Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 97
  2. Effortlessness Through Effort
     … What does it need, in terms of the breath? Get used to looking at the particulars as you focus on the breath. And then you’ll start getting used to looking at the particulars of the thoughts that pull you away. This will take a while, which is why we practice. We have to spend so much time because the mind is very complex … 
  3. The Awful Truth
     … So right here is the point where you have to focus, because this is the important point: how your mind is moving around right now, and the skill with which it’s moving around. We’ve got the meditation technique as an initial guide: Stay with the breath. If the mind wanders off, bring it back to the breath. In the beginning, you want … 
  4. Skillful Distress
     … The way out is to focus on renunciate distress as a motivating factor, like the string on the bow of a bow and arrow. You pull it back. There’s more tension, but then when you release the string, the arrow propelled by it goes far. If you don’t pull the string back, or if you don’t even string the bow, the … 
  5. Recollecting the Buddha
     … and at that point, when you need your meditation object most, it’s not going to be there.” But that ignores the point that when the Buddha teaches breath meditation, the focus is not just on the breath. Breath is, of course, the bodily fabrication kaya-sankhara, but his instructions also tell you to be sensitive to citta-sankhara or mental fabrication, which are … 
  6. Indulge in the Pleasure of Jhana
     … a boundary between the two of them? In other words, your body is willing to have you be aware of it and it’s not going to freeze up when you focus your awareness on it, and your mind is willing to let the body come in. It’s willing to be very, very sensitive to it. Some people find that it’s easier … 
  7. All-around Alertness
     … Where do you not ordinarily focus on breath sensations in the body? Have you ever spent much time with your right flank, or your left flank, or your tailbone? Give them some time, give them some space, give them some attention. They might have some potentials you haven’t thought of before. Then, from the sense of well-being in the body, it begins … 
  8. Fire
     … Then when things really are connected, all you have to do is to focus on one spot and develop a feeling of connectedness throughout the whole body. You don’t have to keep tracing things here, tracing things there. You’re just present in one spot, and the awareness spreads from that spot. Ajaan Lee’s image is of cutting a whole series of … 
  9. Cleaning Out the Stables
     … As we go through life, we focus on wanting this, wanting that, and then getting a sense of the different worlds we would have to inhabit in order to gain those things and the different kinds of people we would have to become to get them. Sometimes we go for the object and sometimes we decide it’s not worth it. But over time … 
  10. The Long-Distance Meditator
     … So you need this quality of continuity in your focus, continuity in your attention, if you want to see the things going on inside. After all, everything you need to know is happening right here. It’s simply that you’re not watching carefully; you allow yourself to get distracted. The mind puts down a curtain, and you’re content to be blinded to … 
  11. The Gift of Discernment
     … So it’s by getting you to focus your attention inside, on the activities of the mind, having the mind watch its own activities: That was the Buddha’s gift. That was his primary expression of compassion so that you *can *look after yourself with ease.
  12. To Depend on Yourself
     … That goodwill and compassion will focus you on the problem of how to put an end to suffering, which points you to right view. So those two discernment factors help each other along. As you exercise them together, they get stronger and stronger. So as Ajaan Suwat used to say, if you don’t believe anybody, at least believe the Buddha, because his intentions … 
  13. The Buddha’s Compassion
     … his teachings. Now, for us, we don’t know. As long as we’re practicing and haven’t encountered any of these things, we just file them away for future reference. Focus on what you’re doing right now, but file them away with a sense of appreciation that there is someone who actually went to all the trouble to discover all this and … 
  14. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … Was it not comfortable enough, or was it so comfortable that you began to lose focus? Be careful about the comfort that comes up in the meditation when you finally get a sense of ease. Don’t just wallow in it. Remember you’ve got work to do. So you’re going to use the ease to give the mind a more solid foundation … 
  15. Cleansing the Mind
     … Our society makes us focus on things we don’t have, the things we lack, to spur us on to work harder. But the Buddha has us spur ourselves on with goodwill, compassion, and empathetic joy. Empathetic joy’s not to make you feel lazy. You see other people doing the good things leading to happiness, and that should be an inspiration for you … 
  16. Doubting the Buddha
     … As when you focus on the breath: Try to be very sensitive to how the breathing feels, figuring out which way of breathing feels right coming in, feels right going out, and then try to maintain that. It’s the maintaining that’s going to let this very ordinary-feeling breath become more and more refreshing. Try to breathe in a way that doesn … 
  17. Elemental Energy
    When we get in touch with the breath, we’re getting in touch with the spot where the mind and the body meet, which makes it a really good place to focus. You look in one direction, and there are physical events; you look in the other direction, there are mental events. You see how they come through the breath to each other, how … 
  18. Frustrated Desires
     … One lesson you could learn from that is that you’ve got a goal to have a quiet mind, and if you try to focus on the goal, you are going to get frustrated. So don’t have a goal about a quiet mind, just let it naturally settle down on its own, if it’s going to. But again, that’s not what … 
  19. Arising & Passing Away
     … This is one of the reasons why the Buddha has us focus on just arising and passing away; what’s immediately apparent, immediately present to the mind without going into the stories of whether there’s something behind it out there, or something experiencing it, or some agent in here that’s experiencing it and reacting to it. Just look at the sensations coming … 
  20. Acceptance Isn’t the Issue
     … That’s what the Buddha would focus on. Think of him coming from his awakening: One of the first things he saw as he surveyed the world was that beings were on fire with the fires of passion, aversion, and delusion. So he didn’t see it as his duty to accept them. He saw it as his duty to make a change so … 
  21. Something Good to Cling to
     … Like right now, as we’re meditating, we focus on the breath in the present moment and see what we can do to make it comfortable, to have a sense of well-being right here. The pleasure of the breath may not be all that great, but the pleasure of a mind that’s able to settle down in a place that it knows … 
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