Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. The Dhamma Eye
    Thai word for concentration is “dang jai man,” which means to be firmly intent. It literally means to take the mind and set it up firmly. You have to set up an intention and then stick with it. For instance, right now: Set up the intention that you’re going to stay with the breath, you’re going to stay here in the present … 
  3. The Dead Snake Around Your Neck
     … So, see the importance of fabricating a state of concentration and maintaining it. Again, the issue of talking to yourself is going to be important. Sometimes you tell yourself, “My mind is in concentration and nothing is happening. What can I make happen?” An important part of the concentration is learning to be patient when things don’t seem to be happening. It’s … 
  4. Straightening the Arrow
     … This could get very confining if it weren’t for the fact that we’re also developing concentration, and we’re protecting our concentration because it’s an expansive state of mind. All the Buddha’s images for concentration in the Canon are of full-body awareness. You gain the pleasure and rapture of seclusion, the pleasure and rapture of concentration, and let them … 
  5. The Karma that Ends Karma
     … Then you get upset because they’ve destroyed your concentration. You can build up huge narratives about how they shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have destroyed your concentration. Actually, they weren’t the ones who destroyed your concentration. You dropped it, ran after them, and then found some satisfaction in blaming them. Again, you’ve got to learn how to pull yourself … 
  6. Don’t Focus on Jhana, Focus on the Breath
    We’re sitting here trying to practice right mindfulness and right concentration. Right concentration is jhana. So the question is: How do you get into jhana? And the first answer is that you don’t think about jhana to get into jhana. Jhana is not your focal point. Your focal point is the breath. The descriptions of jhana talk about the mind as you … 
  7. Four Roles to Play
     … The Buddha talks about them in terms of qualities you can emphasize in the process of settling down into concentration. The way he describes it sounds as if there are four different types of concentration: concentration based on desire, in other words, the consumer; concentration based on persistence, the agent; concentration based on intent, the observer; and concentration based on analysis, the judge. When … 
  8. Right Resolve in Real Life
    Right Resolve in Real Life July 11, 2017 Right resolve and right concentration are very closely connected. The beginning of the definition for right concentration says, “Secluded from sensuality; secluded from unskillful qualities.…” It refers to the work of right resolve. You’re resolving to stay away from sensuality through resolve on renunciation, which means you’re not going to let yourself get engaged … 
  9. Figuring Out Concentration
    The description of right concentration says that, on the first level, you have pleasure and rapture accompanied by directed thought and evaluation. Now, “directed thought and evaluation” is the Buddha’s was of describing how you talk to yourself on an ordinary everyday level. You direct your thoughts to a topic and then you evaluate it: You ask questions, make comments. So, as you … 
  10. Asking the Right Questions
     … The first one has to do, of course, with getting the mind concentrated. How do you center it? How do you get it to indulge in its concentration?—in other words, learning how to enjoy it at the same time that you’re not getting carried away by the pleasure. You have to learn how to focus on the breath but not get waylaid … 
  11. Analysis of Qualities
    There’s a passage where the Buddha says that getting the mind into strong concentration requires both tranquility and insight. We tend to think of insight as something that comes after the concentration, but the Buddha’s making an important point: If you’re going to get the mind to settle down, you have to understand what you’re doing. At the very least … 
  12. Respect for Tranquility & Insight
    There’s a verse we chant very often that mentions respect for concentration. We have to realize that concentration requires both tranquility and insight. We have to have respect for both of those as well. Some people find that they’re good at the tranquility and not so good at the insight. Others find that they’re the other way around: The insight comes … 
  13. The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites
     … Then they see any attempts to develop concentration as going against the nature of reality. So they actually describe concentration as an unnecessary part of the path, or even an illegitimate part of the path. I’ve seen cases of people developing the three characteristics without a firm basis in concentration, and they get extremely depressed, thinking there’s nothing they can do to … 
  14. Learning from Labor
     … That’s how the practice of right concentration leads to awakening. You learn by doing. You learn from your labor. So when you hear that scientists are studying the brainwaves of people who enter into right concentration—or what they claim to be right concentration—hoping to be able to replicate those brainwave patterns for other people, you realize that they’ve got it … 
  15. Making Yourself Worthy of Trust
     … But for the time being, as you’re getting the mind to settle down and be still, have some respect for your concentration. We’re all too quick to want to get the concentration to go where we want it to. If we want deep concentration, we want to squeeze it toward deep concentration. If we want insights, we want to squeeze the concentration … 
  16. Pleasure Has a Price
     … This is what we work on in the concentration—to develop that kind of pleasure within. Even though the pleasure of concentration may not be the ultimate goal, it is part of the path. Even though it’s temporary, it’s a lot more solid and reliable than the pleasures of sensuality. Sometimes you hear warnings about the dangers of getting attached to the … 
  17. Balancing Tranquility & Insight
     … As I said at the beginning, this applies at the beginning to all the topics that would pull you away from your concentration. As your concentration begins to develop, and you get more and more sensitive, it starts applying to the concentration itself. You see the inconstancy of one level of concentration, and once you let go of whatever inconstancy you can detect in … 
  18. Squeezing Goodness Out of the Aggregates
     … I was reading a book by a monk one time who said, “The practice of concentration requires a sense of self. We all know the Buddha discouraged having a sense of self, so don’t make an effort to practice concentration. Let it happen on its own.” But then the question would be, what is right concentration doing in the path? There’s no … 
  19. A Game of Chess
     … The basic principle is that you solidify the state of concentration you’re in and then you notice: Where’s the stress that’s still in that state of concentration? It’s like stepping back. When you’re totally in that state of concentration, everything is really, really still. You can’t think about anything. But then you can step back a bit and … 
  20. A Noble Warrior’s Path
     … When you’re practicing concentration, apply the three perceptions—or any other type of contemplation that would give rise to dispassion—to the things that would pull you out of concentration. But while you’re trying to develop the concentration, you don’t focus on the fact that the concentration is inconstant—because in the very beginning it’s all too obviously inconstant. You … 
  21. What Should I Do?
     … Are you going to focus on right effort more than concentration, or concentration more than effort, or equanimity more than either? Because the practice requires all three, and it’s a matter of knowing when to emphasize which quality. The Buddha makes a comparison with a goldsmith: Sometimes the goldsmith puts the gold in the fire, sometimes he takes it out and looks at … 
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