Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 105
  2. Breath Meditation: Four Sets of Tools
     … As the mind moves from one level of concentration to a higher one and gets more solidly established, you find that a lot of the extra activity you’ve been doing to help protect it, you can drop. You release yourself from the unnecessary things you’ve been doing. In the beginning, as Ajaan Fuang used to say, it’s like pouring cement. You … 
  3. A Slave to Craving
     … It’s not meant to make you hate the body; it’s just to remind you that this is a tool you’ve got, and what’s the best use of this tool? You can use that as an object of concentration. You can use it as a tool for getting some order in your craving, bringing your cravings in line—so that you … 
  4. Succeeding at Happiness
     … Higher than that is a motivation more inclined toward concentration: Giving makes the mind serene; joy and gratification arise. The highest motivation is when it’s purely, as the Buddha said, an ornament of the mind. In other words, you’re no longer feeding off what you’re going to get out of the gift. It’s just a natural expression of the mind … 
  5. A Greater Happiness
     … Even just that level of understanding, that level of awareness in your concentration practice is enough to show you that you don’t have to identify with the body. It’s habitual, we tend to do it, but it’s not necessary. So we’re not contemplating the body because we’re trying to bad-mouth it, simply that because learning to detach yourself … 
  6. Interested in the Breath
     … It’s through working with the breath, trying to train the mind in concentration, that we actually develop discernment as to what’s going on. There’s the discernment that comes from reading books, and there’s the discernment that comes from thinking things through. Those are helpful. They give us a sense of the general direction of the practice; they give us a … 
  7. Everything You Need
     … That’s why the factors of the path are called right, from right view all the way down to right concentration, and their opposites are called wrong. And part of right view is realizing that you are responsible for your actions, and you have the power of choice as to what to do and what not to do. And in every present moment there … 
  8. Honest & Observant
     … That’s another one of the skills you’re going to need to protect yourself from past bad kamma, which is concentration. So you’ve got the virtue of truthfulness, concentration, discernment, the ability not to be overcome by pleasure, not to be overcome by pain, and that unlimited attitude of goodwill for everybody. These are the qualities that will protect you from doing … 
  9. You Can Make a Difference
     … That skill of not being overcome by pleasure or pain relates directly to the practice of concentration. We do try to give rise to a sense of pleasure here, but we don’t want our minds to be overcome by it, and if you’re going to really do the concentration, that’s going to be an important skill to learn. The unskillful approach … 
  10. Perception
     … As you work in concentration, you should be getting some practice in this — because, after all, each of the stages of concentration, all the way up to the dimension of nothingness, is called a perception attainment. For example, when you’re working with the breath, the label of “breath” should be your primary perception. The label you apply to your experience of the body … 
  11. The Stakes Are High
     … When we focus on the breath and try to get the mind to a sense of being one and concentrated, we want to bring things together. At that point, the dividing lines get blurred. Your awareness seems one with the body. The feeling of pleasure seems to be one with the breath. Let it be that way for a while. As these things come … 
  12. Focus on One Thing
     … What in your life still needs improvement? What your life is still lacking, in terms of the precepts, in terms of concentration, in terms of discernment? In other words, what’s lacking in the causes for happiness in your life? The causes that you have control over. So one of the things you can do this evening, in addition to focusing on the breath … 
  13. Outside the Box
     … He goes on to point out that when you’re practicing concentration, you’re taking these inconstant aggregates—body, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness—and you’re trying to make them as constant as possible. You see that they do have their constant side. These things that are stressful do have their pleasant side. You can create a sense of ease in concentration, a … 
  14. Two Guardian Meditations
     … As he said, as he was practicing different practices while trying to find the way to awakening, he developed qualities of conviction, persistence, or energy; mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, as they were required for each path. Then when he taught the path that he discovered was the right path, he recommended these same five qualities because he had found that they really were important … 
  15. In the Eyes of the Wise
     … It has to be augmented by your concentration, because after all, if you’re going to give up the satisfaction of being admired by the people around you, you have to have something inside to keep you nourished. This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration, so that we can have a sense of well-being that we can tap into, that … 
  16. Analyzing Suffering
     … So you start holding on to the states of concentration. You can get very, very attached to them. But there does come a point where you realize that if you’re going to move on in the practice, you have to learn how to let go. But in the course of mastering the concentration, you become a much stronger, much more confident person. You … 
  17. Actualizing Your Potentials
     … An important part of concentration practice is learning how to get out of the mindset that holds on to those issues, to get out of that little world of becoming, and create concentration as a type of becoming instead, in which you’re a different person with different desires, different concerns, so at the very least you have time to put those burdens aside … 
  18. Layers of Selves
     … Can you change those perceptions? Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about trying to see the distinction between body, feeling, and awareness, which are the three components of our concentration. We try to take them apart to see that even though they’re in the same place, they’re different things. You can think of the analogy of the radio waves going through the room here … 
  19. A Sense of Yourself
     … There’s a belief in some places that there’s the path of mindfulness that leads to awakening, and a separate path of concentration that leads to awakening. The path bifurcates, and although either fork takes you to the goal, you have to choose or the other. But the path doesn’t bifurcate—there’s one path. And you’re going to develop your … 
  20. Happiness is a Skill
     … To know the aggregates, the Buddha has us take them and turn them into concentration. This is where a lot of the skill comes in. Look at Ajaan Lee’s teachings on breath meditation. Many of his analogies have to do with people with skills. Many of the Buddha’s analogies for the practice also have to do with people with skills. As you … 
  21. The Uses of Equanimity
     … This is why we practice concentration: to get the mind solid in the face of whatever comes up. But that solidity has to come from learning how to develop strengths: a sense of well-being, a sense of ease inside the body, an ease inside the mind, so as to assist in keeping you solid. The secret to patience or endurance is to focus … 
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