Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 89
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. Awe
     … Don’t focus on any of the little details. Make the earthness of earth, and how vast it is, the object of your concentration. Allow your awareness to take on some of that vastness and then learn how to hold it there. If the elements seem threatening, think of the vastness of space, the space that penetrates all of this activity of the wind … 
  8. A Post for the Mind
    To be mindful of the body, you can focus on the breath. The Buddha compares it to a post for tying down the mind. In one case, he compares it to a post to which they tie an elephant. They’ve gotten the elephant out of the forest, out of the jungle, and they’re bringing him into the city to train him. And … 
  9. Inner Worlds
     … If physical survival were everything, then the current pandemic would be a cause for real concern and you’d have to focus all your energies on making sure that nothing happened that would put you in any physical danger. But you have to remember that survival of the mind is something else—and something more important. The mind sheds bodies in the way we … 
  10. Practice at Home
     … It’s all Dhamma practice if you make it Dhamma practice and focus on these four qualities in your relationships. You’re going to develop endurance. You’re going to develop the ability to be harmless. You’re going to develop a mind of goodwill and a mind of empathy. That’s how, in helping others, you help yourself.
  11. Patience Is a Skill
     … You focus on the causes, and you keep coming back to them, coming back to them, coming back to them, and after a while they will begin to have an imprint on the mind, an influence on the mind. We can’t tell beforehand who’s going to be fast, who’s going to be slow in making progress. As Ajaan Lee says,* *some … 
  12. The Role of the Observer
     … Then there are perceptions and feelings—the labels we put on things and the feeling tones we focus on—pleasant, unpleasant, neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant: Those are mental fabrications. Those are our tools, our weapons in our internal battle over those thoughts that come into the mind and just seem to hang on because there’s part of the mind hanging on to them … 
  13. Mind in & of Itself
    As you start to focus on the breath, it’s good to make a survey of three things. First, the breath itself. Take some good long deep in-and-out breaths, and think of the whole body breathing. Not just the lungs, not just the nose, the whole nervous system is involved in the breathing process. If there’s any area in the body … 
  14. Thoughts with Fangs
     … While you’re sitting here and meditating, for instance, how is this breath? And then how is this breath? How about this one? How is your focus? Where are you focused? Is it working? Is it getting results? If you like the results, stick with what you’re doing. If you don’t like the results, you can change. As for the issue of … 
  15. Skillful Fears
     … This is why all the teachings focus in, in, in on what you’re doing, what you’re saying, what you’re thinking right now, because these are the areas where the real dangers lie. As for the dangers of aging, illness, and death, the Buddha has you use them as motivation for practice, but he also wants you to train yourself so that … 
  16. Practice Without Gaps
     … One way of ensuring that is to make the breath interesting to focus on. You can recall that the way you breathe is going to have an impact on your body and on your mind. So you want to adjust the way you breathe—see what kind of impact it has, learn from your experience as to what works and what doesn’t work … 
  17. The Tricks of Denial
     … You need a double focus. Ajaan Lee talks about this in his book on frames of reference. He says that your alertness is like a pulley that pulls in one direction, then pulls in another direction—back and forth, back and forth. You watch the breath and you watch the mind and then you go back and watch the breath again. Keep your eye … 
  18. Noble Wealth
     … We focus on what we’re doing. Now, There are short-term results and long-term results. The short-term results you do look for, so that you can gain a sense of when you’re wandering off, when the breath isn’t quite right, or when the way you’re focused isn’t quite right. And you make adjustments. But you realize that … 
  19. Bedside Dhamma
     … The purpose of this, of course, is so that you can focus on areas where you can help, and can maintain your strength so that you have some stamina, both so you can be there for that person and so you can get some good Dhamma lessons out of this. If the person hasn’t been meditating, you’ll begin to see very clearly … 
  20. Planting a Tree
     … You have to focus on your duty, which is looking after the water, looking after the fertilizer, making sure that bugs don’t get on the tree. But you can’t design how fast the tree’s going to grow. In terms of training your mind, of course, this has a lot to do with your past karma. Sometimes there’s a karma obstacle … 
  21. Getting into the Body
     … Whichever aspect of the breath seems most prominent now—the in-and-out breath, the sense of breath energy in the body, whatever seems the most congenial place to focus the mind—let the mind settle there and just be very intent on sticking with it, noticing what you’ve got here. The image of heightening is useful. Think about how you go up … 
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