Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Wisdom as a Tool
     … This is one of the reasons why we develop mindfulness and concentration. We’re trying to develop the mind that the Buddha said is like earth or like fire. It doesn’t shrink back from disgusting things and doesn’t get excited about pleasant things. It’s a mind willing to watch patiently. You want the sense of patience that allows you to see … 
  3. Admirable Friendship, Inside & Out
     … Even in the refined states of concentration, we’re not there just to bliss out, say, on emptiness or space or the quality of the breath. We want to see very clearly: When you do this, when you hold this perception in mind, when you focus in this way, what are the results you’re getting? If you change the focus, change the perception … 
  4. Unentangled Compassion
     … And almost without thinking about it, you find yourself developing concentration. Discernment comes with figuring out what’s the appropriate effort to apply in any one particular situation. What do you need right now for the mind to be willing to settle down? And once it’s settled down, how do you keep it there? And what do you learn about the mind as … 
  5. The End of Karma
     … So what is the karma that leads to the end of karma? The main factor is right concentration. Remember that the image of the path is central to the teaching. We’re going someplace. And although thinking about and trying to describe where we’re going is not going to get us there, it does ensure that we don’t have any wrong views … 
  6. Training Your Moods
     … Remind yourself that the pleasure coming from concentration has very few drawbacks. It’s not like the pleasures of the senses. The pleasures of the senses can get you intoxicated. They can lead you to do all kinds of stupid things that you would later regret. But nobody ever killed over the pleasure of jhāna, or stole, or had illicit sex, lied, or took … 
  7. Taking Risks
     … How about getting the mind in a good state of concentration? And from that point he was able to find the way out of suffering. It was all very paradoxical. He wanted to get past desire but he couldn’t just snuff out desire by exposing himself to all kinds of pain. He had to use his desire for mental comfort as a path … 
  8. The Wisdom of Equanimity
     … You get the mind quiet with the breath and part of the concentration is going to be spent in maintaining that quiet area, fending off the little thoughts that might come nibbling at the edge of your awareness. So the quiescence needs some activity surrounding it to protect it. And mindfulness is one of those activities, remembering that this is what you want to … 
  9. Doing, Maintaining, Using
     … There is a use for concentration, there is a use for mindfulness, there is a use for discernment. These things can help overcome all the issues of suffering that we create for ourselves in life. But was need all three stages. Simply being able to do it when you’re on retreat is not enough. You have to be able to maintain it in … 
  10. Question Your Perceptions
     … As you’re practicing concentration, you want to get really clear about what your perceptions are, and what purposes they serve, because as you develop insight, perceptions will play a huge role as well. The forest ajaans talk often about how, with all the five aggregates, you don’t have to analyze all five at once. Choose one. As you really get to know … 
  11. Defiant Like the Buddha
     … It’s a path of virtue, a path of concentration, a path of discernment. These are all safe qualities. There’s not only safety in these qualities, but there’s also victory: the defiant attitude that the young prince had when he was thinking that there’s got to be a way out of here. He was actually able to carry it through. When … 
  12. Listening to the Practice
     … And this is a good way of developing a lot of sensitivity and also developing stronger concentration: working on allowing the breath to be more comfortable. Focus on it in a certain way and see what happens as a result. Then change your focus slightly—you might change the place you focus, the pressure of your focus—or you can simply think of having … 
  13. The Buddha’s Cost-Benefit Analysis
     … There’s one account that starts with right concentration. There’s one that starts with right resolve: deciding that whatever thoughts were on the unskillful side, he was going to beat them back, just as a cowherd would beat back any of his cows that were trying to get into the rice during the rainy season. As for thoughts that were skillful, he’d … 
  14. The World of Conviction
     … The concentration you’re aiming at, too, is a kind of becoming. In fact, you actually see the process of becoming very clearly as you try to meditate because, as you often discover, when you’re trying to stay with the breath all of a sudden you find yourself off in some other place in a different world. That’s because a different desire … 
  15. Choosing Not to Suffer
     … This is one of the paradoxes in meditation, because one of the main steps in concentration is developing a sense that you really are unified with the breath. It’s one of the ways of settling down and being totally absorbed in the present moment with a sense of oneness. But after a while in that sense of oneness, things begin to separate out … 
  16. Imagining Freedom
     … He mentions in one of the suttas a state of concentration which is literally mindless, with no awareness, no consciousness, nothing at all. And he states very clearly that that’s not the goal. He does mention twice that there is a kind of consciousness in nibbana, but it’s not the kind of consciousness that we know in our world of the six … 
  17. A Sense of Duty
     … the fourth noble truth, which boils down to virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are your duties. Now, no one’s imposing them on you, aside from the fact that suffering imposes them. If you really want to get beyond suffering, these are the things you have to do. It’s important that you have a strong sense that if something is a duty, you … 
  18. The Humble Way to Awakening
     … If you’re in the right position—which is what were trying to create here as we meditate, putting the mind in a position where it has enough sense of security and solidity through its practice of mindfulness and concentration—you can resist your normal reaction to pain or at least drop the normal reaction to pain and react to it in a new … 
  19. The Luminous Mind
     … Even though the mind has the potential where it can know and be aware, these other factors influence it, which is why we need to train the mind in concentration to overcome the hindrances. To do this, of course, depends on seeing at some point that the reason we’re suffering is not because of somebody else somewhere else, or the economic conditions, or … 
  20. Ego
     … These pleasures come not only from concentration but also from understanding, from virtue, from generosity, the pleasure that comes from doing something noble with your life. You want to nurture this sense of pleasure and a sensitivity to this kind of pleasure, because when we talk about happiness it’s not just about people running around smiling all the time and being kind of … 
  21. Sources of Lasting Happiness
     … And the third is developing the mind—by which he meant developing good qualities in the mind, qualities like goodwill, mindfulness, concentration, discernment, alertness: qualities that help you act in skillful ways because they enable you to see what’s actually going on. They can help you see what you’re doing and see the results of what you’re doing. If you see … 
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