Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. No Extra Arrows
     … That’s one of the reasons why we practice concentration: one, to get the mind still enough to see things clearly; and two, to provide it with a sense of well-being that allows you to step back from the pain, and not be consumed by it. And then three, when you’re creating a state of concentration, you’re dealing directly with these … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. Don’t Sell the Buddha Short
     … You consciously have to do them in order to get into concentration, and when the mind is still, you see them a lot more clearly. Then it’s simply a matter of getting deeper and deeper into concentration. The Buddha talks about how you can go from one level of concentration to the next by noticing where there’s disturbance in the concentration you … 
  21. 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 … 
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