Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 136
  2. Educating Equanimity
     … Equanimity is not easy, but it’s helped along by, one, developing a sense of well-being in your own concentration, and two, learning how to look at your own mind. That way, if the mind wants to jump into a particular situation and say, “We’ve got to help it this way or change it that way,” you can step back and ask … 
  3. Potentials Past & Present
     … There’s a dimension that the mind can touch if you develop all the right qualities in mind—in particular, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: what we’re trying to develop right now. You get very clear about what’s going on in the mind, how the mind takes raw material from the past and can fashion it either in a skillful way or in an … 
  4. Getting the Most Out of Now
     … Then when the breath gets comfortable, what do you do with that? You’ve got to be careful, because there is a tendency when the breath gets comfortable to start focusing on the ease and well-being, and to forget about the breath, or to hope that the concentration will go on automatic pilot. That’s like falling asleep at the wheel, hoping that … 
  5. Better to Give than to Consume
     … We want the bliss; we want the pleasure, the sense of freedom that we’ve heard that will come from mindfulness and concentration. But in order to consume those things, we first have to produce them. This is why, when the Buddha starts his teachings on the most basic levels, he starts with generosity. It’s the first of the perfections, the first of … 
  6. Start Out Small
     … The continual clarity is what actually creates the state of concentration you’re looking for, the developed mindfulness you’re hoping for. It starts with these incremental steps. So, whether the results come fast or slow, be sure that at least you’re getting the causes right. And they’re simple: Be with the breath, all the way in, all the way out. Just … 
  7. Modest, Unentangled, Unburdensome
     … The skills you develop in terms of concentration, insight: They’re their own reward. Nobody else has to know. The second quality that affects other people is being unentangled. If you’ve spent a lot of your time involved in the issues of other people, you don’t have much time to practice. This is directly related to the internal quality of persistence, because … 
  8. Battling the Hindrances
     … That’s why we can’t just do concentration. Discernment has to come in as well. Sometimes discernment is simply a matter of noticing things and feeling a sense of immediate disenchantment or immediate dispassion. But sometimes it doesn’t work that way. You have to exert, as the texts say, a fabrication, which means you have to think about things in a new … 
  9. Don’t Underestimate Merit
     … Otherwise, when you’re content with whatever little concentration you have or whatever little mindfulness you have, you say, “That’s good enough,” and that brings the practice to a halt. We have to admit where we are and accept where we are as a starting point, but we also have to accept the fact that we have greater potential and can do better … 
  10. Dissolving Distress
    In the Buddha’s description of right mindfulness, he’s telling us how to get the mind into right concentration. The formula is this: You remain focused on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That covers two activities. Keeping focused on, say, the breath, in and of itself: That’s … 
  11. Games the Mind Plays
     … It’s only when you get to the very end of the path that you can start practicing what they call undirected concentration. But until you get to that point, you have to have a strong sense of direction, because otherwise the mind would just go off in all sorts of other directions. There are a lot of strange ideas about what meditation is … 
  12. Achieving Balance
     … You don’t want to think too much because that destroys your concentration. But it’s also possible not to think enough—as when you have a problem and don’t try to think it through to discover the cause. So we’re looking for balance here. But remember that balance doesn’t come automatically. Think of those old-fashioned scales. Before they reach … 
  13. Physical Pains & Painful Words
    When you’re sitting here focused on the breath, even when you’re well concentrated on the breath, you don’t have just the breath. You’ve also got feelings, you’ve got the mind, and you’ve got mental qualities. All four frames of reference are right here. The question as to which one you’re going to pay attention to most depends … 
  14. Humility
     … seeing the processes of the mind as they give rise to greed, anger, and delusion, or to mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. Even though these things have abstract names, they’re specific events. Choices are made each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. Look for the specific choice, look for the specific movement of intention that heads either in a skillful or … 
  15. Healthy Conceit
     … If you’re too proud to look at your distractions and figure them out, if you just want to jump over them to the next wonderful stage in the concentration, you’re going to miss the really important lessons. As Ajaan Lee said, one of the big problems with meditators, especially who’ve read a lot of Dhamma, is that they mistake high-level … 
  16. Elephant Training
     … The nun thought to herself, “Here it is, a wild animal, and still it can be trained! My mind is not a wild animal.” With that thought, she went back into the forest, sat down, and was able to get the mind into concentration. Your mind is not a wild animal. You can talk to it; you can reason with it. And remember, even … 
  17. Choices
     … x—then the quality of ardency comes in and says, “Let’s straighten things out.” This ardency, Ajaan Lee says, is the factor of wisdom in the practice of mindfulness and concentration. Again, it’s a matter of realizing that you have choices as to what to do, so you try to do them as skillfully as you can. So experiment with the breathing … 
  18. Even Shame Can Be Skillful
    In one of the accounts of the events leading up to his awakening, the Buddha said that the first factor in the noble path that he discovered was right concentration. It’s the center of the path. The other factors, he said, are its supports. So as we focus on the path, this is the main factor we have to focus on. We have … 
  19. Mature Happiness
     … virtue, concentration, discernment. They’re noble qualities of mind. And the happiness we’re looking for is a happiness that’s mature. It requires mature wisdom to attain it. As the Buddha said, wisdom starts with the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to long-term welfare and happiness?” The wisdom there is, one, seeing that it’s up to your actions … 
  20. Skills for Dying Well
     … mindfulness, concentration, conviction, all the other strengths that the Buddha teaches. You want to develop those strengths and you want to see that it’s worthwhile to do so. If you believe that death is the end, then why bother? But if you realize that, in terms of where you go after death, there is such a thing as a good death and there … 
  21. Cut, Cut, Cut
     … This is one of the reasons why we train the mind in concentration in order to gain insight. You’re focused on very simple things here in the present moment: breath, awareness. And you’ll find out that there are layers to the breath and there are layers to the awareness. As the Buddha said, you notice when there’s an element of fabrication … 
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