Search results for: "Focusing"

  1. Page 93
  2. Insight Is Seeing What’s Worth Doing
    Try to stay focused on the breath, wherever you feel it most vividly. If you don’t know where it’s most vivid, take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. Let it calm down until it feels just right—not too heavy to be comfortable, but not so light that you can’t follow it. And don’t put too … 
  3. Battling Negativity
     … It’s all open and aboveboard and it’s focused on one thing. There was a famous thinker, Kierkegaard, who said, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” And the principle in general applies to Buddhism as well: You will the end of suffering. You will the end of your attachment to ordinary happiness by looking for a higher happiness. You keep that … 
  4. Strength Training
     … This is where the Buddha really showed his wisdom, in focusing on the skills to strengthen the mind. Those can see you through all kinds of difficulties. Strength of the body can help you through certain difficulties but it can only go so far. And as I said, there becomes a point where no matter how hard you exercise, the body’s just not … 
  5. Relationships
     … So even though it may seem like a strange exercise, focusing on the breath, relaxing the patterns of tension here, relaxing them there, still, as you work at it, it goes deeper and deeper, and seeps deeper and deeper into the mind until it has more and more of a profound effect on the whole way you relate to yourself. The way you relate … 
  6. To Comprehend Suffering
     … The first step is to develop your powers of mindfulness and alertness, as when you’re focusing on the breath. Because when you’re face-to-face with pain and suffering you need to remind yourself of the fact that it’s something there right now but it’s not always there. It hasn’t always been there; it’s going to go away … 
  7. Horror Stories
     … As I said earlier, the place where you’re going to find awakening is a place you’ve been many, many times before, just focused in the present moment, noticing how the breath changes, how it has an impact on the body, how it has an impact on the mind, how the mind has an impact on the breath, and how your perceptions have … 
  8. Getting Back on Your Feet
     … As a result, were able to totally reorganize people’s knowledge by focusing on the basics. It’s the same with our practice. We can reorganize our practice, restart our practice when we go back and look at the basics very carefully. So if your practice is falling apart, take it as an opportunity to reorganize your practice and get it on a much … 
  9. Moving Between Thought Worlds
     … Even though a state of mind may have some features that are very true—you can verify it by looking at things outside that, yes, this situation really is difficult or whatever it is that you’ve focused on—but then you can ask yourself: “Do you have to suffer around this?” And the Buddha’s answer is always, “No, you don’t have … 
  10. Suffering Is a Feeding Addiction
     … You’re supposed to be focusing on your breath, but suddenly you find yourself mulling over something that happened three or four months ago. Well, you drop that. Come back to the breath. And each time you come back, don’t berate yourself. Just reward yourself with a good breath so that it feels good to come back. But be alert. The mind is … 
  11. Mastery
     … Develop a sense of shame around that—shame here not being focused on your sense of yourself as a bad person, but on the action. You realize that was a shameful action—either ignorant in the intention or shoddy in the execution—and you’d be ashamed to do it again. This is actually a sign of high self-esteem, that you’re better … 
  12. Getting Yourself
     … The narrative is totally focused on what was going on in his mind, how when he was practicing austerities, whatever pain arose he made sure the pain didn’t overcome his mind. When he found the right path, when he was practicing deep concentration getting the mind into the various levels of jhana and gaining the different insights that came from that concentration, whatever … 
  13. Wise About Pleasure
     … We spend so much time thinking about the present moment, focusing on the present moment, but there are times when we have to prepare for the future. Say, you’re going into a difficult situation and you know that your buttons are going to get pushed, or there are dangers you have to face. It’s good to think beforehand about how to face … 
  14. Not Crushed by the World
     … In this case, the Buddha says, the post means establishing mindfulness immersed in the body, which can mean focusing on the breath, sensitive to the breath energy as you go through the day, noticing when any tension builds up, and releasing it. It builds up again, you release it again, so that the body is a pleasant place to be. When you have a … 
  15. Right View Comes First
     … Now, in giving this talk, when the Buddha got people to this stage, when their minds were focused, gathered into one, he would teach them the four noble truths. This is right view on the transcendent level. He would have them look more deeply into their minds and tell them that whatever suffering they had was something they were doing—they were clinging, to … 
  16. The Triple Training
     … When Ajaan Suwat was asked once about how to carry meditation into daily life, he focused entirely on the five precepts, because the precepts do develop qualities you need to meditate. Like the precept on speech: If you’re careful about what you say, making sure that it’s true and beneficial and timely, then when the time comes to sit down and meditate … 
  17. The Dhamma Eye
     … In this case, we’re focusing on the breath. Be mindful of the breath. In other words, keep the breath in mind. Be alert to it, what’s happening. And be ardent in trying to stay settled with it, concentrated on it. This combination of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency is what brings the mind into concentration. And what’s good about concentration? It enables … 
  18. The Buddha’s Basic Therapy
     … A while back I was reading an article in a magazine about gratitude, and the author was focusing on the gout-weed in her garden—which, apparently, is a really tenacious weed, very hard to eradicate. She said she was learning how to develop gratitude to the gout-weed because it taught her good lessons about persistence and acceptance. That’s missing the point … 
  19. Using Perceptions
     … She focused on the two spots at once. That pulled all of her thoughts into that line so that she could be anchored in the body and have a sense of feeling solidly here. As she said, if she imagined only one spot, it was hard not to think around that spot. It was as if she had one hand full, but the other … 
  20. Victory over Death
     … This relates to that other passage we chanted just now, about the importance of not thinking about the past or the future, but focusing on the present moment. You focus on the present moment not because it’s a wonderful moment or because your awakened nature is here. You focus on the present because there are things you need to do here, duties you … 
  21. Dealing with Confusion
     … Notice that the movement goes from individual narratives to looking at the world as a whole and then focusing on the present moment. So it’s good to think about that when you find yourself tied up in defilements in the mind, unskillful mental states in the mind that you really don’t feel comfortable with. Remind yourself: Everybody has these to a greater … 
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