Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Training the Mind to Train the Mind… Learn how to make that your default reaction, so that whenever something—anything—threatens to come up while you’re focusing on the breath, threatening to entangle you and pull you away, you can cut through the tangles pretty quickly. This doesn’t settle those issues once and for all, but it does enable you to clear some space in the mind where you …
- Mental Stirrings… You start out in that process by actually not paying attention to the thought and by paying attention instead to the breath, focusing on the breath as your object of concentration. The thoughts that come into the mind you leave aside. Just don’t pay them any attention. As soon as you’ve noticed that you’ve paid attention to them, come right back …
- A Rite of Passage… I kept thinking, “Here I am, just focusing on my own breath, being very selfish.” But I began to realize that the voices in my head that I’d come to identify with were voices I’d picked up from different people. This voice was the voice of my mother, that voice was the voice of my father, telling me I shouldn’t be …
- Feeding your Attack Dogs… As you look and listen and think in the course of the day, ask yourself, “Is this really helping in the practice, or am I feeding these attack dogs?” Years back, when Ajaan Suwat was asked about how to bring meditation into the course of your daily life, he focused on the issue of precepts and virtue: Sila is the Pali word. Ordinarily when …
- Life in the Context of the Practice… of our actions, our intentions, which are shaped by our views. Once he saw the pattern, then he could focus in on the present moment to see the same pattern there. Focusing on the larger pattern took a lot of the personal sting out of the particular problem or issue in the present moment. The same applies to you. After thinking about the happiness …
- Even Animals Can Be Trained… Well, choose whichever of those spots that seems easiest to stay focused on. Then think of the energy flowing smoothly out from that spot, so that there’s no obstacle, nothing getting in the way. And try to notice where in the body you’re especially sensitive to the flow of the energy. For some people, it’s right around the heart. For other …
- The Kamma of Concentration… The editor of the magazine said he was surprised that I’d focused on kamma as the missing factor. He was expecting something more along the lines of emptiness, say, or the bodhisattva vow that you shouldn’t be looking for happiness anyhow. But I was surprised that he was surprised, because from the very beginning, the teaching was all about happiness, and it …
- Emotion… When there’s lust, exactly what are you looking at? What are you focusing on? What are you talking about and what are you saying? What narratives are you concocting that make the object of your lust appealing? You can start with your own body. There are times when you hate your body; there are times when you love your body. Okay, notice what …
- Working at Home… The four noble truths are a problem-solving approach, focused on the problem of stress and suffering as a whole, and offering a solution to the problem. As you first start applying this approach to the obvious issues in your life, you learn to develop maturity around the application of this teaching. The work then gets more and more subtle, to the point where …
- Breath, Tranquility, & Insight… But what you really find as you try to focus on the breath is that you’re working on many of the processes at the same time, simply that you’re going to be focusing on different aspects. When you’re with the breath, feelings and mind-states are right there. When you shift your attention to feelings, it’s very much connected with …
- The Dhamma Eye… You’re focused on the breath so you can anchor the mind in the present moment, because if you want to understand your own mind, you have to watch it in the present moment. If you try to watch it in the past or in the future, what are you going to watch? You watch your memories, you watch your anticipations, and you don …
- Fear of Concentration… It’s simply that, by focusing on the breath, things get more and more calm, more and more still. You’ve got to spread your awareness to fill the whole body. Otherwise, you’re going into what they call “delusion concentration,” where you just zone out. Here it’s helpful to have the perception in mind that there’s breath energy filling the body …
- A Warrior’s Strengths… If anything, “I’m a meditator, I’m the person focusing on the breath,” but these other thoughts are something else. Learn not to identify with them. When they’re too strong to deal with, you just let them go, let them go, let them go. No matter how enticing they may be seem, how real or important they may seem, you have to …
- The Buddha’s Eight Principles… You don’t have to go squirming and wiggling and trying to get more, because the more time you spend on trying to fix up the world around you to be comfortable, the less you’re focusing on your mind. Now, it’s important to realize that contentment doesn’t spread to everything. Some people think that contentment means that whatever happens in your …
- Justice vs. Skillfulness… Instead of running around trying to right all the sufferings caused by the injustices of the world or the structure of society, he focused on one type of suffering: the suffering we each cause ourselves, through our own craving, through our own clinging, through our own ignorance. When we put an end to that suffering, we don’t suffer from anything outside at all …
- Becoming… And the reason the Buddha focuses on these and not on other issues is because the nature of action is important for understanding why we suffer and how we can stop suffering. There’s the kamma that leads to suffering; there’s the kamma that leads to its end. So we’re here trying to understand what action is all about, what action does …
- How to Be Alone… What kind of mood would take me further?” There’s a passage where the Buddha talks about a meditator who finds, as he’s focusing on the breath, that there’s a fever in his mind. So he needs to change his topic for the time being, to find something more inspiring, more uplifting. That could include reflecting on the Buddha, the Dhamma, the …
- Practicing for Dispassion… It’s the acts of discernment focused on the drawbacks that help give rise to dispassion for all the things that would pull you back, pull you back. So we practice virtue, concentration, and discernment, for the sake of dispassion. That’s when we’re using them rightly. We don’t practice virtues to think that we’re going to be better than other …
- Pride in Your Craft… This is why the breath-meditation method of Ajaan Lee taught focuses on breathing in a comfortable way. At the same time, you learn from what you’re doing. You can observe your breath and you can learn from uncomfortable breathing. Fortunately, there’s no moral stigma attached to the fact you’ve been breathing in an uncomfortable way. It’s simply a practical …
- A Committed Relationship… And as you’re focusing on the breath, learning how to meditate, you have to make some other sacrifices in life as well. It’s the same as when you’re having a relationship with another person. You’ve got to give up some aspects of your relationships with other people. If you really want to get to know the breath, you have to …
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