Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 124
  2. Food, Shelter & Work
     … down the front, down the back, and all around you—because as we get the mind concentrated, we’re aiming at developing a centered but broad awareness. One spot in your awareness will be more prominent than the others, but you don’t want it to block out the others. You want everything in the body to be connected. So as you breathe in … 
  3. A Blameless Happiness
     … Particularly the happiness of concentration: That was the first harmless happiness that occurred to him. So he pursued that happiness and, in pursuing that happiness, he ended up finding an ever deeper happiness, deeper well-being—the ultimate, i.e., a happiness that’s not dependent on any conditions at all. So he saw that there’s nothing really wrong with our desire for … 
  4. Choosing & Watching Your Choices
     … But as you begin to resist them, as you stay with your object of concentration, you begin to notice more and more: What are the processes of choice in the arising of a thought? When things arise in the mind, they’re not just arising and passing away. There’s a cause deeper inside. And there are stages in the process, stages where you … 
  5. Wise about Pain
     … The three qualities the Buddha says should be brought to mindfulness and concentration practice are mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. Mindfulness means keeping something in mind. In this case, you keep in mind the fact that you want to stay with the breath. As for alertness, you’re alert to what you’re doing: Are you staying with the breath? If not, what can you … 
  6. Raise Your Standards
     … In particular, he developed concentration based on goodwill and all the brahmaviharas. After eight or nine years of that, he returned home. And it was because of his example that the country in which he lived became a peaceful country, both through his instructions and exhortations, and through his personal example. The point being that the way we look for happiness is teaching a … 
  7. Turning Anxiety into Heedfulness
     … As for times when anxiety does come up, remember that whatever happens in the world, you’re going to need mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment to deal with the unexpected. So instead of laying out all kinds of scenarios about what you’ll do if this happens, what you’ll do if that happens—which would just eat up all your time—just remind … 
  8. Comprehending Clinging
     … You develop the precepts; you develop the practice of concentration. These are things you should do, should develop. And you also try to develop a sense of yourself as competent, responsible, and able to benefit from these practices. As the Buddha says, when you see things as not-self, it’s not simply to say, “That’s the way they are, so I’ve … 
  9. Alertness: What Are You Doing?
     … The other time when this is a useful perspective is when you’re moving from one stage of concentration to another. Often this will happen without your realizing what you’re doing. The mind just settles in, settles in, settles in. You come out and you say, “That was deeper than it was before.” You want to stop and think, “Okay, what was I … 
  10. Clearing Your Space
     … So what do you do? You read the instructions in the Canon where they say that through concentration you develop a sense of ease and well-being, a sense of rapture, and then you let it work through the body, saturate the body so that there’s no part of the body that’s not saturated with rapture and pleasure. You read that and … 
  11. To Discern Suffering
     … Let’s try to understand it.” And the concentration makes you strong enough to stick with that part of the mind. This is when you can begin to discern suffering, to see exactly how the mind creates suffering around physical and mental pain, how it adds unnecessary burdens to itself by the way it reacts. You begin to see how the suffering comes and … 
  12. Use Your Imagination
     … If you can do that with unskillful things, why can’t you do it with skillful things? Right concentration is a state of becoming, and the anticipation that you’re going to be able to do it is an important part of being able to actually do it. So learn how to use your imagination in that way. Pains come up, and the old … 
  13. A World of Limitations
     … It requires concentration and discernment. It requires other qualities as well, the qualities we tend to associate more with the heart, in terms of goodwill, compassion, and equanimity. It’s a long list. If you were to take down the list of all the qualities the Buddha recommended, it’d be very long. So we have to work on many fronts. Other qualities are … 
  14. A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have
     … take his thoughts all the way through even higher and higher levels, until he gets to the Brahma world, where the pleasure is the same pleasure we gain from a really concentrated mind. If the person can keep that up, then the Buddha says to tell him to let go even of that type of pleasure. That, too, is impermanent. The sense of identity … 
  15. Practical Wisdom
     … This is one of the reasons why we develop alertness, mindfulness, concentration, discernment, and how we learn to be persistent and ardent in developing these qualities of heart and mind. That’s because these are the qualities that guarantee the quality of your intentions. There’s a teaching in the commentaries about the cycle of action. First comes the intention and then the result … 
  16. Recognizing Fools
     … But the concentration on its own is not enough to guarantee wisdom. There are what they call vipassanupakilesas, the corruptions of insight: either visions you might have or insights you may gain as you meditate, when the mind gets really still. If you latch on to them, they can actually pull you off the path. These are the fools on a subtle level. So … 
  17. High Level Metta
     … You’re developing right concentration. And as you get hands-on practice with these different kinds of fabrication, you begin to realize how you use them in different ways, creating different mind states throughout the day, different physical states throughout the day. And you can apply them to other areas of your life. For example, suppose you want to develop thoughts of goodwill. Goodwill … 
  18. Questioning Your Conviction
     … Sariputta, “Are you convinced that the five strengths of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment lead to the deathless?” And Sariputta says, “No, I’m not convinced. I know.” And how did he know? Because he questioned things, tested things, tested himself. **So even though conviction is the foundation post, it’s not the whole building. And before you put up the whole building … 
  19. Imagine Your Breath
     … It’s the discernment faculty in your concentration. You begin to see fabrication. You begin to see how it can be used to energize the body, to calm the body, to energize the mind, to calm the mind. You come to realize that you’ve got a lot more leeway here in the present moment for making this a much better place to be … 
  20. Disposable Worlds
     … to let them go, the first thing you have to do is learn how to do them properly.” Learn how you make these things, because it’s in a state of concentration that you can observe the mind as it creates these worlds, to see what exactly the mind is doing. You can’t let go of something unless you really know it. And … 
  21. Safe at Home
     … They can help give rise to discernment, give rise to concentration, give rise to understanding. They can be very useful. Others are not so useful, so you have to learn how to figure out which is which so that you can really be in control of your mind. The best place to see them is right here in the present moment. They tend to … 
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