Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 93
  2. Self-doubts
     … I’m becoming a different person.” Focus on that. So when the dismissive voices come, you have something to show them: They’re not all that authoritative, not all that believable—you can’t trust them. And as for the lazy voices, ask yourself that question, “Which path is longer, the path to awakening or the path away from awakening?” And go for the … 
  3. Seeing with the Body
     … To work around this problem, the Buddha has us focus simply on the problem of suffering without asking who’s causing this, or who you are, or what you have to do to your sense of self to make it better. He says, “Just look at the suffering in and of itself.” That’s important: the “in and of itself.” That helps get you … 
  4. A Quality of the Character
     … how to analyze things, how to focus on the breath, how to develop concentration. But it always has to be within that context of virtues. And these are best picked up by being around people who are virtuous. Part of those instructions to Rahula was that if you saw you’d made a mistake, you talk it over with someone who’s more advanced … 
  5. Noble Treasures
     … If nothing else, he’d make a vow to focus his energy and his attention to really understand a problem. This aspect of meditation is all too often overlooked, especially in methods that give you a set body of instructions and say, “Just do this and don’t make any variations.” But how do you know that the results you get from just following … 
  6. Pay Careful Attention
     … The Buddha himself said that when you listen, try to focus your attention so that your mind is one with the topic that’s being discussed. In other words, it’s gathered in oneness around it. And then, he said, apply appropriate attention. Think about, “How does this apply to the problem of suffering and the end of suffering? What is it telling me … 
  7. Introduction: Meditation as a Skill
     … You focus on your breath, make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath. When it comes in, you know it’s coming in; when it goes out, you know it’s going out. Try to be as consistent as possible in staying with the breath. This means you have to develop mindfulness, to remember to stay with the breath each … 
  8. Dangers Outside & In
     … That’s why we focus on developing the mind. As we develop the mind, we learn that we can respond to outside dangers in a skillful way because we don’t feel so threatened by them. One, we accept them. But we don’t just stop with acceptance. In the case of pain, the Buddha teaches how to be with pain but not overcome … 
  9. No Arrows, Nothing
     … We train the breath—focus a lot of attention on the breath—because it’s one of our main tools in helping us settle down. But ultimately, the real issue is what the mind is doing. We mentioned this a little last night: the way the mind puts together sensations, puts together thoughts, puts together feelings—glues everything together. And then the things we … 
  10. To Disturb Your Complacency
     … Which is why when the Buddha talks about things in space and time, he tends to focus on the negative—because there’s something better. He’s not being negative just to show how negative he can be. He’s negative with a purpose—for you to want to find a happiness that’s better than this, a happiness that’s not subject to … 
  11. Protection Through the Practice
     … The focus is not just on the dangers. It’s also on the potential for your actions to make a difference, to offer you protection. If there are nothing but dangers and you couldn’t do anything about them, then heedfulness wouldn’t make any difference. It’s because you can make a difference by developing good qualities, skillful qualities, solid qualities, inside, that … 
  12. Taking the Long View
     … So, paradoxically, by taking the long view, the focus gets focused right back here, right now. But then again, that’s how the Buddha gained his awakening. He took the very long view. He saw the cycles of rebirth that beings can go through. Then his immediate reaction was to turn around and look at the mind right here in the present moment, realizing … 
  13. After the Fire
     … It’s only when you find the mind is really lopsided in one direction that you really have to focus your attention on either the more active side or the more passive side. But once things have been brought more into balance, you want to have all seven of the factors of awakening present. Sometimes you see them presented in such a way that … 
  14. On Your Own Two Feet
     … So it’s not a Catch-22, it’s simply that these two faculties of the mind—the ability to watch things and observe and come to reliable conclusions; and your inventiveness in trying out different ways to experiment with the breath and the way you focus on the breath—go hand-in-hand. They develop together. After all, a lot of things are … 
  15. A Practice, Personal & Social
    When you focus the mind on the breath, you’re focusing on an area that nobody else can know: how you experience the breath from within, how you experience the movements of your own mind from within. People could look at you from the outside and see the rhythm of your breathing and they might notice expressions flitting across your face, but how you … 
  16. Grace & Dignity
     … When we think about heedfulness, we tend to focus on the dangers around us, dangers inside us, because they’re there. We have greed, aversion, and delusion, and there are parts of our minds that really like greed, aversion, and delusion. That’s a danger. As the Buddha once said, the mind is capable of almost anything. Think of all the animals in the … 
  17. All Your Old Baggage
     … You could focus on the breath in a particular way, you can breathe in all kinds of different ways. You can do long breathing or short breathing; warm, lukewarm, cool, cold breathing; fast or slow; deep or shallow; broad or narrow. And there are all kinds of ways you can conceive of how the breath energy’s coming in and out of the body … 
  18. Wandering On, Shooting Arrows
     … Which is why our focus has to be continually inside, inside. We look around at the world, and the best lesson to gain as you look around at the world is to see that there’s so much suffering, there are so many people squabbling over the best way the world should be run—and the squabbling never ends. I know a monk in … 
  19. Understanding Goodwill & Equanimity
     … As for your dealings with other people, you focus on the people you can help, saving equanimity for cases where you can’t. So all the brahmaviharas, all the sublime abidings, require understanding so that they really lead to the happiness we want. And the happiness we want is one that spreads itself around. It’s not like the happiness of the world—based … 
  20. The Wall of Discernment
     … When you focus on the space, you can get into formless states, which are even more refined than the states that depend on the breath. You keep following this process until you get as far as you can in terms of concentration. It’s because you’re using your discernment as you get the mind focused that the mind can settle down like this … 
  21. Good Eating
     … Your main focus should be on the practices themselves, and the sense of well-being that comes from them. The sense of “I am” that develops around these: Eventually you’re going to have to let that go. In the meantime, though, you’ll find there are skillful and unskillful identities that you can develop around this kind of meditation-eating too. The skillful … 
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