Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 121
  2. Solid Inside
     … The qualities you develop—mindfulness, alertness, concentration—are qualities that are useful whatever your path. So focus on the breath. Know when it’s coming in, know when it’s going out. Allow yourself to breathe comfortably. Don’t force the breath too much. Whatever the body seems to need—whether it seems to need long breathing or short breathing, fast or slow, heavy … 
  3. Looking Off to the Side
     … We’ve developed our powers of virtue, concentration, and discernment, which as we circle in on the present moment allow us to see more and more. One of the reasons we focus on the breath is because it’s very close to that element of intention which is so important to understand. The breath is a bodily fabrication, which means that there’s an … 
  4. Assumptions
     … This mind that’s often so obstreperous can become a mind of peace, a mind of concentration, a mind of wisdom. You’re basically working with the same building blocks, just you learn how to use them in a new way.
  5. Circumspection
     … serenity, concentration, equanimity. You’ve got to figure out which ones you need right now. So how do you figure that out? You watch. You try things out and see what works and what doesn’t work, until you begin to get a sense of how to read the mind. This principle applies all across the board throughout the practice, to every one of … 
  6. Mindful All Day Long
     … You want to be able to carry that ability to get the mind concentrated, to stay mindful, as you go through the day. This works best, of course, when you’re having some success as you sit and meditate. You find that you can be quiet with the mind, quiet with the breath. You tell the mind to stay with the breath and it … 
  7. Unlearning Unskillful Behavior
     … Try to get the mind as concentrated and still as you can. If any nibblings of that thought come up in the course of the hour, say, “No, not yet, not yet. Wait until the mind is in better shape.” Then, at the end of the hour, give yourself some time to think it through, and see what ideas you come up with. Some … 
  8. The Use of the Present
     … Fabricate your feelings into a state of concentration. Fabricate your thoughts into questions you might ask about where the stress is: What can you do to understand it? What can you do to figure out the cause? What can you do to abandon the cause? Those are useful questions. That’s a good use of your directed thought and evaluation: the way the mind … 
  9. Body as Path
     … When you get the mind in a good state of concentration like this, all the aggregates are here. There’s the form of the body, there’s a feeling of pleasure, there’s the perception of breath. Directed thought and evaluation are the fabrications. And of course there’s consciousness. They’re all here together. You’re taking all the aggregates and you’re … 
  10. Lessons from Generosity & Virtue
     … After all, what is concentration? You’re placing boundaries around the mind. You’re trying to develop an expansive mind, but it requires that you give up a lot of the topics you normally think about. Certain things are off-limits: thoughts about sensual desire, thoughts about ill-will, topics that make you restless and anxious, your doubts about whether you want to be … 
  11. Resolute Good Humor
     … That requires a certain amount of stability, which is why the Buddha taught right concentration: pleasure, rapture; more pleasure, more rapture; pleasure without rapture, but still very pleasant; and equanimity, which was also a form of pleasure. That’s food along the path. Now, the other extreme is the idea being that we’re coming to a goal that’s totally relaxed, totally without … 
  12. Old Movies & New
     … That way, your concentration becomes not just a matter of forcing the mind, but also of drawing the mind in, giving it something to explore, something to learn about, so that even if it doesn’t settle down as solidly as you’d like it to, at least you learn something in the course of the hour. That will make you interested in coming … 
  13. Shoulds & Desires
     … As you go through the practice and you show to those parts of the mind that haven’t been won over yet that you really can be happy being generous, you really can be happy being virtuous, meditating, developing goodwill, developing concentration, gaining insight, then you can win the whole mind over. This is one of the ways in which we bring about unity … 
  14. At Home with the Breath
    One of the Buddha’s terms for concentration is vihāra-dhamma, a home for the mind. It’s like that definition of home in the Robert Frost poem: “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” The breath is the object; it’s the primary vihāra-dhamma. When the mind settles there, the breath has to take … 
  15. Inner Wealth
     … They also make it easier for the mind to concentrate: If you don’t have a lot of negative past actions in your background, then there’s less that you have to deny, there’s less that you have to regret—and the mind finds it easier to settle down. Again, you don’t have any wounds that you find yourself suddenly sitting on … 
  16. Goodwill as Wealth
     … As the Buddha said, one of the purposes of concentration is to give you what he called “a comfortable abiding,” a comfortable place to stay right here, right now. But it’s also good for developing skillful qualities in the mind. That sense of well-being in the body is an important form of wealth. When you think about being generous with material things … 
  17. Proactive Mindfulness
     … Those are the factors that will help the concentration to grow. Just apply these qualities to this breath, and then to this breath. Don’t think about how many breaths you’ve breathed so far, or how many more you’re going to have to breathe through the rest of the hour. Just focus on doing things right for each breath as it comes … 
  18. The Positive Side of Heedfulness
     … If you want to observe the mind, you have to put it into a state of concentration. You don’t just sit here watching it as it’s doing willy-nilly whatever it’s going to do. You have to direct it to an object. Bring it to oneness—ekaggata. Ekaggata is sometimes translated as one-pointedness: eka, one; agga, point, -ta, -ness. But … 
  19. Merit: Goodness of the Heart
     … Who would he teach first? He first thought of teaching his old teachers, the ones who had taught him about conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment as they understood it. He wanted to share what he’d found with them. But it was too late. They had been reborn in states of the cosmos where they were out of touch with everybody. Then he thought … 
  20. Potentials for Energy
     … Similarly with calm, equanimity, persistence, and concentration: He simply says that there are potentials within you to be developed without saying what they are. Now, in some cases, you can trace those potentials down in other passages in the Canon. For instance, with mindfulness, he says in another passage that the potential for mindfulness consists of virtue and views made straight. In other words … 
  21. Noble & True
     … For example, as we’re practicing concentration here, the basic desire to get the mind to settle down is a good desire. It’s part of right effort. But as we all know, the desire on its own is not enough. There are times when the desire is too strong and others where it’s too weak, or it’s not focused properly. There … 
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