Search results for: "Focusing"

  1. Page 97
  2. May I Look After Myself with Ease
     … In the meantime, people who spend all their time focusing on how much they want to straighten out the world, straighten out other people, end up getting frazzled, all pulled out of shape, and generally miserable. This is not to say that we shouldn’t try to make the world a good place, simply that that task comes secondary in importance. Of first importance … 
  3. Days Fly Past
     … What are you doing with what you’ve got right now? His teaching focuses on doing, on action. Everything we know is an action or the result of an action. Even theories are actions. Ideas are actions. Concepts are actions. They’re part of a casual chain. Where are they taking us? Even when you’re meditating, sitting here trying to do absolutely nothing … 
  4. Kamma & Rebirth—A Handful of Leaves
     … In that way, he wasn’t focused just on his own problems. He took a larger perspective. And this larger perspective is what makes the pains of your past kamma much less. The Buddha compares it to a river. You’ve got a lump of salt, and if you throw it in the river, you can still drink the water because the river is … 
  5. Vitakka & Vicara
     … A lot of things that the mind focuses on and gets obsessed with are just like that. You see the consequences but you don’t care. You say, “I’m much more attracted to the taste of northern Thai food. I can put up with the diarrhea.” That’s what you think. So in this case you have to really think about the consequences … 
  6. Ask the Right Questions
     … So stay focused right here as much you can, and as you ask the right questions of what’s right here, you’ll find the happiness you’re looking for. And you reach the point where you can put those questions aside.
  7. Jhāna & Discernment
     … Then find a place in the midst of the body where it feels good to stay, where it’s easy to stay focused, and then stay right there, allowing your awareness to spread through the whole body. The breathing fills the body. The awareness fills the body. Everything feels good together. This is how you get into what’s called jhāna, absorption. It’s … 
  8. Mind Control
     … You’re sitting here focusing on the breath and suddenly find yourself thinking about tomorrow’s meal. Bring your mind back to the breath. That’s it. Remind yourself, “That’s not why we’re here for. We’re not here to think about meals. We’re here to think about the breath.” Sometimes just that is enough. In other words, what has happened … 
  9. Abusing Pleasure & Pain
     … the pain that comes from focusing down too hard, from sitting in an unbalanced posture, or from closing off certain energies in the body to focus more strongly on the spot you want to highlight. You can avoid those problems by thinking “whole body” all from the very beginning, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out. That in … 
  10. Complexities of the Mind
     … What did you do? How did you focus on the breath? Where were you focused? What feelings surrounded the mind as it began to settle down? To what extent can you recreate that? The next time around, you want to try that. See if you can recreate it. Ask yourself, what did it feel like? What were the steps going in? You want to … 
  11. Observe Yourself in Action
     … You’re focused on the breath and talking to yourself about the breath. You have images that you hold in mind about how the breath flows through the body. And of course, there are the feeling tones. In fact, the feeling tones are how the states of jhāna are defined. That’s just one of the links, one of the more important links, in … 
  12. Training the Committee
     … As we’re sitting here focusing on the breath, sometimes there comes a sense of frustration. The mind is not willing to settle down. Or sometimes it’s just not simply in the mood to meditate. This is where it’s convenient to think about the mind as not being just one entity. There are lots of minds in there. It’s like a … 
  13. The Need for Right View
     … got to work on the factors of the path, to develop them. So this is where right view helps you. It gives you a sense of what needs to be done: focusing on what your intentions are right now, what choices you have to make. Right view helps direct those choices in a fruitful direction. Now, as the path develops, you get a greater … 
  14. The Power to Transcend Suffering
     … ss put down in the heart, so we can pull them all out. And one of the tools the Buddha gives us is breath meditation, what we’re doing right now: focusing on the breath as it comes in, as it goes out. Sometimes you wonder, “What does this have to do with understanding suffering?” It has lots to do. One, it gets us … 
  15. The Walls of Ignorance
     … This is why he focuses the Four Noble Truths on the suffering that comes from craving and ignorance. There’s a natural stress in the fact that things change, but our real problem is that we create extra suffering through our craving and ignorance. As long as we have the habit of putting up walls in the mind, we’re in a position where … 
  16. Contemplation of the Body
     … That’s why people have so many excuses for not focusing right here. If you don’t focus right here, what’s going to happen? You’re going to maintain your deep attachment to the body. It’s not going to go away on its own. Some people think they can short circuit the process of attachment by going straight to their sense of … 
  17. A Strong Sense of Self
     … But when the breath starts feeling good in the spot you’ve been focusing on, it’s very easy to drop the breath and focus on the sense of comfort. In that case, you lose the basis of your concentration. So the Buddha’s next recommendation is to breathe in and out aware of the whole body. And it’s good to build up … 
  18. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … You’re focusing primarily on your behavior and not letting the standards of the world take over. There are lots of unskillful things that the world will let you do and turn a blind eye or, sometimes, actually encourage you to do. They really are against the Dhamma, really against the principle of finding true happiness inside. So you want to take the standards … 
  19. Arising & Passing Away
     … So he goes to see the Buddha: “Why did these monks all have such different answers?” And the Buddha replies, “It’s because at the moment when they gained insight, that was the topic they were focused on.” You can focus on any of these topics, but you don’t know beforehand which is the one that’s going to work for you. So … 
  20. Wisdom for Dummies
     … Third, train your mind to develop better and better answers to the question that focuses on what you’re really responsible for: what you can do that will lead to your long-term welfare and happiness. Then take advantage of the tools the Buddha offers so that it’s easier to give up the things that you like doing that are harmful, and to … 
  21. Selfing & Not-selfing
     … You’re not focused so much on the self, but on the skills that you can develop, and your sense of who you are and of what’s possible in this world will grow until you get to something that doesn’t require “world” and doesn’t require “self” at all. That’s when you can put everything down. Although, when you put it … 
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