Search results for: "Concentration"
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- Directed Thoughts, Random Thoughts… As we chanted just now, one of the factors of the first level of right concentration is directed thought: You direct your thoughts to the breath. If they wander off away from the breath, you drag them back again. Then you combine them with evaluation: How is the breath? When it comes in, where do you feel it? Does it feel good? If it …
- If at First You Don’t Succeed… You sharpen it through mindfulness, you sharpen it through concentration, and then through asking the right questions about what you’re doing and how you can do it better.
- Fear of Letting Go… So with all the things he teaches us—right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration—he says, try holding on to these. Make these the attitudes that you take with you. They’ll take you far. They’ll take you to something solid. Those other things you’ve been depending on will take you for …
- Breath Energies… Well, that depends on what stage you are in the concentration. In the beginning, you want to expand the moving breath. But after a while, after you’ve got things moved around and everything seems to be flowing, you want the mind to find a greater level of stillness. This is where you ask yourself, “Okay, which parts of the body, even when the …
- Respect… But if it’s based on generosity, on virtue, on concentration, on discernment, there’s no need for those boundaries. This is why the Buddha said that when you train your mind, you’re also helping others; when you help others, you’re training your mind. The two processes go together when you’re looking for this kind of happiness. And it’s something …
- What Am I Becoming?… That gets in the way of the path because you need to drop sensuality to develop right concentration here, which is something you can actually cling to in a beneficial way—clinging to habits and practices. You have to make a distinction. Which habits and practices do you cling to that are getting in the way? Which ones do you cling to that are …
- Get Out of Yourself… This is why we practice concentration, focusing on the level of intentions and attention, the raw material we use to put together states of becoming in the mind. You can look at these events from a more impersonal standpoint, a much larger standpoint, and that gets you out of them. As the Buddha said, the essence of discernment is seeing things as separate. An …
- Directing the Flow… The same hold true with the training in heightened mind, which is basically training in right concentration. You look at the Buddha’s instructions on breath meditation: Mindfully you breathe in; mindfully you breathe out. You know when you’re breathing in long, you know when you’re breathing out long. You know when you’re breathing in short, you know when you’re …
- Skills of the Dhamma Wheel… That’s the path, starting with right view and going on through right concentration. And although there is a stage at the very end of the practice where you let go of the path as well, you’ve got to develop it in the meantime. The purpose of looking at things in this way is to have a framework for how you’re going …
- Choiceful Awareness… Allow your concentration and awareness of the breath to be as constant and pleasurable and as much under control as possible. It’s in exercising these choices that you get really, really sensitive to what’s going on. That way, when the moment arrives where there’s a genuine lack of choice, you’re poised right at the threshold of something really important. It …
- The Wear & Tear of Life… And the Buddha said, “Well, when Sariputta died, did he take virtue away with him? Did he take concentration away with him? Discernment? Release?” All the really valuable things in the world are still here. That’s what you’ve got to remember. Regardless of aging, illness, death, and separation, the good things in life are still available, if you take advantage of them …
- The Brightness of Life… Now, the Buddha’s not saying, “Well, just stop feeding.” He says to learn how to feed in a more skillful way, to train the mind to feed off of the path—as we’re doing right now, trying to feed off of our practice of concentration. This will ultimately lead to a place where you don’t need to feed anymore, not because …
- The Treasure of Equanimity… This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration. You realize that there are lots of interesting things out there in the world, but the really important work is right here: what your mind is doing right now, what choices it’s making, where it’s focusing its attention, what it wants to change and can try to change, and what other things …
- Lessons in Happiness… This is sensitizing yourself to them in a very deep level, seeing that even the really good mental qualities of concentration, ease, rapture: They, too, are inconstant. They, too, are fabricated. This is when you start looking at them in terms of what are called the three characteristics, or, more accurately, three perceptions. These are the perceptions you apply: You look at them in …
- Get Real… That’s the softness, the malleability, that we’re aiming for in the state of concentration. As for the strength, that lies in not allowing yourself to get waylaid. Other thoughts are going to come in. That’s something you can expect to happen, so don’t get worked up about it. The trick lies in letting them go right through you. Think of …
- The Noble Truth of Suffering… You get the mind concentrated; you develop your powers of discernment. These are the things you’re going to need. To make them reliable, you base them on right action, right speech, right livelihood, so that you can become a reliable judge. As he says, the Dhamma is nourished by commitment and reflection. So you really have to give yourself to it. And then …
- The Buddha’s Protection… The Buddha said that if we don’t have this pleasure—the pleasure of concentration—then the only escape we see from pain will be to go for sensuality.** **And that’s not skillful. If you get involved in sensuality, then, of course, there’s going to be sensual craving, and sensual craving will lead you on to bad places. So try to create …
- Modest in Manner, but Not in Goals… This is one of the reasons why the Buddha said that if you have powers like that—or if you have any attainments at all in your meditation in terms of gaining concentration, gaining insights—you don’t talk about them to others. You talk about them with your teacher so that you can know what to do with them, but otherwise, you stay …
- Heedfulness… There are many verses in the Dhammapada where the Buddha says, “One day lived with the mind concentrated is worth much more than a thousand years lived unconcentrated. One day lived gaining insight is much more noble and worthy than a thousand years lived without gaining insight,” and so forth. It’s not the number of days, it’s the quality of the mind …
- Why It’s Good to Know Why… This is why we practice concentration. We’re going to be learning about our intentions, the power of our intentions, and our power to shape them in the right direction. The Thai translation for the Pali word samadhi—tang jai man—literally means establishing the mind firmly, or establishing the heart firmly. But it can also mean being really intent on what you’re …
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