Search results for: "Concentration"
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- Controlling… As for pleasures not of the flesh, those are the pleasures of getting the mind into right concentration. These are all things over which you have some measure of control. So learn how to do it wisely. You learn some of the theory, and then as you apply the theory, you learn from your experience. Remember the Buddha’s statement that you learn the …
- Consistently on the Path… The teacher will talk to you in a certain way and will recommend certain perceptions, and you’ve got to find where in your mind are the other voices that want to hold onto other perceptions that will pull you away, saying that the path is too difficult, that taking the precepts demands too much, or that concentration demands too much. You’ve got …
- The Bureaucracy of the Defilements… You can actually see the decisions that are being made because you’ll notice—and this is one of the reasons that we practice concentration and try to stay with one object like the breath—that once you decide that everything else that’s irrelevant to your object is going to be dropped, you have to get quicker and quicker at sensing what’s …
- The Reflective Self… So go back, look at those steps, and ask yourself, “Okay, if these were the only tools I had, how would I use these tools to overcome, say, bouts of delusion concentration or laziness or having to sit with pain?” The solutions are there, but it does require ingenuity to find them. It’s through your ingenuity that you make the Dhamma your own …
- Our Variegated Minds… These are the things we’re trying to train here as we concentrate on the breath. Take the breath as your object; That’s bodily fabrication. You direct your thoughts repeatedly to the breath and you evaluate the breathing, so that it becomes more comfortable. In other words, you bring knowledge and awareness in terms of the four noble truths to the process of …
- Virtue… And the practice of virtue—right speech, right action, right livelihood—follows on right resolve, as do right mindfulness and right concentration. Right resolve covers the resolve to resolve for renunciation, for no ill will, and for non-harming. The precepts carry through with this resolve in the area of your words and your speech, while the meditation carries it through directly in area …
- Discernment: Commit & Reflect… When you have conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, all these things come together to make your discernment strong. Then the discernment turns around and solidifies those other qualities, because you begin to see things for yourself. You’re taking them not just on faith or because you believe in them. It’s because you’ve seen them. You move from right view to right knowledge …
- The Trick to Staying in Place… After all pleasure and rapture are factors of right concentration, and you’re not going to find them by being grim. So allow yourself to play with the breath. Explore. You may make mistakes, but that’s par for the course. It’s like picking up a guitar. The very first time you strum a few strings, the sounds are kind of strange. But …
- Close to the Heart… So, your sensitivity to the present moment is a very important part of developing concentration, developing insight, and dealing with the whole problem of suffering, the burdens that the mind carries around. It gives you the tools you need to deal with all the unskillful mental states that seem to get lodged in the mind and do their damage in both body and mind …
- Impatience… Sometimes this may sound wearisome—that you’ve got to watch yourself all the time—which is why we practice concentration. Give the mind a good safe place to be, an easy task where it’s not so difficult to watch what you’re doing, not so difficult to watch the results. You may not like the results at first, but it’s a …
- Refuge… are here; everything you need is here. It’s just a matter of your making the choice that this is what you want to do. Virtue hasn’t been close off. Concentration hasn’t been closed off. Discernment hasn’t been closed off. They’re all here; they’re all open. It’s just a question of your giving them priority. You decide if …
- Meditate to Win… There are times in concentration practice when you do get totally immersed. That’s basically to give the mind a chance to rest and get still. But then once it’s been still for a while, and things start moving again, you can see those movements very clearly if you step back a bit. The discernment is in the stepping back. It’s one …
- Ask the Right Questions… Other times you cling because you’re clinging, say, to mindfulness, or concentration. Okay, cling in the meantime because those are necessary tools in the work that needs to be done. When the work is no longer needed, then you can put down the tools, too. So, whenever you get confused about the Buddha’s teachings, keep reminding yourself that he taught just two …
- Sowing Good Seeds… Either you wander off to what is called delusion concentration, where the mind is still but doesn’t really know quite where it is. Or else you fall into an air pocket, kind of drop out of sight for a minute, and come back up again. That’s a sign the breath has gotten too refined, more refined than you can follow. So the …
- Breaking Old Habits… Every time there’s suffering, what else arises at the same time in the mind? When the suffering goes away, what’s gone? When it comes back again, what else has come back with it? You want to learn how to look into these questions, and that requires good, strong concentration, along with steady mindfulness, which is why we work on these qualities in …
- The Intelligent Heart… What we’ve talked about here, the pleasure of concentration, is conditioned, but it’s a lot stronger and a lot more reliable than the ordinary pleasures that are advertised at us all the time. It provides the opening for us to see deeper into the mind, to see something that’s not conditioned: another dimension entirely, outside of space and time in every …
- So Little Time… But the purpose of all this is to create in the mind a state of genuine well-being in concentration. When you have that well-being, what misery is there to slosh out on other people? For most of us, we’re miserable and we slosh our misery out on others, thinking that we’re lightening our load, but it just makes things worse …
- The Human Condition… That’s why we’re working on the sense of ease and wellbeing that comes from having the mind in concentration. That’s part of the path toward renunciate joy. We don’t have to wait until the very end of the path to gain some of this joy, you know. It comes with the sense of wellbeing you gain when you center the …
- Doing… This is what mindfulness and concentration practice are all about. You’ve got the form of the breath, which shapes your sense of the body. You’ve got the feelings that go with the breath, and we’re trying to give rise to comfortable ones. How much can you play with the breath? How much influence do you have on the breath? How much …
- Questioning Your Way to Certainty… It gets in the way of concentration. We know this from reading it in the texts, from hearing it in Dhamma talks, and also from our own experience. You find yourself wondering, is this really the right meditation for me? Is the Dhamma really right? Did the Buddha know what he was talking about? Those thoughts can really get in the way of the …
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