Search results for: "Concentration"
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- A Refuge in Quiescence… Your conviction becomes solid, your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration all become solid. You’ve got this place where you can ride out the storm. Think of those verses in the Theragāthā: A monk is in his hut and he says, “The hut is well sealed, the roof has no leaks, so if the rain god wants to rain, go ahead and rain.” In …
- A Cure for the Sluggish Mind… Or you’ll drift off into delusion concentration, where the mind is still, but there’s not much alertness, not much awareness—which is not what you want. So energize the body. Then look at the mind: Is it too energetic, or is it too sluggish? From that, figure out what needs to be done. If it’s too sluggish, think of the Buddha …
- Patience & Hope… We’re developing the skills of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency; the skills of concentration and discernment, that will allow us not to be overcome by the results of past actions, and to see our way clear—that regardless of what situation we find ourselves in, we can choose the skillful way out. As the Buddha says, some of us are born in darkness, some …
- The Forerunner of All Things… So here the practice of concentration gives you something you can rely on. You develop your mindfulness in order to stay here. It gets strengthened as you keep coming back to the breath, coming back to the breath. Your alertness as to what’s going on gets strengthened as you notice what you’re doing in the present moment that’s helping the breath …
- Heedful of Ruts in the Mind… conviction, persistence—persistence is right effort—right mindfulness, right concentration, and the discernment of right view and right resolve. Everything good comes out of heedfulness. So always keep that quality uppermost in your mind.
- Your Ancestral Territory… It’s one of the establishings of mindfulness, the basis of your concentration practice. You can think of the stories about the quail and the monkeys, and how if they wander out of their ancestral territory, they’re going to get into trouble. But if they stay in their ancestral territory, they’re going to be safe. In the story of the quail, it …
- Rapture… The intensity is not a measure of the intensity of your concentration. It’s more a measure of how starved of energy the body’s been feeling. If it’s been feeling really starved, the sense of rapture will be extremely intense. If the body hasn’t been starved, the rapture or refreshment will be gentler. It’s like drinking a glass of water …
- Admirable Friendship… After his first day meditating here, he came to complain that the orchard was awfully noisy and interfering with his concentration. The sound of the bugs walking over the leaves and the sounds of the lizards running around on the leaves: Those were real irritants to him. This shows that you can find something to complain about anywhere. And the same with any people …
- The Best of a Bad Situation… Those concentration camps they’re building right now, they say they’re just for immigrants. Well, after they run out of immigrants to put in there, they’ll probably find other people to put there, too. So you have to be prepared. At the very least you have your breath. You can work with the breath energy inside the body. Nobody else has to …
- Abusing Pleasure & Pain… right concentration, a factor of the path. But we don’t use it as a path. We just lie in it. And you know what happens when you lie down in paths. If it’s a forest path, you’re bound to get run over by an elephant or whatever large animal uses the path. If it’s a paved road, you get run …
- You Contain Multitudes… Say, “Hey, we’re looking for happiness.” Some of them will say, “But I want happiness right now.” This is what the concentration is for: Learn how to tap into a skillful sense of well-being whenever you need it so that you can show even the most impatient selves that “Yes, there is something good here.” Learn how to appreciate the happiness that …
- Being Somebody, Going Somewhere… We need them in order to practice the precepts, to develop the mind in concentration, to develop our discernment, because we have to be conscious that everything we do—even just being in the present moment, keeping our thoughts focused on the present moment—is going to take us someplace. Thoughts don’t just sit there. They move, they have an arrow, they have …
- Potentials for Refuge… We have to remember that those establishings of mindfulness are his instructions on how you get the mind into concentration. So for our internal refuge, we’re trying to get the mind to settle down, to be with the body as a whole. The problem is that as you settle down it’s like sitting in a chair. You find that under the seat …
- No Happiness Other than Peace… They’re wrong concentration but they are absorption and there’s an element of peace, an element of stillness there. Whatever pleasure those things contain, it lies in those moments of peace, those moments of certainty. Of course the problem with those kinds of peace is that they don’t last very long and they’re very toxic, because they can lead to all …
- Treasures Beyond Death… It’s in the training of the mind that you’ll be able to firm up your intention, and then strengthen your resolve to actually act on that intention to do only what is skillful—and to think of skillfulness in its highest sense, i.e., the skills of the path, starting with right view and going on through right concentration. So as we …
- Noble Priorities… You can develop mindfulness, ardency, alertness, concentration, discernment from what you’ve got inside to put an end to the suffering. That may seem like a selfish quest: It’s your own suffering and not anybody else’s. But when you see someone who’s approaching death and they’re in a torment and you can’t help, it’s a huge burden on …
- A Healthy Body Image… With concentration. When they talk about being wakeful: You spend the time—when you’re not lying down to sleep—walking and sitting, cleansing the mind of unskillful qualities: greed, aversion, delusion, lust, fear, jealousy, all the unskillful things that can come up. When you’ve got the strength, that’s the best use of your strength. So the body is good for some …
- Little Things… This is what it means to be uncomplacent in your practice of concentration. As we chanted just now, “One who sees danger and respects being heedful.” Well, the danger comes from little things, because little things can turn into big things and sneak up on you from behind. There’s another passage in the Canon where the Buddha describes four things you shouldn’t …
- Sensitivity All the Time… They give you the sensitivity you need to find more stable states of concentration, to figure out the techniques you need in order to get the mind to settle down when it’s obstreperous. But again, once you’ve learned those lessons, it’s not the case that you can turn off the effort to be sensitive, the effort to be fully engaged. It …
- The World Offers No Shelter… virtue, concentration, and discernment—and even before that, with the bases of merit: generosity, virtue, developing goodwill. Even though these things are not permanent, they can take you to a place that does not get swept away. In the meantime, they provide you with a certain amount of stability—stability that the world outside cannot provide. Not only the world outside, even your own …
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