Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Dhamma in Line with the Dhamma… You don’t just sit there and watch things come and go and say, “Oh, this is arising and passing away.” You have to actually sort out things in your own mind and the results that are arising in the body and mind as you’re focusing on the breath. Is what you’re doing leading in a good direction or a bad direction …
- The Prison Break… Or think of adjusting your focus, so that instead of focusing on the gross energies in the body, you focus on the subtler ones that are right there in the same place. Try to erase any perception you have of the skin of the body holding things in. Remember, the skin is full of pores. The atoms of the skin are largely space. Hold …
- Beyond Nature… There are places in the body that, if you focused on them, could get you really tied up in anguish or pain. You could take the germs of a pain and build them into something really overwhelming. There are other places in the body where there’s a potential for pleasure. If you learn how to focus there, you can develop a strong sense …
- A Haven for Inner Wealth… That conviction keeps you more focused on making sure that you’re feeding off the right kind of intentions right now. And there are virtue, shame, and compunction. These three qualities go together. Virtue is the promise you make to yourself that you’re not going to harm anybody, and then you stick with that promise. This requires mindfulness; it requires alertness. That’s …
- On Not Twisting the Cow’s Horn… When the delusion concentration is strong enough, you come out of it and wonder, “Where was I? Was I awake? Was I asleep? What was I focused on?” You can’t really say for sure. It’s just a very vague but pleasant sense of being very still. That’s not helpful, because you want your powers of observation to be alert and active …
- Endurance & Restraint… It may seem tedious focusing on the minor things, but this is where your defilements show themselves most easily, especially in your speech. You really have to be careful about what you say and how you say it, to make sure that it’s true, beneficial, and timely, because your speech often reveals defilements inside. Sometimes you distort the truth a little bit to …
- Shaping the Present… So bring knowledge to help you figure out: “Okay, this way of focusing on the breath; this way of thinking about the present moment; this way of thinking about what I’m doing is actually going to lead to good results.” If that’s the case, you foster that. So to be mindful, to meditate, it’s not just a matter of just accepting …
- A Larger Perspective… We’re here focused on the present moment, but all too often what else is there in the present moment? There are issues, our narratives from when we were younger, when we were dealing with people today, or earlier this morning, or our plans for tomorrow: all of our stuff, our narratives. Depending on how skillful those narratives are, they can really get us …
- Tuning-in to the Breath… Instead of focusing on the little droplets, you can focus on the space. This gives you a really clear lesson in how much choice you have in how you experience the present moment. Just the simple sensation of having a body here comes from subconscious shape-giving choices you’ve made. You realize there are lots of different sensations you can focus on, and …
- The Path to Stream Entry… And again and again, throughout his teaching career he kept focusing there on the noble eightfold path. Yet we have this tendency to think that he didn’t tell us everything in the path, that there’s much more to be figured out. Well, of course there are a lot of details in the path that he didn’t tell. And a lot of …
- Working Hypotheses… You know that exercise where they get people to get together in groups and say, “Imagine that you have only one year left in your life, how would you change the way you live this year?” They get together every couple weeks and talk about it, and they find that their lives become much more focused on what’s really meaningful to them. Well …
- Views & Vision… So why not highlight the good things? If you find yourself focusing on the bad ones, remind yourself, “At least I had some good qualities in the past and those are the ones that eventually won out. At least they are winning out right now.” If a part of your mind retorts, “While you may be winning out right now, you’re going to …
- Respect for the Path… You try to find a place in the mind, a place in the body right now, where it really feels good to stay focused. Then you do your best to protect that spot. Sounds may come in; sounds go away. Thoughts come into the mind; thoughts go away. But don’t drop your focus to follow those things, because what do they have to …
- Metta Metacognition… But you’re focusing on the present moment because what you do in the present moment has long-term consequences. So it’s not just the present moment for its own sake. It’s the present moment as it leads into the future. You realize you’ve got to learn the skill of how—when there’s something you’d like to do but …
- Respect, Confidence, & Patience… Sometimes you need to focus on the length of the breath; other times you focus on spreading the breath throughout the body; other times you have to be very careful about where you’re focused in the body. All of these are component factors. Ajaan Fuang once noted that when someone is having trouble in concentration practice, or the concentration of the practice is …
- Effective Self-Discipline… We’re focusing on the breath not to get the breath but because being with the breath trains a lot of really good qualities in the mind—mindfulness, alertness, sensitivity, persistence. At the same time, as you really pay attention to the breath, you begin to notice that certain ways of breathing are helpful for concentration and others are not. This makes it easier …
- Tranquility & Insight in Tandem… You’re sitting here focusing on the breath, it’s coming in and going out, and then all of a sudden you realize you’ve been away for five minutes or whatever. The question is, what happened? There was a lapse of mindfulness. And with a lapse of mindfulness, the mind can do all kinds of things. Even though you’re sitting here saying …
- Equanimity Isn’t Everything… way. They have a real pull on the mind, a real hold on the mind. This is where you have to exert a fabrication, like we’re doing it right now: focusing on the breath, adjusting the breath. There’s verbal fabrication in the directed thought and evaluation as you direct your thoughts to the breath and evaluate the breath. Bodily fabrication is the …
- Brahmaviharas on the Path… The Pali word for love is *pema. *When the Buddha talks about love, he focuses on its obvious drawbacks. There’s hatred, he says, that can come from love. In other words, if you love someone, and someone else is going to do something harmful to them, you’re going to hate that person. There’s also love that comes from hatred: If you …
- At the End of the Day… If there’s a pain in the back and you find that focusing on the back makes it worse, then focus on the front of the body. The important thing is that if there are pains in the body, you don’t let them get you down. Because the pains in your body when you’re meditating are nothing compared to the pains that …
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