Search results for: "Concentration"
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- In Terms of the Four Noble Truths… One way this works is when the mind is really concentrated and then you leave concentration, it’s useful to ask yourself, “Where is the stress coming in? As soon as I leave concentration, what additional stress is there?” That’s one way of developing dispassion for those forms of stress outside of the concentration: attachment to the body, to feelings, perceptions, ideas, even …
- The Five Aggregates… Step Two, once the concentration is good and strong, is that you look at it to see that even in this very subtle concentration there are still problems. There’s still some stress. There’s still some clinging. And so you analyze the concentration into aggregates again. You work at perceiving these things as not-self, stressful, not-self, changing all the time. These …
- Fabricated Path, Unfabricated Goal… It’s not the case that you try to stay in concentration, and if it doesn’t get all the way to jhāna, you throw it out and then try another state of concentration, and throw that out. Don’t throw out your concentration. Instead, build on what you’ve got: the quality of being single with your object, or having a single focus …
- Pleasure & Pain… Don’t think that concentration practice has to be one thing and discernment practice is something else. In the process of maintaining your concentration, you’re going to learn a lot about the mind. Try to maintain the sense of being centered, having a sense of well-being inside. It’s not just a dead-end path, as some people seem to say. If …
- Directing Yourself Rightly… And the stronger your concentration, sometimes the stronger your anger when you come out of good concentration. You’ve got to watch out. Ajaan Lee has a nice observation. He says that the problem is that you get attached to your concentration, thinking that everything is fine as long as you concentrate, and the world out there is bad because it disturbs your concentration …
- Stretch Your Mind… In fact, the phrase mahaggataṁ cittaṁ, the enlarged mind, is a description of the mind in concentration. Sometimes, when we think about concentration, we think of the mind being focused down to one sharp point, but that’s not the concentration the Buddha was teaching. Fill your whole body with breath, fill your whole body with your awareness. Just don’t make your awareness …
- Seclusion Through Mindfulness… So seclusion involves both concentration and discernment. And this is what mindfulness does. In the lists of qualities that lead to concentration—say, in the noble eightfold path—discernment does come first, and mindfulness comes before concentration, but you need some concentration to get the mind willing to do the practices that mindfulness requires. So, they help one another along. So learn to delight …
- Nourishment from the Breath… When you get clearer and clearer on what’s wrong and what’s right with the concentration, and you start getting ideas of how to fix what’s wrong and to maintain and augment what’s right, that’s the discernment element. In other words, you have to have some discernment in your concentration. Concentration without discernment drifts off and is not really all …
- Gather Around the Breath… Here again, there’s some conflict or disagreement as to what the word samādhi, which most people translate as “concentration”—actually means. Some people say “concentration” sounds too tense—it’d be better to think of samādhi as “lucid calm.” But calm is one of the factors for awakening that’s separate from concentration—it’s one of the precursors for concentration. And the …
- Fear of Death… training in heightened virtue, heightened concentration—trying to heighten mind, which is the phrase in the Pali, and basically means getting the mind to a good strong concentration—and then heightened discernment. For instance, to counteract the fear of leaving the body, we practice concentration. One of the topics of concentration is contemplation of the body, as we chanted just now. What is there …
- Sensitivity & Strength… There are the techniques of concentration, but then there are also the questions that give rise to insight. And you learn from experience. It’s not just a matter of doing concentration until concentration is fully developed and then turning to other issues. You work both on the intentional technique in the concentration practice, and on the questions that come up in the course …
- Concentration Develops Right View… It’s in doing the concentration—starting with right effort, through right mindfulness, into right concentration—that you get to see the specifics of craving here. And that way, right view gets developed so that it’s not just a general idea you can talk about. You actually see these things in action: Yes, these movements of the mind for sensuality, becoming, and non …
- Tuning Your Lute… As for your concentration, you may decide you don’t have enough strength to do full-body awareness—and it does take strength to do that. Remember the Buddha, after doing his austerities, thinking about doing concentration. After he realized that the austerities weren’t working, and maybe the first jhāna, as he remembered having done when he was a child, might be the …
- Fully Absorbed… They can very easily destroy your concentration. I know a lot of people want to have visions in their concentration, want to have insights appearing spontaneously. There’s an interesting passage in Ajaan Lee where he treats these things as obstacles in the concentration. When they come, you have to learn a way to deal with them so that they don’t pull you …
- More than a Sliver of Mindfulness… You use it as part of a training that gets you into right concentration. Seeing this context, you pay more attention to one of the lists inside the description of right mindfulness. In this, the Buddha talks about the different kinds of feelings. This is relevant to right concentration, because the stages of right concentration center on their feeling tones. When you read the …
- Reflect on What You’re Doing… Keep that image of the mirror in mind, because when you’re practicing concentration, the same issues come up. You get the mind to settle down. The two activities the Buddha recommends in his description of right mindfulness, which we’ve talked about as being the recipe for right concentration, involve two things. One, you focus on an object in and of itself, like …
- Stupid about Pleasure… So while it’s important that we develop concentration, we also need to develop the discernment that makes it right concentration, that keeps it on track, that helps you to appreciate it for what it is. The pleasure of concentration is one of those rare pleasures that has no drawbacks. It may be shaky in the beginning, and that’s probably one of the …
- Patience & Urgency… Then, when you feel that your concentration is strong enough, you may want to test it. One way of testing it is to bring in a difficult issue—“Okay, let’s think about it for a while”—with the purpose of using your concentration to observe: How does the mind approach that issue? How does it relate to that issue? At what point does …
- Firm in Your Intent… So concentration lies at the essence here. It lies in all the qualities. Ajaan Suwat once gave a Dhamma talk in which he said all the factors in the noble path have to have concentration in them. And the same holds for the five strengths, starting with conviction. Concentration in conviction means you have to stay with that conviction. The same with persistence: You …
- Admirable Intentions… That way, when the time comes to meditate, you’ll be clear about the intention to stay, clear about the intention to get the mind into concentration. That’s what mindfulness practice is for. Sometimes you hear that mindfulness practice is one thing, concentration is something else, but the Buddha never taught it that way. The formula for mindfulness is keeping track of “the …
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