Search results for: "Focusing"
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- 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 …
- Skills to Make You Free… In the same way, here you’re focusing on the parts of the body that are not immediately calling for your attention, but you can make them comfortable. Then you can think of that sense of comfort spreading through the area that has pain. Say there’s a pain in your knee. You let the comfortable breath energy go down the leg, through the …
- Independent Values… We’re focusing our attention on other things, so we don’t see the potential of the breath: that it really can provide a soothing energy throughout the whole body. When the breath feels comfortable, think of that that sense of comfort spreading out, seeping out, permeating the whole body. Then see if you can maintain that. It requires a sense of balance, so …
- The Time & Place to Let Go… Right now you have the responsibility of getting the mind to stay focused, so you can identify with that. But as for other things that might come up that demand your attention, you can say, “Wait a minute, you’re not really me, you’re not really mine. I don’t need you right now. This is not the time and place.” As long …
- Not-self as a Raft… We’re focused on the question of “Why is there suffering? What am I doing that’s causing suffering? What can I do to stop?” because this is the big problem in life. We’re constantly acting, constantly making choices, all for the purpose of happiness, but so many times those choices lead to suffering. What are we doing wrong? That’s where we …
- The Mirror Inside… Just make sure your reflection is focused on what you’re doing. Concentration is maintaining that focus. Discernment lies in seeing how well you’re doing it. It’s very closely related to evaluation. In fact, Ajaan Lee says that that’s the discernment part of concentration practice: the evaluation. There’ll be times when the mind can put down the evaluation and simply …
- Overwhelmed by Freedom… Part of us is afraid we’ll feel bored with nothing to do but focusing on the breath; nothing to do but sitting and then walking, and then sitting and walking. And part of the fear comes from the sense that we don’t know how to measure progress. The mind has this tendency to go up and down, it seems to make some …
- Judicious vs. Judgmental… They’re the reason the Buddha focused his teaching on the four noble truths. You need a sense of goodwill to be even interested in the question of trying to understand suffering, because you want to find an effective way of dealing with it. You want to be rid of suffering, to experience wellbeing, precisely because you have goodwill for yourself and for others …
- Virtue Contains the Practice… To begin with, you’re focusing your attention on the most important issue in life, which is what sort of impact your actions are having, and particularly what kind of impact your mind states are having. After all, the source of action is in the mind. If you’re uncertain about different mental qualities, then watch. Try developing goodwill; try being generous; try observing …
- Common Sense… the way the mind focuses on the pain. You can increase or decrease the amount of suffering by the way you focus on the pain. The same with pleasure: Certain forms of pleasure, if you really focus on them, are helpful in making the mind clear and still. A sense of ease and well-being that comes with the breath: That’s a helpful …
- Strength in Humor… That means that it’s something that you can stay focused on at all times, and nobody gets harmed or hurt. It doesn’t mean that everything in the world is going to suddenly go the way you want it to. But you do find that you’re not causing any unnecessary suffering and you’re actually helping the situation around you as much …
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