Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 103
  2. Luminous
     … You know that the purpose of this is to get the mind to settle down into concentration. There are some people who don’t like the word “concentration” for samādhi. I don’t understand why, because when the mind settles down properly, it’s not just calm, it’s centered. Everything gathers around one object. Even though your awareness spreads out to fill the … 
  3. A Foundation for Restraint
     … So this involves not only concentration but also some discernment: reminding yourself that this tendency of the mind to look for trouble is what’s causing all the trouble. You have to think about the implications of that until you have a sense of dispassion toward it. The breath helps with that contemplation, giving you not just a place to stay, but a comfortable … 
  4. The Stairway Up
     … Most of us would like to be magically beamed up to a higher level of concentration or a higher level of insight. But it’s often the case that our refusal to look at the situation in our minds right now is what’s preventing concentration and insight from arising. So look at what you’ve got. Look at where you are. Don’t … 
  5. The Truth of Perceptions
     … Depending on the power of your concentration and your ability to stay focused on single perceptions, you find you can get a very strong sense of solidity. Ajaan Fuang had a student one time who, as he was going through the different elements, found that he had a perception that his body was made out of brass. It was that solid and stiff. Okay … 
  6. The Skill of Patience
     … The same with the well-being that comes from concentration: You have to learn how to protect the little things in the beginning. A little sense of ease, a little sense of respite: Learn how to appreciate that. Once you appreciate it, then you can let it spread and allow more of the body to be soothed by it. In this way, you’ve … 
  7. You Can’t Clone Awakening
     … To realize the cessation of suffering you have to develop a path, the factors beginning with right view going all the way through right concentration. One of the big factors is right effort. As the Buddha says, three of the factors of the path circle around all the others: right view, right effort, and right mindfulness. Right view starts out with belief in the … 
  8. One Thing Clear Through
     … There’s the practice of virtue, the practice of concentration, the development of discernment. In every case, there are things we have to give up in order to get something of greater value. With virtue, there are times when you would like to break the precepts—it would be easier, it would be convenient—but the long-term results would not be good. Or … 
  9. Observing the Mind at the Breath
     … And that reduces the level of stress in your concentration. So this is what you want to look for: the rise and the fall in the level of stress. That’s what you look for to see your mind. It’s hard to focus directly on the mind. But you focus on the level of stress in your concentration, its rise and fall, and … 
  10. Honesty & Integrity
     … In these really nice open states of concentration, nice open states of ease and well-being in the mind, is it fashioned is it not fashioned? When you can see the element of fashioning, it’s still concentration. There’s still an intentional element here. You’ve got to work through that. When you have that kind of willingness, when you have that kind … 
  11. Choices that Matter
     … You’ve got to deal with them somehow, so you take what powers of concentration you have, what powers of discernment you have, and you put them to use. It’s in this way that they get developed. It’s like when you’re hungry. You look in the refrigerator, and the food is a little bit spoiled but not so badly spoiled that … 
  12. Our Sense of Self
     … mindfulness, alertness, and concentration. Now, this goes against our old habits, so it’s going to require effort, especially in the beginning because you’re rusty at these new skills. It takes it takes time to work through them, to develop them, to keep coming back to them. But it’s an effort that’s well spent. Right effort doesn’t mean middling effort … 
  13. Dedicating Merit
     … When the mind is really concentrated, those currents can be focused and strong. If you send currents out to other people, and if those people are sensitive, they can pick them up. One evening when I was meditating, I happened to think about one of the supporters of the temple. She was going through a bad time, so I sent some metta in her … 
  14. Strategies for Happiness
     … We’re learning ways of perceiving the breath energy in the body that create stronger and stronger states of concentration. We’re learning to direct our thoughts and evaluate the breath — that’s fabrication — and to be consciously aware of all this. So you’ve got all five aggregates here turned into a path. There will be a sense of identification with the path … 
  15. Over-informed
     … Try to really settle in and get some nourishment out of the concentration, because that’s what keeps you going until you get more sensitive. Then you begin to see, “Well, there’s this thing that I do that I don’t have to do, and I can get the mind even more still, more solid when I stop doing it.” In this way … 
  16. The Adventure in the Present
     … This is one of the reasons why we spend so much time practicing concentration, because this is directly a training of your intentions. You intend to stay with the breath and then you keep intending to maintain that intention. In the course of that, you see other intentions coming up. That’s the whole point. You want to see those intentions, because in the … 
  17. What’s Relative, What’s Constant
     … enthusiasm; generosity—generosity in the sense of really giving themselves to their field; unbroken concentration; and playfulness. Well, those correspond to the bases for success. Enthusiasm corresponds to chanda, desire. Generosity, in the sense of really giving yourself to the practice, corresponds to persistence, energy, effort. Unbroken concentration corresponds to intentness. And playfulness is a part of your using your powers of analysis: trying … 
  18. Success on the Path
     … Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration: These are all good things to do. The Buddha is not asking you to do anything that you’d be ashamed of, not asking you to do anything that’s going to be harmful to anybody. He’s asking you to develop good, honest, upright qualities of the … 
  19. Caught in a Thorn Bush
     … Putting it into the fire is an image for effort; blowing on it is an image for concentration; and looking at it is an image for equanimity. Working with the gold requires a balance of all three: If you simply left it in the fire, it would burn up. If you simply looked at it, nothing would happen. If you blew on it, nothing … 
  20. Loss
     … And the Buddha said, “Well, did Sariputta take virtue away with him? Did he take concentration away? Did he take discernment away? Did he take release away?” No, all the important things in life were still there. The important possibilities, the important opportunities were still there. And the Buddha continued, “Did I ever tell you that anything born will never leave you? Things that … 
  21. Selfing & Not-selfing
     … Then as your concentration gets more solid, you get more sensitive, what was good enough before is not quite so good enough after all. Or you can improve it. Breathe in ways that are more subtle, breathe in ways that are more satisfying. You work with what you’ve got and move it in the right direction.” As for who is the you that … 
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