Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 142
  2. To the Far Shore
     … Yet you find that if you put them together in the right way, as you are when you’re getting the mind in concentration—you focus on the breath to create a feeling of ease, you use the perception of the breath filling the body, the ease filling the body, you think about how to improve the breath, to make it more comfortable, how … 
  3. To Comprehend Suffering
     … This is why we develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are the tools we can develop that can enable us to understand suffering. Years back, I was involved in a psychology experiment at Oberlin. They had you put your hand in a bucket of ice-water. And there were three groups: The first group was told to pull your hand out … 
  4. Horror Stories
     … He had his mind in the state of concentration that was based on not allowing himself to breathe, subsisting on very little food to see what that would do to purify the mind. After six years—six years, think of that—he realized that self-torture was a dead end as well. So he had to figure out what alternatives were left. He had … 
  5. Capable
     … That’s the quality you’re looking for in the concentration. Then you contemplate it. This is where the fourth quality comes in, vimamsa, which is usually translated as discrimination or ingenuity. Ajaan Lee translates it as circumspection. You look all around what you’re doing to see if the results are really* *good all around, and if there’s anything lacking, you try … 
  6. High-Level Dhamma
     … The potential for virtue, the potential for concentration, the potential for discernment are all there. But it’s not the case that you go straight to those things without having to muck around with your defilements, because the defilements are going to get in the way one way or another. Because our habit is to deal unskillfully with whatever comes up, then when the … 
  7. Recollection of the Buddha
     … After all, a major part of the path, a central factor of the path, is right concentration: rapture, pleasure. And it leads to an end: a happiness that more than repays the effort put into the path. So when you think of the Buddha, make sure your thoughts then come back to your practice, and have them energize your practice. That’s the whole … 
  8. Victory over Death
     … Strength of mindfulness and concentration, as you try to give the mind a place to rest fully alert and to gather its strength. And then strength of discernment, as you examine your own actions above and beyond what the Buddha said was skillful and not skillful—as you learn to look and decide for yourself. How do you cause harm in your own mind … 
  9. Hunting & Foraging
     … In his discussions of concentration, it’s the evaluation, seeing when things are going right, seeing when they’re not going right, trying to figure out a way in which to help them to go right: That’s the source of discernment. They’re basically the same thing, being ardent and using your evaluation. That’s how you gain the discernment and the insight … 
  10. Oppressed by Old Kamma
     … They pull you away from your concentration. They get in the way of the work you’re trying to do here. Here you have a real luxury—hours and hours and hours of time simply to focus on the mind—and what happens? You get bored or oppressed by the idea that you’ve got to fill up those hours with something. Well, why … 
  11. How to Think about Death
     … There’s generosity, there’s virtue, there’s renunciation—the ability to step back from sensual pleasures and find a higher level of pleasure in a concentrated mind—discernment, persistence—your powers of endurance—truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. These are things of lasting value. They might not be as hard as the hardwood of release, but at least they’re not just twigs and … 
  12. The Forerunner of All Things
     … Right now we’re shaping them for the sake of concentration, breathing in a way that’s soothing, calming, or energizing if the body needs energy, but breathing in a way that brings the body to balance. And then talking to yourself about the breath: Is the breath good? If it’s not good, what can you do to make it better? If it … 
  13. The Thinking Heart
     … Part of that is through developing right concentration so that we can create a steady sense of well-being. You sit here with the breath coming in and going out. Try to breathe in a way that, at the very least, feels okay. If you learn how to protect that sense of being okay right here, you’ll find that it’ll grow into … 
  14. Guardian Meditations
     … the pleasure of concentration. Finally, there’s contemplation of death. As the Buddha said, the contemplation of death leads to the deathless, so it’s not meant to make you discouraged or despondent. Actually, it’s meant to make you more heedful. When you start getting lazy in the meditation, saying, “Well, this is enough for tonight,” you have to ask yourself, “What really … 
  15. The Big Picture
     … After he had gotten into concentration, he posed a question in his mind, “Was I born before this?” He saw that he could remember back many, many eons. An eon is the life of a universe. They used to say that our universe started with the Big Bang, but now with the new telescope they’ve discovered that, No, it goes back much further … 
  16. Staying Power
     … Then, as the thoughts come into the range of awareness, they don’t destroy your concentration. They don’t destroy the framework. It’s like a person walking into a building. The simple fact that the person has walked into the building doesn’t destroy the building. Then you can examine the person. Ask questions. “Why are you here? What are you doing here … 
  17. What You’re Bringing
     … That’s how it should be with the concentration. Get absorbed, and the hour won’t feel like a whole hour. What you’re doing is bringing some awareness not only to the body, but also to parts of the mind that tend not to be lit up with any awareness; that tend to hide in the shadows. We were talking today about dependent … 
  18. Cooking Food for the Mind
     … Conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, persistence in the practice, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: These are all strengths of the mind and they require good food, the food of the meditation when you know how to fix it well. So remind yourself each time you meditate: You’re the cook and you’re also the person eating the food. On the one hand, you can … 
  19. Gifts of Noble Wealth
     … The texts give just a few basic ideas, and yet he was able to run with them and develop a very detailed course for how you work with the breath energy in the body, how you make it a really good place to be, how you could get the mind in concentration just by the way you focus on your breath. Of course, he … 
  20. You Are Not Powerless
     … Don’t let go of concentration before you’ve developed it, but know there will come a time when you have to let it go. The same with insight: You have to give rise to insight, you use it, and then you let it go. We’re not here just to arrive at insights. Our insights are part of the path. They’re a … 
  21. Generating Desire
    Generating Desire November 28, 2008 Part of the definition of right concentration is that you seclude your mind from sensual thoughts, from sensual obsessions, and it’s not easy. The mind likes to spend a lot of time planning sensual pleasures. A man once came to see Ven. Ananda and said, “I hear that the monks, even the young ones, train their minds to … 
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