Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 103
  2. The Buddha’s Good News
     … That’s how he himself was able to get beyond, say, the first jhana, and go into the higher levels of concentration, and then to get beyond the levels of concentration itself, through developing his own sensitivities. So, you might say that the training is a sensitivity training. But it’s not about being sensitive to what you just happen to feel or what … 
  3. Hold onto the Breath
     … It’s going to be tough, and you’re going to need some allies.” This is why we practice concentration. All those jhanas are your allies. Mindfulness is your ally. All the good qualities you develop on the path: They’re your allies. And you’ve got to hold onto them, because there’s work that needs to be done, the kind of work … 
  4. Not Just a Witness
     … If there was a course of action he thought was worthwhile, if it seemed likely to bear fruit, he would follow it with all his conviction and persistence and mindfulness and concentration and discernment—in other words, putting all his strength into the practice. When he got results—when he was convinced that these were the best results you could get from that practice … 
  5. Head & Heart
     … This is one of the most important lessons you need in gaining powers of concentration. You’ve made up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath, stay with whatever your meditation object is, and you’ve got to maintain that intention, stick with that intention. So the rule while you’re meditating is that anything else that comes up is inappropriate … 
  6. The Joy of the Battle
     … You have visions of nice states of concentration: bliss, ease, expansive full-body awareness. Yet you find yourself doing battle with the hindrances. Sensual desire comes up, ill will can come up, sloth and torpor, restlessness and anxiety, doubt and uncertainty. Instead of blissing out, you find yourself doing battle with these things. You have to remind yourself that an important part of the … 
  7. Self-Doubt
     … If your concentration crashed, okay, why? What happened? What tripped you up? If you broke one of the precepts, what was the temptation? What was the mind saying to itself when it gave in? You have to watch out for that the next time around, and you have to think up a good response ahead of time—so that the next time that particular … 
  8. Protest Your Virtue & Right View
     … So whether you’re dealing with distractions or actually dealing with the concentration object itself, either way you can start looking at how the mind fabricates around things. You’re getting behind the scenes, and it’s behind the scenes that the ignorance and craving and the clinging and all those other troublemakers are operating. And it’s here that you can clean up … 
  9. Perspectives & Priorities
     … It doesn’t really have a shape at all, outside of the shape your perceptions slap onto it. “And when those moments arise—are they coming at you or are they going away?” These are some of the questions you can ask—if you have the energy, which is one of the reasons why concentration is also an important part of the seclusion: just … 
  10. Good Traditions
     … Try to get sensitive to how the breathing feels inside, because it strengthens your mindfulness even more, it strengthens your alertness even more, and helps you develop qualities like concentration and discernment, all of which are necessary for training the mind so that you can see the potential for happiness that lies inside. Even just with concentration, when the mind begins to settle down … 
  11. A Rite of Passage
     … You can’t trust that everything that comes up in the still mind is reliable, because there are a lot of things that can come up in a concentrated mind that are wrong. But the concentration does give you the ability to step back and question, step back and question, ask the right questions. Don’t be just questioning everything. There are some questions … 
  12. Suppressed Emotions
     … After all, the pleasure that comes from concentration is one of the factors of the path, Right Concentration. It’s something to be developed. As for the pain, that also becomes something you can approach with the tools you’ve learned from your technique. Try breathing through the tension around the pain. If the pain is in your knee, you can think of the … 
  13. The Buddha Defines Wisdom
     … This is why we need to have concentration. This is another reason why concentration is a wise thing to be doing. It gives you a foundation so that you’re not feeling threatened by whatever stress or suffering there is in the mind. You find that at least one part of the mind is not stressed out. It’s not suffering, so you focus … 
  14. Endurance
     … This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration: There can be a sense of well-being, a sense of fullness, rapture, that you can gain as you train the mind to be still, totally independent of outside conditions, and you can learn to feed off that. Ajaan Fuang talks about how he was trapped up in northern Thailand during World War II … 
  15. Control
     … You can make concentration, discernment, all kinds of good qualities grow. It’s up to you. Meditation is devoted to gaining practice in focusing on the right things. Right now, here in this body and mind, you do have the potential for developing concentration and mindfulness. You’ve got the breath coming in and out. You’ve got this mind that thinks and is … 
  16. Thinking About Your Fears
     … These are states of concentration you can work on and dwell in. As you get the mind to settle down, you find that there is a happiness that comes without the body. That way, the fear of leaving the body is not quite so strong. It doesn’t totally do away with it. That fear is going to end only when you gain the … 
  17. Generating Good Energy
     … Because you find that as the mind settles down into different layers of concentration, the way you experience the breath is going to change. When you get the mind into the first jhana, there’s a sense of breath energy suffusing throughout the body. But you’re standing outside of it a little bit, watching over, like the bathman and the bathman’s apprentice … 
  18. Together but Separate
    It’s one of the ironies of the practice that in the practice of right mindfulness and right concentration, we’re trying to create a sense of oneness, bringing things together, whereas the function of right view is to see things as separate. But there’s a natural progression, and it’s not really a paradox at all. Just think about how you ordinarily … 
  19. Overconfidence & Underconfidence
     … In meditation, it comes down to looking how much energy you have, how much energy can you put in right now, so you adjust all the other factors of the practice in terms of your conviction, your mindfulness, your concentration, your discernment to be in tune with the amount of energy you have. For example, tuning your conviction: There are passage where the Buddha … 
  20. Two Types of Dukkha
     … One of the two ways he recommends is that you develop concentration. Have a sense of ease with the breath, rapture with the breath, refreshment with the breath, whatever your topic is. Then, from that, you can settle into equanimity with a sense of well-being. The other way is to gain insight, to see how you’ve been fooled by the mind’s … 
  21. Your Desire to Practice
     … The practice of concentration is designed to give you this sort of all-around perspective. You’re seeing the breath not only at the nose, but you’re also beginning to learn how to sense the breath in the whole body. When there’s a feeling of pleasure, you learn how to feel it not only in one or two spots but let it … 
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