Search results for: "Concentration"
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- 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 …
- Body & Mind from Within… And you do that by following the path composed of virtue, concentration, and discernment. Part of concentration is right effort, when you make up your mind that if something unskillful comes up in the mind, you’re going to get rid of it. You’re going to make sure it doesn’t come back. You’re going to replace it with skillful attitudes, and …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Safe Haven… This is why we try to bring the mind to concentration. That’s our safe place inside. That’s our safe haven. You can focus on the breath, you can focus on the word buddho, whatever you find calming and easeful and pleasant. The breath is good because it helps work with the whatever sense of dis-ease you might have in the body …
- In Earnest… The five strengths—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—are healthy food for the mind, food that teaches it to be more and more independent, less and less reliant on its old kinds of feeding, its old kinds of food. When you think of the image of feeding—that it’s not just you gobbling down stuff but you’re also on fire—it makes …
- The Patience of a Hunter… You can do the concentration. This is why we give those instructions. But you can’t do insights. There’s no direct guarantee that if you focus in a certain way, the insights will have to come right away. But you can put your mind in a state where it’s ready to notice them when they do come. It’s still enough so …
- To See What You’re Doing… We’re practicing right concentration, which begins with right mindfulness. As the chant said just now, keep focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The body in and of itself means the body simply taken on its own terms: what you’ve got right here, right now. You’re not …
- Technique & Attitude… Whatever the technique, as long as you find that it helps you get the mind still and centered in the present, and sensitive to what’s going on right here and now, it’s a useful concentration technique. But there’s more to the meditation than just technique. There’s also the attitude behind it. We have a tendency here in the West to …
- Truthfulness… Up until that point, if you find things that seem to work, you seem to get to certain levels of concentration that sound like what you’ve read in the books. When that happens, put a Post-it note on it, that it sounds like what you’ve read about. Sometimes you’re right, and sometimes it turns out the you overestimated or underestimated …
- Possessiveness… Develop thoughts of compassion instead, so that you can get the mind into concentration. Use that knowledge of fabrication: You focus on your breath; you talk to yourself about the breath to adjust it in ways that make it a good place to be; you focus on perceptions of the breath and perceptions of the mind that allow you to settle down with feelings …
- Nothing Wrong with Right & Wrong… There’s right view, right resolve, all the way down through right concentration. But those factors are also paired with wrong view, wrong resolve, wrong concentration: “right” in the sense that they lead to the results you want, the end of suffering; “wrong” in the sense that they don’t lead to those results. So there’s nothing wrong with right and wrong. It …
- The Discernment of a True Person… How much food is enough? How much sleep is enough? How much staying with tranquility is enough? To what extent do you have to start working on insight? At what point does the insight work become counterproductive?—in other words, you don’t have the strength of concentration to carry it through. Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about this a lot. He says that you …
- Merit & Skill… The path has eight factors, or can be divided into three types of training—training in virtue, training in concentration, training in discernment. Meritorious activity has three kinds—generosity, virtue, and meditation. The Buddha was famous for making lists of all the different qualities that were required in the practice. There’s never a list of ones, which means that as you practice you …
- In the Elephant’s Footprint… That self can take you all the way through the levels of concentration and get you started on discernment, but then you come to a point where you realize that one of the actions you’re doing that’s causing stress and suffering is clinging to an idea of self. You create a sense of self. The Buddha calls it ahaṅkāra mamaṅkāra: “I-making …
- Cheerfully Ardent… virtue, concentration, discernment. The release that comes—that’s going to be the result. You don’t do release, but to get the path to be the middle path you have to try, make mistakes, and be willing to have a cheerful attitude about your mistakes. Don’t see them as failures. See them as learning opportunities. When you’ve learned something that doesn …
- Only Natural… When the Buddha talks about directed thought and evaluation as one of the factors of right concentration, if you’re not familiar with what he’s referring to, it sounds as if you’re going to have to do something new you’ve never done before. But the phrase, “directed thought and evaluation,” is simply another name for talking to yourself. So now, as …
- Head, Heart, & Gut… keeping your mind calm and getting it into concentration so that when the going gets tough, you’re not surrounded only by tough options. A sense of well-being that you can develop, as you get the mind into concentration, can give you a place to stay where you have a sense of strength, where you can withstand the parts of the mind that …
- There’s Work to Be Done… Remember, to get into right concentration, you have to use directed thought and evaluation. You have to evaluate the breath, while you keep your thoughts focused here on the breath. So there’s work to be done. The Buddha recommends three qualities that you bring to the breath. One is that you’re mindful. You keep remembering to stay with the breath each time …
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