Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Breathing Skillfully… This is why our skill starts with focusing on the breath and then looking at how we’re talking to ourselves about the breath. Usually, in the very beginning, your mind will be talking about other things. It drops the breath and goes running after whatever comes past. You’ve got to learn how to drop those other things and come back to the …
- Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening… So this quality of faith and conviction in the Buddha’s awakening is an important element in keeping you focused on where the important issues are in your life right now, where the important issues in your practice are right now, so that you can take advantage of this opportunity really to find what freedom is like. It’s good to contemplate on these …
- A Heart Wider than the World… As Ajaan Lee says, “Before you make yourself large, you have to make yourself really small, focused inside. What’s happening right here with the breath, at the mind? What’s happening in the mind, right at the breath? Looking at the details, because the details will grow into larger things. You’re making your choices. That present karma, where you have the freedom …
- A Meditative Life… Look at the parts that aren’t attractive, to balance out the one-sided view that simply focuses on a few attractive details here and there and tends to blot out everything else in order to give rise to lust. After all, the body is not what produces lust. The mind produces lust. The mind starts hankering to feel lust and so it goes …
- When Attacked by Distractions… If you spend your time focusing on the mud around it, you’re never going to get the water. In other words, our main perception there should be that you’re willing to slurp the water up from the cow’s footprint because you need the water, even though you have to get down on all fours to slurp it up. You probably wouldn …
- Stepping Out of Yourself… When we focus on the breath, that’s what we’re focusing on: the feeling of the process, and not so much the air coming in and out through the nose. As the breath gets very subtle, we reach a point where we can’t feel the air, but there’s still a movement of energy in the body. So focus there and then …
- Things Aren’t as They Should Be… You can take something simple like this—the fact that you’re talking to yourself about the breath, focusing on the breath; you have a perception of the breath, an image of how the breath flows in the body; you’re trying to create a feeling of well-being: Okay, that’s the activity. You can watch yourself doing that activity and you’ll …
- The Pain of Conviction… Just the way you breathe, sitting here focusing on your breath, makes a difference in the mind’s sense of well-being. And it’s potentially always there. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a mood that takes a while to get back there, but it’s there. The more quickly you can tap into this sense of well-being, the easier it is …
- In Line with the Dhamma… It’s imagination focused on thinking of what you can do with your raw materials. You’ve got the breath. You’ve got the body. In the past, you’ve made a lot of unskillful things out of it. How can you now make something skillful out for it, something that actually leads away from suffering? Let that challenge capture your imagination until the …
- Not-self, Not No Self… That makes it easier to stay focused. If the breath is uncomfortable, you’re going to find a lot of other things to do pretty quickly. Think of the breath as the whole body of energy. When you breathe, the whole body’s breathing in, the whole body’s breathing out. You can breathe in a way that’s tight and restricted, or you …
- 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 …
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