Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. Protective Meditations
     … After all, it was through the power of his concentrated intentions, his consistent intentions, that he gained awakening. And in the course of the three knowledges of the night of his awakening, he learned a lot about how karma functions in the universe, particularly about how your intentional actions play a huge role in whether you’re going to suffer or not. So insight … 
  5. Commit & Reflect All Around
     … When you’re making something—as when you’re putting together a state of concentration—is it worth it? For the time being: Yes. You want the mind to have a place to settle down. In the process of settling down, you’re going to learn about it. And when it’s fully settled down, you’ll be in a position where you can … 
  6. Accepting the Buddha’s Standards
     … As you learn through observing the precepts to cause less and less harm, your focus moves to more subtle levels of stress in the mind, learning how to drop whatever it is that you’re doing to cause them, until finally you come to the subtlest disturbances, caused by the concentration itself. In each case, you want to accept, one, that the stress is … 
  7. Inquisitive
     … As the Buddha said, we can use concentration as a pleasant abiding—in other words, just a nice place to settle in—but we can also use it to develop mindfulness and alertness, and to figure out how the mind can free itself of greed, aversion, and delusion. The breath is going to teach you those last two things only if you ask questions … 
  8. Lean into the Present
     … to realize that this is the best use of your powers of concentration, this is the best use of your time. Once you figure out how the mind creates unnecessary suffering for itself, you find that there’s a lot more that you’re going to discover as well—things of even greater value. So try to lean into the present moment, because that … 
  9. Wisdom & Compassion
     … But when you can strengthen yourself through the breath this way, through developing concentration and mindfulness and alertness, you’re in a much better position. So wisdom and compassion or discernment and goodwill go together like this, they help each other along. You need wise strategies to develop a sense of well-being in the mind. It doesn’t just come on its own … 
  10. Understanding Aggregates
     … Of the various factors of the noble eightfold path, right concentration is the one that’s most often compared to food. Here again, you’ve got form (the breath); feeling (the feeling of dis-ease you might encounter when you first try to settle down, and then the feeling of pleasure you’re trying to develop); the perceptions that you keep in mind about … 
  11. Encourage Yourself
     … When it’s used really wisely, the Buddha says, you can get the mind to settle down in concentration. The thinking becomes less and less and less necessary. But as with so many aspects of the path, you can’t really let go of them until you’ve mastered them. So if your meditation requires just sitting here and thinking for a while, okay … 
  12. Training for Happiness
     … So when you develop mindfulness and concentration, try to do it with right view as well. The view is what opens the possibility that you can exercise your power of choice over your emotions, your reactions. When the meditation allows you to confirm that, you begin to see, yeah, you really do have the choice. You could sit here focusing on the breath, or … 
  13. A Friend When You’re on Your Own
     … You start getting sloppier in keeping after the mind in terms of your mindfulness, in terms of your concentration. These things are all connected. So remember the value of having the Dhamma as your friend as you go into seclusion. Find ways of picking up the right attitudes—attitudes that are actually good for your mind, not attitudes that somebody else might think might … 
  14. A Light in the Darkness
     … You can’t say, “I wish my concentration were better. I wish it was the way it was years ago.” You have to put those thoughts aside and say, “Where is it right now? What are my abilities right now? What issues are presenting themselves right now?” If you get used to handling what’s here right now, you’re focused on the right … 
  15. A Culture of Self Reliance
     … Develop good strong concentration, which he compared to rice, beans, honey, butter: good food for the mind. The more you can feed your mind on these qualities, the easier it is to live with less and less outside, which makes you have a smaller footprint, you’re a lot more self-reliant. There is a greater and greater sense of independence. Once I was … 
  16. Generosity of Spirit
    Sometimes it may seem like a very selfish and self-centered thing we’re doing here, trying to get the mind into concentration, have a sense of ease and well-being inside. And although it is centered in yourself, it’s not self-centered in a selfish way. After all, the more well-being you can find inside, the less you feel oppressed by … 
  17. Cooking the Present Moment
     … Instead of using them as something to suffer over, you can turn them into something that gives insight—something that gives rise to concentration and all the other factors of the path. So, basically, what we’re learning to do here as we meditate is how to prepare our produce so that it’s good, edible food. We’ll work with the breath. That … 
  18. Delight in Striving
     … You develop your powers of concentration and discernment so that you can be a more reliable observer and see things clearly. These are all good things to be doing. You look at the things that other people are doing in the world right now to make themselves happy, and they can make you despair. So take joy in the fact that we have this … 
  19. Mission Possible
     … There’s precision work in dealing with your defilements that get in the way of your concentration, in dealing with the ignorance that gets in the way of release. It’s urgent work, but it requires that you be very patient. As I said the other day, it’s a middle path, and it’s the middle paths that exercise your discernment. For an … 
  20. Producing Discernment
     … So as you bring the mind into concentration so that it can be still, so that it can observe itself, you’re basically creating a state of mind that’s likely to be discerning both in the sense of being sensitive and in the sense of learning how to work with options, work with possibilities. As for the insights come up, if they’re … 
  21. The Primacy of the Mind (2)
     … When does it need to be gladdened and energized? When does it need to be steadied and made more concentrated? How do you release the mind from any of its burdens? You’re doing all of this at the same time that you’re dealing with body and feelings. These are all issues that’ll be determined by attention and fabrication—attention and intention … 
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