Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 101
  2. Strength from Within
     … conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. You notice that the three middle strengths there are basically identical with the section of the noble path that deals with meditation practice. So the meditation, of course, will be our real strength. But in addition, you need conviction and discernment. Conviction here means believing that your actions really are important. Ajaan Lee, when he was giving a … 
  3. Hold a Mirror to Your Mind
     … A similar principle applies when you’re getting into deeper states of concentration. There’s a strong tendency—especially when you get to states of endless space, endless consciousness—to interpret them in a metaphysical way, that you’ve reached ultimate reality, the Ground of Being, or the source of all things. But looking in those terms is to ask the wrong questions. The … 
  4. Training Your Intentions
     … So we work on those five hindrances, and concentration is the means. The texts often talk about how you have to get rid of the five hindrances first and then get the mind concentrated. Actually, it’s in the process of trying to get the mind to settle down that you run into these hindrances as hindrances. Otherwise, they just slosh around in the … 
  5. Right Speech
     … What you’re trying to do as you meditate is to learn how to make this chattering, which is often a problem, actually part of the path, an element of your concentration that helps the mind to settle down with a sense of interest, a sense of comfort, a sense of wellbeing. Then as the wellbeing gets more and more firmly established and the … 
  6. Listening to the True Dhamma
     … This is a quality of right concentration. When you’re concentrated on the talk, you can hear it clearly, you can understand it clearly. That makes it even easier for it to have a good impact on your mind. That good impact also depends on the second added quality, which is appropriate attention—yoniso manasikāra. This basically means asking the right questions. Here, the … 
  7. Fabricating Equanimity
     … Even though you’re not yet fully in concentration, you’re trying to bring the mind to a state of solidity with that perception of earth. And as long as that perception is helpful, you hold onto it. If earth gets too solid, too constricting, remember that the Buddha also mentioned to make your mind like water, make it like wind, make it like … 
  8. In Your Right Mind at Death
     … If you can develop the pleasure and rapture that come from concentration, you provide yourself with an alternative to sensuality. You don’t feel so pulled to go for sensual pleasures of any kind. Otherwise, you get easily trapped. Ajaan Mun talks about remembering that he’d been reborn as a dog for 500 lifetimes in a row. It’s hard to imagine him … 
  9. Genuine Happiness
     … It’s one thing to read about concentration and about wisdom and discernment, to decide that they’re nice things. But to actually know them in the mind: That requires that you train the mind, in the same way that you train an animal so that it can live in your house. Sometimes you have to be gentle with it, sometimes you have to … 
  10. The Buddha’s Narrative
     … developing mindfulness, alertness, concentration, ardency, and all the skillful qualities of the mind. He was able to bring his mind to good solid concentration. Then he started asking questions: Was this his only life or were there other lives? In other words, is life preceded by nothing or is it preceded by other lives, is it followed by other lives? He remembered back many … 
  11. Genuine Goodness
     … That’s where the practice of concentration turns into a way of developing discernment: As you try to figure out what ways to bring the mind to stillness, you begin to see how things work in the mind. A lot of things in your life that seemed very solid and set begin to seem a little bit more fluid. Certain problems you had in … 
  12. Evaluating Your Practice
    Evaluating Your Practice January 12, 2012 When you try to bring the mind into concentration, there are two mental faculties that do most of the work. One is directed thought, and the other is evaluation. You bring your mind to the object, or as they say in Thai, you lift the mind to the object, you lift the object to the mind. This means … 
  13. Judging Your Meditation
     … It strengthens your powers of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, and allows you to tap into sources of happiness and well-being that you might not be able to tap into otherwise. Yet often, when you begin to meditate, you’re told that there’s no such thing as good meditation or bad meditation, that you’re not supposed to judge it. How do you … 
  14. Action & the End of Action
     … It’s one of the stages of concentration. And you need to see it as something you do—it’s something you’ve fabricated. That’s where the real insight is: seeing how you put things together, and how the way you put them together does cause stress and disturbance—and how you can learn how not to do that. If you’re primed … 
  15. The Buddha’s Investment Strategy
     … This way you give rise to discernment as well, leading to concentration. These two qualities – discernment and concentration, as they’re supported by mindfulness and alertness – bring the mind to greater and greater stillness, greater and greater clarity. So as we’re working with the breath, we’re not just working with the breath. We’re also gaining insight into the processes in the … 
  16. Choices Now & at Death
     … But if you stay with the breath, you can get the mind into a state of concentration. The concentration can give rise to discernment. Discernment will help you see through all the processes by which desire creates things, and you get to the point where you can go beyond. Whereas if you wander off, you’ll end up just coming back to the same … 
  17. What It All Comes From
     … Based on the joy, there’s concentration. Concentration leads to discernment. And discernment, in turn, leads to release. So, you have to have the proper response to your suffering, which is that you’re confident there’s a way out—and that you, as a conscious agent, can succeed in following that way. We see this in the two main emotions that are talked … 
  18. Smart About Lust
     … The first step in overcoming lust is learning how to develop good strong concentration, realizing that there is a sense of well-being that can be immediate, visceral, right here, as you spread feelings of ease and refreshment through the body simply by the way you breathe, simply by the way you relate the rest of the body to the areas where it’s … 
  19. When Things Regress
     … The states of concentration you used to have, you don’t have anymore, or at least you don’t have them right now. The important principle is that you don’t let the mind get worked up about any of those things. Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about the early years of his practice when his mind would settle down in ways it hadn’t … 
  20. The Dignity of Restraint
     … People sometimes wonder why they can’t get their minds to concentrate. It’s because they’re not willing to give up other interests, even for the time being. A thought comes and you just go right after it without checking to see where it’s going. This idea comes, that sounds interesting, that looks intriguing, you’ve got a whole hour to think … 
  21. The Six Properties
     … You can do this at any stage in the concentration, although it’s most effective when the breath is still. At that point the body feels like a cloud of mist, little points of sensation, and each little sensation has the potential to be any one of these four properties. When your sense of the body is reduced to what the French would call … 
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