Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 94
  2. Make a Difference
     … So you focus on three things: renunciation, non-ill will, and harmlessness. Renunciation here means putting aside all your thoughts about sensuality, your fascination with thinking about sensual pleasures: that you’d like them this way, that way, or maybe no, you’d like them some other way. You can think for hours in these ways, but when you realize it’s going to … 
  3. Producing Experience
     … You can develop skill in the way you focus on the breath, the way you adjust the breath, the way you develop sensitivity to what’s going on in the body. These are all things you do as a producer of experiences, and you can learn to do them more and more skillfully to create a sense of wellbeing in the present moment. Even … 
  4. Cutting Edge Perceptions
    When you focus on the breath, it’s important to take it one breath at a time. If the prospect of sitting here for a whole hour focusing on the breath weighs you down, remember it’s only one breath at a time. This breath right here. This breath coming in; this breath going out. This helps keep you focused and doesn’t weigh … 
  5. A Heart Bigger Than the World
     … When you want to nourish your heart so that it’s easier to develop thoughts of goodwill, you focus on their good side. That doesn’t mean that you pretend the bad side isn’t there. It’s just that that’s not where you should go for your food. All too often, the mind will nourish itself on other people’s bad qualities … 
  6. Contentment in the Practice
     … This is why it’s so important that before you start working with the breath here or there, adjusting it here or there, you find at least some spot where it’s comfortable and focus on that. To make another comparison, it’s like starting a fire on a windy day. You have your tiny little flame, so you cup it in your hands … 
  7. Skillful Fear
     … This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration, one of the reasons why it’s so important that we have a sense of well-being that comes as we focus inside on the breath. It takes strength to go against our immediate knee-jerk reactions and to think about the long term. So to sustain yourself as you’re waiting for the … 
  8. Self-starting
     … We can’t do much about the past intentions, but we can focus on and change the present ones. And we have to realize that they’re important. We can’t just slough them off. If you find yourself getting lazy or discouraged in the practice, you’ve got to find ways of picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and asking yourself, “Do you … 
  9. At Normalcy
     … But if you learn how to stay with the breath and see that your focus on the breath is the cause of the rapture, the rapture will come when you need it and go when you don’t need it. You’re more in control. You’ve been able to maintain your normalcy—and at the same time, you learn how to observe. The … 
  10. King Asoka’s Vow
     … Where are the best places to focus? What is the best way to breathe? What’s the best way to picture the breath to yourself? These are things you do and then you check up on the results. You’re alert to what you’re doing. If you’re not alert to what you’re doing, then you can’t really gauge the results … 
  11. Bowing & Chanting
     … We always say that when you’re meditating and listening to a Dhamma talk at the same time, you want to focus mainly on your meditation. But when you’re chanting, try to think about the meaning of the chants and what that meaning implies. It gives you something to think about. It pulls you away from all the garbage that’s being disseminated … 
  12. The Safety of Jhana
     … You can breathe, learn to focus the mind, let the mind settle down, become unified around the breath, and you’ve got a source of pleasure that’s totally your own and has no drawbacks, carries no blame. It does have its limitations. After all, it is conditioned. And the Buddha says, if you stay attached to it—in other words, if you’re … 
  13. Gradually Sudden
     … If you develop your powers of concentration, develop your mindfulness, and focus on the question of how not to fall for these things, the steps gradually begin to slow down, and you can see them clearly. When you see them clearly, you begin to see how empty many of them are. The mind does have its funny reasons. And one of the reasons it … 
  14. The Size of Your Eyes
     … And when you come to sit and meditate and focus on the breath, the greed and the anger and the aversion – all these other distracting things – are going to be in charge. And then it’s going to be a big battle. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be impossible to settle down, but you’re just making it that much more … 
  15. Boxed Stories
     … Just be in the sense of the body as you feel it from within, and see what you can do to make it as comfortable as possible, through the way you breathe, through the way you focus. Or just relax certain muscles in different parts of the body—the backs of the hands, the tops of the feet—and see if that pattern of … 
  16. You’ll Wish You’d Meditated More
     … Heedfulness doesn’t focus just on the negative. If everything were negative, heedfulness wouldn’t make any difference. The whole point of heedfulness is that you can make a difference through the way you act. You can make a difference through the way you think and talk to yourself. There is safety that can be found. So spend as much time as you can … 
  17. Respect for Concentration
     … How does this breath feel? Is it good enough? If it’s not, well, what would make it better? This helps you focus on what the real issue is, which is that you’ve got to get the mind to settle down in a place where it likes to settle down. So you do your best to create that nice spot. And then your … 
  18. Pleasure on the Middle Way
     … We have the choice as to which ones we’re going to focus on and develop. So as we practice, we make the most of that by being very conscious of what these feelings can do to us. There are some pains that are actually useful for the practice, others that are not. There are pleasures that are useful for the practice. They have … 
  19. Friendship Leading to Seclusion
    We come here to gain some seclusion so that we can focus on what’s going on inside the mind. The texts talk about three kinds of seclusion: bodily seclusion, mental seclusion, and then seclusion from your attachments. Bodily seclusion is when you’re away from other people, as when you go off and sit in your hut, sit in your tent, sit under … 
  20. Gladden, Steady, Release
     … Your best preparation for the future lies in these qualities that get developed as you stay with the breath, as you focus on the breath. This is your safe place. If you stay here long enough, you can develop a sense of ease, a sense of well-being that nobody else can touch. Nobody even has to know that you have it. But you … 
  21. The Problem Is Birth
     … In the beginning, you don’t have to focus on the unattractive side of these things. Just be objective—“What have you got in here?” As the Buddha said, it’s like opening a sack filled with beans and rice and seeing what kind of beans you have, what kind of rice you have. Or you can develop thoughts of goodwill. Get the mind … 
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