Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. Determination
     … So stay focused on what’s good about being focused, what’s good about having priorities. That’ll give you the strength you need to see you all the way through.
  3. Feeding Off of Others
     … And when we’re feeding off of somebody else, are we really feeding off of them, or are we feeding off of our ideas of them? When you desire somebody, the Buddha says, in effect, “When you talk to yourself about desiring someone else, is the desire focused on their body, on your feelings about the person, on your perceptions about the person, on … 
  4. Why the Breath
     … You get a sense of how the mind focuses its awareness on things. Exactly what is awareness? How many layers are there? There’s the focal point of awareness, and there’s that background awareness that fills the whole body. It’s there already, it’s simply a matter of getting the focused awareness in touch with it, learning to settle in with it … 
  5. The Power of Choice
     … But what would you get out of that? Those things are there, they’re true, but what’s accomplished by focusing on them? Focus on something that’s good, that brings the mind a sense of peace and well-being. There are lots of those potentials right now, too. There might be one spot in the body that’s cooler than others. Allow your … 
  6. The Breath All the Way
     … In the second set, the aspect you’re focusing on concerns the feelings created by the way you pay attention to the breath. In the third set, the aspect you’re focusing on is the state of the mind as it tries to stay with the breath. And in the fourth set, you focus on the mental qualities that are involved in developing dispassion … 
  7. Potentials for Good
     … As Ajaan Lee points out, if you focus on your potential for being bad or focusing simply on your bad points, it pulls you down. And once you pull yourself down this way, it’s all too easy to spread out and focus on other people’s bad points as well, which means you don’t see their potential for good. That discourages your … 
  8. The Fabrication of Pain
     … You’re focused on the wrong place, you’re focused with the wrong attitude. All of this is what makes the pain something hard to bear. The simple fact that there will be pains in the body is something you have to accept. They come and they go. But the pain that we create for the mind that doesn’t have to be accepted … 
  9. Name & Form
     … So we’re here focusing on the breath because we want to learn about the mind. We’re focusing on form because we want to learn about the activities of name, because it’s the mental side that’s causing suffering. But it’s also the mental side where the solution to the problem of suffering is going to be found. Your experience of … 
  10. Mindfulness of Death
     … There’s one passage where the Buddha says that if you really want to be heedful, you remind yourself each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out, “May I live for this one more breath, I could accomplish a lot.” In other words, mindfulness of death focuses you on the breath and what you can do with the breath. If you simply … 
  11. Universal Truths
     … Which ways of focusing on the breath make the mind uncomfortable? Which make the breath uncomfortable? Which ways of focusing, which ways of thinking about the breath, which ways of labeling and understanding the breath help make it more comfortable, easier to stay here so that it does become your home? — so that no matter where you go, you have this home inside, this … 
  12. What Makes Concentration Right
     … So the fact that you’re getting the mind focused on the breath is based on right view. Right view tells you that if you’re going to find an end to suffering, you have to look at what the mind is doing. We tend to think that we’re suffering from things outside, and there is that level of suffering. But the reason … 
  13. A Home for the Mind
     … It’s staying focused that’s the hard part. Maintaining a sense of balance is like getting on a bicycle. It’s not hard to get on the bicycle, but staying balanced takes a while if this is the first time you’ve ridden a bike. But with time, you gain a sense of how to adjust. If the bike is tipping over to … 
  14. A Noble Path
     … In some teachings, they make a sharp distinction between a path that’s focused on your own well-being and a path that’s focused on the well-being of others. But as the Buddha pointed out, when you’re really developing mindfulness, developing concentration, you realize that you cannot harm anybody if you want to develop these qualities of mind. He even observes … 
  15. In Search of What is Skillful
     … He describes the basic formula for right mindfulness, and then once the mind is settled in, he says to stay focused on, say, the body in and of itself, but don’t think any thoughts related to the body. In other words, you drop directed thought and evaluation, and that’s how you get in the second jhana. Which implies that in the establishing … 
  16. The Dhamma Wheel
     … This focuses you on your intentions because you break a precept only if you intentionally break it. That keeps you focused on the mind and it makes you honest. Then that honesty carries over into the concentration, and from the concentration it carries over into the discernment. So it’s a complete path we have here. The Buddha is asking us to train both … 
  17. The Path of Questions
     … The unskillful use of desire means focusing so much on the results you want that you ignore the causes. You want to skip over them. That kind of desire is unskillful. You’re not going to get beyond desire by just dropping unskillful desires. You have to learn how to replace unskillful desires with skillful ones, focused on the causes that will take you … 
  18. Pleasure on the Path
     … Sometimes that will require focusing directly on the more painful spot and thinking of the breath permeating it; not pushing it through, but allowing it to slip through easily. Think of all the space between the atoms, even in tight parts of the body. See if you can think of the breath going through that effortlessly. Other times it will require not focusing on … 
  19. What We Have in Common
     … He focused on what we all have in common, in terms of why we’re suffering. We may be clinging to different things, but the clinging itself is the problem, not the things. And the dynamic of clinging and the dynamic of putting an end to it is the same for everybody. There are minor differences in terms of the particulars of your clinging … 
  20. Friends with the Breath
     … At the moment we’re focusing on the concentration. But all three are involved. Virtue is a quality of normalcy in our intentions, harmlessness in our intentions. As we’re sitting here meditating, we’re not harming anybody at all. Not only that, we’re not planning to harm anybody. We’re here focusing on getting our mind straightened out. And discernment comes into … 
  21. Cutting Roads
    A focused mind can do a lot of good and it can do a lot of damage. It’s like the rays of the sun. If you focus them on the right spot, they can start a fire for you when you’re cold. If you focus them on the wrong spot, they can start a fire during the dry season that can sweep … 
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