Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Watch the Mind at the Breath
     … So the concentration here is needed. Full-body awareness is needed. They allow you to watch your thoughts and emotions from the outside. You have something to measure the movements against. Try to see them when they’re small, when they’re just little tiny flames, little tiny sparks, little stirrings right at the border between your sense of the body and your sense … 
  3. Delight in the Dhamma
     … Get some pleasure out of concentration. That way, you allay your itch and find a well-being that comes from inside. So learn to delight in that. And finally, the Buddha says to delight in two things that are actually epithets for nibbana. One is “the unafflicted,” the other is “non-objectification”—“unafflicted” in the sense that you’re not causing any pain to … 
  4. Cleaning Out the Stables
     … But you’ve still got work to do in terms of concentration and discernment, and you need a lingering sense of “I am” to do the work, because without that sense of your capabilities, without the sense that you’re going to benefit, you can’t do anything. To get rid of the unnecessary selves, you have to realize how deeply embedded they are … 
  5. The Steadiness of Your Gaze
     … What this means is that being steady in your awareness is not just a matter of concentration practice. It’s the basis for allowing discernment to arise — because you’re right here, and when you’re right here watching what’s happening, you can’t help but see. The problem is we’re all too often not here. Our gaze has been diverted. Our … 
  6. To Depend on Yourself
     … But if you want to develop powers of concentration, you have to learn how to cut things off. The important thing is that you realize you do have choices. Even though we’re all supposed to be sitting here meditating, no one’s enforcing it. We don’t have a meditation policeman going around, checking everybody’s minds. So it’s up to you … 
  7. The Buddha’s Compassion
     … You think you’ve attained the goal when it’s simply a level of concentration or one of the sensual levels of pleasure. So all these teachings come under stress and they all perform a function. It’s good to notice also, when the Buddha talks about cosmology, that he doesn’t talk about it in a lot of detail. It’s a sketch … 
  8. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … Two factors of jhana, or right concentration, are directed thought and evaluation. Keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath: That’s directed thought. Then watch it, be sensitive to it, and ask yourself: Could it be better? What kind of breathing would feel better right now? That’s the beginning of evaluation. Then you can evaluate further: Explore the sensations of breathing in … 
  9. Push Yourself
     … When the time comes that you can rest in concentration, as the Buddha said, at those times the pleasure of unskillful qualities is not there. The stress of unskillful qualities is not there. And the stress of skillful qualities is not there. Notice the implication of that: that developing skillful qualities will sometimes involve stress. But when you finally can master all the obstreperous … 
  10. Near to the Buddha
     … When you learn to develop qualities of mindfulness, alertness, ardency, concentration, discernment around the breath, then every time you breathe, there they are, right nearby. In this way, you become a real friend to yourself. The reason we fall for bad friends outside is because we’re not really friendly to ourselves, we can’t really depend on ourselves. We think we can find … 
  11. Intelligent Equanimity
     … As you develop your meditation, try to bring the mind to concentration so that it can maintain this state of equanimity from which you continue your work. In other words, you have equanimity for everything else at that point, aside from the development of insight. Then the equanimity serves to protect you as well. Ajaan Fuang once said, “If you don’t have the … 
  12. Building on Certainty
     … But the Buddha’s way of getting you to see them is to have you develop nice, comfortable states of concentration, where the body feels balanced, not too heavy, not too light, kind of like Goldilocks’ porridge: not too hot, not too cold, everything just right. This puts you in a really good mood. And then, when you’re in a good mood, you … 
  13. Cleansing the Mind
     … When the Buddha talks about the various levels of concentration you can get into, there’s one passage where he says that mudita can get you into the third jhana. Goodwill can get you into the first. Compassion into the second. But the happiness of seeing other people doing good things in the world can get you even higher, into the third. So when … 
  14. Cause & Effect Right Now
     … When does the level of stress in the mind go up? When does it go down? And to see that, you’ve got to develop mindfulness, concentration, all the qualities of the path. Your mind’s already active in shaping your experience, and so the Buddha gives you an active path to learn how to shape it in a more skillful way. In the … 
  15. Courage
     … As he himself once said, when he realized that he’d have to give up his sensual passions in order to get the mind into concentration, his heart didn’t leap up at the idea. But still, when he realized that there were advantages to be gained from giving up those passions, he put them aside. So we have his example. He didn’t … 
  16. Focus on What You’re Doing
     … This is why we fabricate a state of concentration: so that we can get good at fabricating a good state of mind and get more conscious of what it means to engage in fabrication. We’re always fabricating different mental states: greed, aversion, delusion—all kinds of things. We’re doing it all the time, to the point we’re not really conscious of … 
  17. Sticking with an Intention
     … That’s why we’re trying to get the mind in concentration. Try to be very, very alert to cause and effect here in the present moment. When you can see the connection between cause and effect, that’s when you’re in a position to evaluate your thoughts, because the worth of a thought lies in its effect. It’s like having a … 
  18. The Knife of Discernment
     … The concentration is the part of the meditation you can do, the asking of the questions is something you can do, but the insights that actually give you that “Aha!” — those you can’t do. Those come as a result of the other actions, but they’re not something you can intend. You can intend to get the mind to settle down, you can … 
  19. Choose Your Battles
     … As you get more and more clear about what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing—in your practice of virtue and concentration—then when things come together, then there’s a sharp drop. It’s a quantum leap, something very different from anything that went before. But for that balance to come together, and for that sharpness of discernment … 
  20. Determination
     … This has a lot to do with their ability to develop concentration and discernment. In other words, they encountered problems, and they didn’t let the problems get them down. They figured that there must be a way around them, and they made a determination. If you think of the mind as a committee, when you make a determination like that, you’re basically … 
  21. Question Your Actions
     … So we get the mind still, learn how to do these things in the concentration, and then try to bring that knowledge, that skill, that awareness, into our daily lives, so that we can see what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, where it’s stupid, why we don’t want to do it anymore. That’s when you can let go … 
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