pay really close attention to this issue: Where is the stress? What are … 
  3. Sweat the Small Stuff
     … This is why the Buddha—when he was about to teach his son, Rahula, how to meditate, even before he taught him the steps to breath meditation—told him to focus on the inconstancy of things so as to undercut the conceit, “I am.” In other words, as you look at your own mind, you begin to realize that there are good intentions mixed … 
  4. From Compunction to Release
     … When you find that you can breathe in ways and focus your breath in ways that do give rise to a sense of well-being, you have a new standard for pleasure. As the Buddha said, most people see no other alternative to pain besides sensual pleasure. So in spite of the drawbacks of sensual pleasures, they keep going back. Whereas when you do … 
  5. The Community of the Wise
     … Those are going to affect the way you practice, what you focus on, what you ignore. So it’s important to reflect on your values. See what your mind is really telling you. You may hear things in Dhamma talks that sound good, but when you’re actually sitting on your own, sometimes the Dhamma talk isn’t there at all. Other values you … 
  6. A Good-Natured Attitude
     … So you learn how to develop those inner resources, develop a sense of how you can feel at ease with yourself—by the way you breathe, by the way you focus in the body, by the way you think about your meditation topics. And notice what you can do without in your surroundings. When you realize there’s a lot you can do without … 
  7. To Sustain Your Practice
     … You can hear the instructions and focus on the breath—and anybody can focus on the breath. What makes the difference is the maintaining. How do you stick with it? This question applies not only to concentration practice, but also to the practice as a whole. We live in an environment that’s not all that friendly toward Dhamma practice. It’s almost as … 
  8. Truth with Boundaries
     … re convinced that it really has to be true, ask yourself, “Have you found the fifth noble truth?” The obvious answer is No. In that case, you can’t really believe it 100%. You’ve got to find out where that other percentage is, the percentage where it’s not true or not beneficial. Focus your attention there, and that helps get you out.
  9. In Touch with Your Fabrications
     … You focus on the breath and you talk to yourself about the breath. That’s two fabrications right there. The Buddha gives you some ideas on how to fabricate, how to talk to yourself, how to breathe. Breathe, he says, in a way that’s conducive to pleasure. Breathe in a way that’s conducive to rapture, try to be aware of the whole … 
  10. Ideals
     … Then you focus your attention there. You’re motivated by considerations like the simile that the Buddha gives of the spears. As he said, if you could make a deal: They would spear you three hundred times a day—one hundred times in the morning, one hundred times at noon, one hundred times in the evening—every day for a hundred years, but you … 
  11. How the Tree Leans
     … But what you choose to focus on, what you choose to feed on, what you choose to encourage: That’s your present karma. All too often, a thought comes into the mind and we treat it like a little package—a potential present. What’s in here? We open it up and then we fall into the box. You have to stay outside the … 
  12. Control
     … One of the very basic lessons Ajaan Lee gives is that when you’re sitting down to meditate and there’s pain in some part of the body, you don’t focus on the pain. There will be parts of the mind where the alarm bells are going off, the red lights are flashing, alerting you to the pain, but you have to ignore … 
  13. An End to the Stories
     … When you realize that, you have to develop equanimity so that you can focus on what the real issues are: the ways in which you keep on churning up more issues inside. As the Buddha said, the craving that makes for becoming is a big issue. You make something from that becoming and then you become a being with needs to feed. You live … 
  14. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … The skills are primarily in the three kinds of fabrication—bodily, the way you breathe; verbal, the way you talk to yourself; and then mental, the perceptions and the feelings you focus on. They’re all important. For instance, with the breath: When a strong emotion comes on, you can’t just talk yourself out of the emotion. You have to realize that the … 
  15. A Post-goodness World?
     … All the more reason to focus on basing our practice on the practice of merit, and seeing acts of merit as a necessary part of the training of the mind.
  16. Sensitive in Seven Ways
     … How much desire should you have, and where should you focus it? If you don’t have enough desire, you sit here and daydream. If you have so much desire that you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing, that becomes a problem, too. You have to learn how to modulate that, and again, how do you know? Well, with practice. What … 
  17. Remarkable Qualities
     … Really focus all your attention on this. How much have you observed your breath in the past? What do you know about the breath aside from the fact that it comes in and goes out? Actually there are lots of variations to the breath: in long, out short; in short, out long; long in and out; short in and out; heavy, light; shallow, deep … 
  18. Mindfulness: Get with the Program
     … Instead of focusing on the mind-state, you tend to focus on the object. But when you’re with the body in and of itself, then it’s a lot easier to see feelings in and of themselves—in other words, simply as events. Mind-states in and of themselves—simply as events. That way, you can get a handle on them. You can … 
  19. In Accordance with the Dhamma
     … We need to know what to do on the external level, and when that’s clear, it gives you more time to focus on what’s wrong inside. Because that’s the real point of all the Dhamma and the Vinaya: to point inside, to where you’re clinging. How can you develop some disenchantment for that clinging? Because that’s what the Buddha … 
  20. The Buddha’s Encouragement
     … But I realized it had to be done, so I trained myself to focus on the drawbacks of sensuality, and on the rewards of seclusion, the rewards of renunciation.” So, you have to choose what you think about. Choose how you’re going to persuade yourself. Self-persuasion is a huge part of the practice, so that you can change your values. Another time … 
  21. Lighter & Stronger
     … In the beginning, to counteract all the streams of the mind that would head off in different directions, you have to protect your focus on one object with lots and lots of activity. To counteract the fact that the mind wants to think about other things, you think about the breath. You evaluate the breath. But there comes a point where you don’t … 
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