Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 107
  2. Wisdom Through Training
     … You start meditating, develop strong states of concentration, you can even develop psychic powers from the meditation, but that, too, isn’t proof. As the Buddha said, these are just footprints and scratch marks. The real proof is when you begin to see that there’s something inside the mind that’s free from suffering, there’s a dimension in the mind that’s … 
  3. The Ten Priorities
     … virtue, concentration, and discernment. This is the path we have to follow. It’s not a path just for some people. It’s for everyone, across the board. As the Buddha said, in any teaching where you find the noble eightfold path, that’s where you’ll find awakened people. In any teaching where no noble eightfold path is taught, there are no awakened … 
  4. Tuning-in to the Breath
     … So even though this is just training in concentration, there’s also a lot of discernment involved. As the Buddha once said, both tranquillity and insight are required for getting good strong states of absorption. And he never talked about insight without framing it in terms of kamma, in terms of the skillfulness of what you’re doing. So this practice is what lays … 
  5. Invest in the Breath
     … What are you going to depend on as your body begins to erode away, as your mental capabilities begin to erode away? If you’ve been developing qualities like mindfulness and alertness, concentration and discernment, you can deal with these problems with a lot more skill, equanimity, and patience, or at least do your best to work around them. When the Buddha talks about … 
  6. The Skill of Restraint
     … In mastering this skill, it helps to have concentration as a foundation. The texts often give restraint of the senses as a prerequisite for concentration, but as is so often the case in the Buddha’s teachings, the two qualities actually help each other along. Try to notice when you look at something: Does your attention go flowing out? Do you lose your sense … 
  7. Varieties of Mindfulness
     … If you’re going to work on concentration, you’ll want to stay on one level as consistently as possible. This is why concentration practice is best done alone or in areas where you don’t have to interact much with other people. But you also need to learn how to balance it with interactions with other people in a peaceful way, so you … 
  8. Views & Vision
     … If you’ve read any of the texts, you know that when the mind gets into deep concentration, the sentences and dialogues that go on in the mind get pared down really far to the point where there’s just a mental note, like “infinite space,” the sañña of “infinite consciousness.” That’s all the talking that’s going on in the mind. But … 
  9. Equanimity Isn’t Everything
     … To bring the mind into concentration requires perceptions as well. You need to have a certain perception of the breath, a certain perception of the body to get into concentration and stay there. At the very least, you need to have an image in your mind or a coded sensation that says, “Okay, this is your focal point. This is where you’re going … 
  10. Common Sense
     … This is why concentration is such a central part of the path. It’s something you intentionally do. You intend to stay with the breath and then you intend to stick with that intention. You keep reinforcing that one intention: You’re going to stay right here with the breath, you’re going to let the breath be comfortable. And then you learn to … 
  11. A Good Place to Stay
     … So this helps your concentration. You also find that it helps your virtue. A lot of times, we do unskillful things because there’s a thirst for pleasure “of any kind, right now.” That’s what the mind says, and then we end up doing unskillful things to please it. Well, here the breath is giving you a sense of ease you can tap … 
  12. Four Bases of Success
     … developing right view, right resolve, all the way down through right concentration. Right now, we’re working on the factors of right concentration, which require effort, mindfulness, and the ability to get the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being. You think about what you’re doing here and evaluate how you’re doing it. Meditation does require some thought. It … 
  13. Battling Negativity
     … in terms of the concentration, the ease, the well-being that comes from getting the mind to settle down with the breath and getting the breath to fill the body. That’s only one of many allies that you can call on, one of many skills that you can master so that you can unlearn your old habits and replace them with skillful ones … 
  14. Thoughts About Thinking
     … You can’t just concentrate your way to awakening or jhana your way to awakening. You get the mind still and then you have to develop not only tranquility but also insight. And insight is not just a technique where you note things. Insight is where you figure things out inside. Know when to think. Know when not to think. Know how to think … 
  15. A Strong Mind
     … You don’t necessarily have to think about, say, mindfulness or alertness or discernment or concentration. But those things develop as you stay focused on the breath. When you wander off, you’ve got to know how to come back to the breath. You have to know how to be sensitive to the breath in the present moment. It’s really not that hard … 
  16. Willing to Learn
     … Develop the qualities of mind—whatever’s needed in terms of concentration or insight—so that you can really look at suffering long and hard. Look at stress long and hard to see what’s causing it. Look at each instance. Even if you don’t find the one thing that’s going to get rid of all suffering—the big block, the huge … 
  17. Expanding Your Skill Set
     … That’s the basic theme of your concentration. Actually, mindfulness and concentration work together. While you’re with the breath, ardency means trying to be as sensitive as possible to how the breathing feels. Once it feels good in the spot you’ve chosen as your main point of focus, you can explore how it feels in other parts of the body as well … 
  18. The Grass at the Gate
     … Many times when we read the descriptions of Right Concentration it seems far away, but everything we need is right here. When Ajaan Lee talks about comfortable breath sensations and uncomfortable ones, we already have comfortable breath sensations in at least some parts of the body. There’s already the potential for a sense of fullness, a sense of ease in different parts of … 
  19. Getting Yourself
     … When he found the right path, when he was practicing deep concentration getting the mind into the various levels of jhana and gaining the different insights that came from that concentration, whatever pleasure arose in his mind, he didn’t let that overcome his mind, either. He was closely keeping watch on his mind, and only when he’d straightened out his mind did … 
  20. Not Crushed by the World
     … The consistency helps you turn your mindfulness into concentration. And your ability to think strategically is going to help you deal wisely with the strategies of the defilements, because they’re pretty clever. They don’t sit down and argue with you reasonably. They get into your breath. They squeeze your nerves. They whisper. They disappear. They threaten. They’ve got lots of tricks … 
  21. In Alignment
     … right concentration with its requisites of all the factors of the path. This evening I was looking at a little video clip on Buddhism in Thailand, and the narrator was a guy from England who at the very end of the show says, “Obviously, Buddhism in Thailand is facing a crisis point; on the one hand, there is rampant materialism, and on the other … 
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