Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Deconstruct Your Emotions
     … That helps get you into concentration. Two, it sensitizes you to things going on in the mind that you might miss otherwise. Some people think of concentration as being a blocking out—and even though there are certain things that you’re blocking out right now, you do have to become very sensitive to the energy in the body. And that’s directly related … 
  3. Look Around
     … This is why even the concentration we’re practicing is a full-body awareness. If you get too narrowly focused on your one spot, then there are a lot of things in the mind that get hidden. What you see in that one spot may be very clear, but a lot of other things connected to it can get hidden. As with any spotlight … 
  4. Maintaining Goodwill
     … That’s the best use for this concentration, because when you stop creating suffering for yourself, you don’t feel inclined to create suffering for anybody else. The reason we make life miserable for other people is because we feel threatened, along with this attitude: “As long as I’m suffering, let everybody else suffer too.” Or: “If I’m suffering, I don’t … 
  5. Unskillful Habits
     … You don’t have to wait before your concentration is really, really good before you can do this. It’s good practice in advance. It’s like going down to the gym. As you exercise bit by bit by bit, you get stronger. If you’ve got work that needs to be done, you use the body you’ve got. You don’t wait … 
  6. Feeding Frenzy: Dependent Co-arising
     … Take the sensations you feel in the legs and the arms, etc., and try to fashion them into a basis for concentration, a place where the mind can stay, that you can take as your dwelling. The sense of ease and fullness you can develop through the breath can help to alleviate your thirst. It gives you something good and nourishing to feed on … 
  7. Facing Your Responsibilities
     … You develop a greater sense of unity, not only in getting the mind to stay with the breath in a state of good strong concentration, but also in getting more and more of your mind on the side of wanting to do this. That’s what right effort is all about, learning how to generate desire to do what’s skillful and to drop … 
  8. Learning from What You Do
     … So you want to work on the concentration. This kind of desire is part of the path because it leads to good results. It’s something to be developed. Each of the four noble truths requires not only knowing about the truth but also developing a skill in how to handle that particular truth. Stress is something you want to comprehend. Its cause is … 
  9. The Path to the Top
     … Conviction is like one of the rafters, as are persistence, mindfulness, and concentration. Only when you have discernment, which is the ridge pole, is the frame for the roof secure. So the only way you can know the truth of the teaching is to put it to the test until discernment arises—and it has to be a rigorous test. As Ajaan Lee once … 
  10. Looking at Your Life
     … There’s a passage where the Buddha compares bringing the mind to the breath, bring it to concentration, to taking the mind up to a tower where you’re above the ordinary turmoil of things. You start seeing the larger picture. In terms of the body, it’s good place to check out how the body feels inside, because the breath is the main … 
  11. Be Bigger Than Your Pains
     … developing those skills—the mindfulness, the concentration, and the discernment. This larger state of mind allows you to be bigger than your sufferings, bigger than your pains, so try to keep this enlarged perspective in mind. One of the Buddha’s terms for the mind in concentration is mahaggatam cittam, the expanded mind or the enlarged mind. You can see things from a larger … 
  12. Appropriate Attention
     … It takes concentration, it takes mindfulness, it takes alertness, all of which are qualities we have to develop. Everybody goes through the process of finding that you focus on the breath and then all of a sudden you’re someplace else—as if someone had come up with a big sack and put it over your head, dragged you off, and then dumped you … 
  13. Virtuous Beginnings
     … But when combined with concentration, discernment, all the other factors of the noble eightfold path, virtue turns into a noble quality. It turns into one of the aspects of the path that leads us outside of the circle, to true freedom. So it’s a good beginning. And even though all of us here practice the precepts to some extent, there’s always more … 
  14. Noble Conversation
     … Some of them have to do with meditation—the practice of concentration, discernment, release, and knowledge and vision of release—and people like to talk about their ideas about the advanced stages. But some more basic topics are actually more helpful to get you started and get you on the right foot from the very beginning—and to keep you on track. The list … 
  15. People Suffer from Their Thinking
     … The body may die, but the mind doesn’t have to suffer with the body’s death if you’re mindful enough, if you have enough concentration, if you have enough alertness and discernment. So work on building these qualities now, while you can. These are some of the ways in which thinking can actually help you. It gives you the right attitude. The … 
  16. Death Is All Around
     … You use your perception of the breath to focus your concentration. You use your directed thought and evaluation, which are thought constructs, to keep your mind on the breath and to evaluate the breath. Then you’re aware of all these things. That’s taking these five aggregates and turning them into your path. They may not be yours, they may not be you … 
  17. Don’t Just Do It
     … You have to remember that we’re here to gain insight by concentrating the mind. In other words, we’re doing one thing that will lead to something else closely related—insight—but the insights come only if you’re paying careful attention. This is where the reflection comes in. We’re reflecting on our actions. Think of the Buddha’s teaching to Rāhula … 
  18. Looking after Yourself with Ease
     … Then we work on the concentration to have a sense of wellbeing underlying all of this. Remember the Buddha’s image of the practice as being like a fortress. You’ve got the soldiers of right effort. You’ve got the gatekeeper, which is mindfulness. You’ve got the well-plastered wall, which is your discernment. And you’ve got a storehouse full of … 
  19. Free Not to Suffer
     … These three qualities—mindfulness, alertness, ardency—are the ones that strengthen mindfulness and create a foundation here in the present moment to get the mind into concentration. In Ajaan’s Lee’s explanation of the three qualities, ardency is the quality that embodies wisdom and discernment. In other words, you could remember all kinds of things about what the Buddha taught, and you could … 
  20. An Environment for Practice
     … You find that you create a better environment for your practice of concentration, a better environment for the development of insight. The third principle, speaking little, keeping your conversation to a minimum: When I first went to stay with Ajaan Fuang, that was one of the principle he set out. He told me, “Before you say anything, ask yourself: Is this necessary? And if … 
  21. A Cocoon of Energy
     … But it’s also possible to hold on to this perception of space even before you get to that level of concentration. It may not count as that formless attainment, but it is a perception of formlessness. It’s good to get the mind used to that perception so that you don’t feel cast adrift. The more steadily you can hold on to … 
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