Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. A Culture of Restraint
     … You’re trying to focus on one thing, and you can stay there because you’re used to exercising restraint in a healthy way: knowing how much you can rein the mind in, when you have to give it a little extra leash, so it doesn’t feel too confined, too cooped up, but at the same time knowing how much is too much … 
  10. One Thing Only
     … suffering and the end of suffering.” The fake part is the “one thing and one thing only.” He did say, “All I teach is suffering and the end of suffering,” but people tend to focus on the “one thing only.” I’ve read some teachers interpret this, saying that there’s a subtle teaching here: that suffering and the end of suffering are the … 
  11. The Middle Way
     … So there comes a point in the meditation where you simply have to put the instructions aside and just focus on what feels really good right now as you breathe in, what feels really good as you breathe out. Expand your imagination as to different ways you can experience the breath in the body. Explore that right here right now. That kind of pleasure … 
  12. The Heightened Mind
     … You can focus most clearly on it with your eyes closed—or if you meditate with your eyes open, it doesn’t really matter, but the important thing is that you remember that this is the big problem. And part of the suffering comes from the fact that we squeeze ourselves into little becomings. It’s like trying to put an elephant into an … 
  13. Resilience Plus
     … It’s all too easy to focus on the misbehavior of others, and then to use that as an excuse for our own misbehavior, which simply adds more fuel to the fire, more weight to the oppression, more stress to the stress test. Here’s where it’s good to think about the Buddha’s instructions on how to respond to what he calls … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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.
  21. 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 … 
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