Search results for: "Focus"
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- Ideals… Then you focus your attention there. You’re motivated by considerations like the simile that the Buddha gives of the spears. As he said, if you could make a deal: They would spear you three hundred times a day—one hundred times in the morning, one hundred times at noon, one hundred times in the evening—every day for a hundred years, but you …
- How the Tree Leans… But what you choose to focus on, what you choose to feed on, what you choose to encourage: That’s your present karma. All too often, a thought comes into the mind and we treat it like a little package—a potential present. What’s in here? We open it up and then we fall into the box. You have to stay outside the …
- Control… One of the very basic lessons Ajaan Lee gives is that when you’re sitting down to meditate and there’s pain in some part of the body, you don’t focus on the pain. There will be parts of the mind where the alarm bells are going off, the red lights are flashing, alerting you to the pain, but you have to ignore …
- An End to the Stories… When you realize that, you have to develop equanimity so that you can focus on what the real issues are: the ways in which you keep on churning up more issues inside. As the Buddha said, the craving that makes for becoming is a big issue. You make something from that becoming and then you become a being with needs to feed. You live …
- The Buddha’s Rules of Order… The skills are primarily in the three kinds of fabrication—bodily, the way you breathe; verbal, the way you talk to yourself; and then mental, the perceptions and the feelings you focus on. They’re all important. For instance, with the breath: When a strong emotion comes on, you can’t just talk yourself out of the emotion. You have to realize that the …
- A Post-goodness World?… All the more reason to focus on basing our practice on the practice of merit, and seeing acts of merit as a necessary part of the training of the mind.
- Sensitive in Seven Ways… How much desire should you have, and where should you focus it? If you don’t have enough desire, you sit here and daydream. If you have so much desire that you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing, that becomes a problem, too. You have to learn how to modulate that, and again, how do you know? Well, with practice. What …
- Remarkable Qualities… Really focus all your attention on this. How much have you observed your breath in the past? What do you know about the breath aside from the fact that it comes in and goes out? Actually there are lots of variations to the breath: in long, out short; in short, out long; long in and out; short in and out; heavy, light; shallow, deep …
- Mindfulness: Get with the Program… Instead of focusing on the mind-state, you tend to focus on the object. But when you’re with the body in and of itself, then it’s a lot easier to see feelings in and of themselves—in other words, simply as events. Mind-states in and of themselves—simply as events. That way, you can get a handle on them. You can …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… We need to know what to do on the external level, and when that’s clear, it gives you more time to focus on what’s wrong inside. Because that’s the real point of all the Dhamma and the Vinaya: to point inside, to where you’re clinging. How can you develop some disenchantment for that clinging? Because that’s what the Buddha …
- The Buddha’s Encouragement… But I realized it had to be done, so I trained myself to focus on the drawbacks of sensuality, and on the rewards of seclusion, the rewards of renunciation.” So, you have to choose what you think about. Choose how you’re going to persuade yourself. Self-persuasion is a huge part of the practice, so that you can change your values. Another time …
- Lighter & Stronger… In the beginning, to counteract all the streams of the mind that would head off in different directions, you have to protect your focus on one object with lots and lots of activity. To counteract the fact that the mind wants to think about other things, you think about the breath. You evaluate the breath. But there comes a point where you don’t …
- Distraction & Drowsiness… Then move your focus of attention down around the different parts of the body. To the left, to the right. Up to the solar plexus: left, right. Up to the chest: left, right. Your throat. Your head. Down the back, out the legs; down your shoulders, out the arms. Move the breath around for a while and notice how the body’s holding its …
- The Buddha’s Narratives & Yours… That’s what the Buddha did, and in doing so he was showing by example that you should put aside questions of your identity—who you were, who you are, who you might be—and focus just on the question of actions. What are the actions that were done in the past that are yielding their results right now? If it’s a result …
- The Dhamma Points Inside… You focus on the breath: You don’t have to push anyone out of the way who’s already trying to look at your breath. It’s totally yours to look at. Your sense of the body that you feel from within: No one else can feel that. If you can find some well-being here, then you don’t feel the need to …
- Fence Me In… You’re allowed to focus on different spots in the body. How much difference will that make? You’re allowed to stay in one spot as long as you like. How much difference will that make? Things you otherwise wouldn’t notice at all suddenly become really enlarged, because you restrict the range of your awareness. It’s the same with the precepts. Once …
- Mundane Right View… what we do, how we think, how we focus the mind, how we position our awareness. These are all very important things in the meditation. When the Buddha starts with the principle of karma, he starts in two very interesting ways. The first is the principle that there are things that are given. In other words, the act of giving is important. It has …
- Endurance Through Discernment… And it’s not a selfish quest to try to focus on solving this problem, because the less suffering you create for yourself, the less you’re going to be leaning on other people. That way, when the time comes when you are really sick and you are dying, and you can’t just breathe through the illness or breathe through the death to …
- Karma-ism… So the Buddha’s advice is just to drop the whole issue and focus on what’s doing right now? What are you doing right now? You should be focusing on your breath, reminding yourself to stay with the breath, to be alert to the breath, and to make an effort to be more consistent in those things. Because those qualities – mindfulness, alertness, and …
- When Your Head Is on Fire… Which encourages you to focus on areas where you’re strong, but it doesn’t encourage you to make up for the areas where you’re weak. It doesn’t teach you how to develop skill in areas where you’re not naturally talented. Now, in some cases, that doesn’t matter, because there are people who have that talent and they can perform …
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