Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Toughen & Tenderize the Mind
     … If you’re already depleted and you’re sitting down and you say, “Well, just get everything to calm down,” you either tend to get sluggish or drowsy or zone out into what Ajaan Lee called “delusion concentration.” So a sense of energy flowing through the body is something you want to learn how to nurture. But there does come a time when there … 
  3. Friends with The Breath
     … a state of concentration, a state of stillness. As the Buddha said, as you do this you’re developing both tranquility and insight. At this point, the insight is into how to keep your mind with the topic, on the breath, not to fall for its arguments that it wants to think about something else or is impatient to get to the next step … 
  4. Being Right
     … Use your concentration to develop ingenuity in how to make virtue attractive to that person, how to make right view at least a little bit attractive to that person. You’re acting out of goodwill. You’re trying to be generous. Because simply being right is not enough. You see this in the Vinaya. If one monk sees that another monk has been misbehaving … 
  5. Outside of the Box
     … Your mindfulness, your alertness, your concentration, your discernment, have all gotten dull. That means you’ve got to sharpen them. So you put the problem aside for the time being and say, “I’ll get back to that when my tools are sharper.” So either way, whether your entanglements are dream problems or real problems, you have ways of thinking yourself out of the … 
  6. In Training
     … gladdening it to make it happy to be here, getting it more concentrated, steady, still, focused, centered, so that it doesn’t wander off. If other thoughts do come into the range of your awareness, you get so that you’re just not interested in them. You train yourself to release yourself from them. Those are the basic steps. There’s more, but these … 
  7. Restraint
     … You breathe in and out in a way that gives rise to rapture, gives rise to pleasure, that gladdens the mind, concentrates the mind. You can breathe with a sense of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out. This expansive sense of well-being and awareness is what gives the mind alternative food, so that it’s not so hungry to … 
  8. Watching Over Time
     … He says that when the mind seems to have too much energy, you should try to use calming qualities, like calm, concentration, and equanimity. When the mind is too sluggish, you should try to develop qualities that are more enlivening, like actively analyzing what’s going on in the present moment, putting in effort, being really persistent in what you’re doing, and trying … 
  9. Inner Baggage
     … In your ways of perceiving the breath, your ways of labeling the states of concentration you get into, how can you learn to live with your perceptions in such a way that they don’t cause suffering? When I went to stay with Ajaan Fuang, one of the first things he did was to hand me a copy of Ajaan Lee’s instructions on … 
  10. Stern Kindness
     … virtue, concentration, and discernment; or the noble eightfold path; or the different variations that we find in the Wings to Awakening. Anyone who’s going to gain awakening will have to do it this way. But he doesn’t know how many people are going to do it. There’s no guarantee that we’re all going to get there, but the Buddha does … 
  11. Dedicating Goodness, Spreading Goodwill
     … Then, based on this concentration coming from goodwill, there’s more work to be done inside. Turn around and look at your mind. See especially where your mind is trapped by thoughts of sensuality, in other words, your fascination with thinking about different sensual pleasures. You realize how much that wastes your energy—energy that could be put to a much better purpose—and … 
  12. A Tradition of Ingenuity
     … The Buddha says there are potentials in the body for calm and concentration, there’s a potential for energy, and you should pay appropriate attention to those potentials to develop them. Where are those potentials? He leaves it to you to find out. In other words, he’s encouraging you to explore. We’re not here just copying and pasting the Buddha’s discernment … 
  13. The First Noble Truth
     … This is why we work on concentration to give rise to a solid basis of inner ease. From that basis we can look and see: “What am I doing that’s causing stress? What am I doing that’s causing suffering? Do I have to do it?” It’s when you see it and realize that you don’t have to do it: That … 
  14. Mind Control
     … That’s what transforms mundane right resolve—the resolve not to do anything harmful—into transcendent right resolve, the resolve to stay in a state of concentration as your home base. So when the Buddha talks about disciplining the mind, he’s not getting ready to drag out the chains and the whips. What he has you do is learn how to get the … 
  15. Values
     … So it’s important to understand that as we’re developing concentration, the important element is balance: a sense of ease, comfort, well-being inside. It’s not as flashy or as extreme as we sometimes want to go in the meditation. But it’s got a lot more value. Value for what? Value in that it allows you to observe the mind, to … 
  16. Messaging Your Mind
     … The concentration gets lost; the stillness gets lost. But if you keep the perception of breath in mind, that this is bodily energy here, you’ve got something relatively clear for your focus. If the breath itself isn’t clear enough, you can add a meditation word. Buddho is popular in Thailand. It means awake. That’s the title of the Buddha. That’s … 
  17. The Karma of Meditation
     … They’re the attitudes of people of really well developed concentration, with a sense of well-being inside that they want to share with others. They don’t think only about their own narrow little limited interests; they think broadly, sharing this good attitude broadly. The Buddha makes a comparison. He says it’s like a very wealthy person who incurs a debt or … 
  18. Training the Committee
     … The more we train our mindfulness, the more we train our alertness, our powers of concentration, our discernment, then the more good we can do, the less suffering we cause for ourselves, the less suffering we cause for others. So there are values that underlie this practice and it’s good to keep them in mind. As we’re sitting here focusing on the … 
  19. Counter-cultural Values
     … When the mind is feeling really frazzled, it’s very easy to see that meditation is something you want to learn how to master, that concentration—getting the mind still, finding some seclusion where are you can let go—is understandable and easy to appreciate. But our society gives only so much space for that sort of thing. Once you’ve rested and relaxed … 
  20. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … But if we develop the qualities of concentration and discernment—these four qualities of the desire to get the mind trained, persistence in doing it, really being intent on doing it, and using our powers of analysis—that can change the mind, make it more reliable. We tend to think of the forest tradition as being very Thai or very northeastern Thai. But when … 
  21. Well-being Despite It All
     … That ability to bring yourself back is what’s going to turn into your concentration, turn into good stronger mindfulness, stronger alertness. So try to enjoy bringing yourself back. You come to realize that this spot being here with the breath—where you can watch what’s happening in the mind, watch what’s happening in the body—is really the best place to … 
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