Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. The Uses of Pleasure
     … We need to see that the pleasures even of concentration, the pleasures of fabrication, have their limitations, so that we can get past them, because we are practicing concentration, as the Buddha said, for the purpose of letting go. All the factors of the path have that purpose. You develop them, you use them, and then you let them go. So it’s the … 
  7. Tranquility & Insight
     … He said that as you get the mind into concentration, it requires that you develop tranquility and some insight. Once the mind gets into concentration, your tranquility gets stronger; your insight gets stronger. So as we’re doing the concentration, we’re bringing these qualities of mind to help develop the concentration, and they then get developed in the process. The questions of tranquility … 
  8. A Pleasure Not to Be Feared
     … You find right concentration, and the factors for right concentration include a sense of *sukha: *happiness, pleasure and ease, well-being; and piti, which is rapture or refreshment. Those are the qualities we try to develop in the meditation as part of the path. So focus on your breath as your object of concentration. Take a couple good long, deep in-and-out breaths … 
  9. Strengthening Discernment
     … through developing virtue and concentration. It’s not that discernment is the end product that comes once the virtue and concentration are developed. It’s in the process of developing the concentration, it’s in the process of working with the challenges of the precepts, that your discernment grows stronger day by day.
  10. Pleasure on the Middle Way
     … That’s when the pleasure of concentration can spread and get really satisfying. This is part of the definition of right concentration: pleasure of different kinds, rapture of different kinds. We hear that the Buddha taught a middle way, but it’s not a middling way between pleasure and pain. It’s a way of practice that looks at pleasures and pains, and learns … 
  11. Friendship Leading to Seclusion
     … You’re using the concentration as your foundation for looking into them. Don’t leave your foundation. When you’re in concentration, you can see how a mind state is constructed: what goes together with what, and how the mind talks to itself as it puts things together. If you’re really familiar with the territory here, you can see these things clearly. So … 
  12. Using Perceptions
     … Perceptions of concentration to help the mind to settle down; the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self: Use those to get into concentration and to see the drawbacks of things that would pull you out of concentration. We use the word inconstancy here for* aniccā*. Sometimes it’s translated as impermanent, but that doesn’t get to the meaning of the word … 
  13. Concentration & Insight
    Concentration & Insight May, 2001 We like to make a sharp distinction between concentration practice and insight practice, but they really have to go together. Concentration doesn’t automatically give rise to insight. Insight doesn’t automatically give rise to concentration. But for them to develop, they need to work together. Some people find that one develops more naturally than the other. But the idea … 
  14. Maintaining Stillness
     … When you’re sitting here in concentration, you can move from one level of concentration to another by simply noticing that fact, that the type of concentration you have has a certain amount of stress at some point. It’s an integral part of that level of concentration. Can you let go of what you’re doing that causes that stress? When you find … 
  15. Doing Aggregates
     … These are the elements with which you’re doing concentration with right now. These are a lot of the activities the mind is always engaged in. We do the concentration so that we can get more sensitive to them. Then we see exactly where the suffering is, along with what we’re doing that’s doing the suffering. Again, notice that we’re not … 
  16. Truths of the Will
     … So when you’re sitting here, trying to get the mind concentrated, that’s what you’re doing: There is an effort that has to go into this so that the concentration will develop and grow. You don’t just watch states of concentration come and go, thinking that there’s wisdom in simply watching them come and go. The wisdom lies in figuring … 
  17. The Steps of Breath Meditation
     … In other words, as you get more and more used to the stages of concentration, you begin to gain a sense of which kind of concentration your awareness needs right now. If it seems unstable, what can you do to steady it? How do you change your perception of the breath or adjust your focus to make the mind more solid? When the meditation … 
  18. The Sport of Wise People
     … Also, have respect for other people’s concentration. That chant we recited just now about respect for concentration means two things: respecting other people’s efforts at concentration, and respecting your own center that you work hard to create and then all too often just throw away. It’s as if it’s something placed in your lap while you’re sitting here meditating … 
  19. Descartes’ Error
     … As we were pointing out this afternoon, the kind of concentration you want is a concentration that has a large solid frame of reference: the whole body. If your concentration is just one-pointed, it has its uses from time to time. When you really want to get precise about pain for instance, you want a very focused concentration. But you want that in … 
  20. The Purpose of Empathetic Joy
    When the Buddha lists the brahmaviharas, he notes that if you use the different themes of the brahmaviharas as topics of meditation, as you go up the list you get to higher and higher levels of concentration. Compassion leads to a higher level of concentration than goodwill, perhaps because the desire to help those who are suffering, or those who are creating the causes … 
  21. A Well-thatched Roof
     … These are some ways in which right concentration can help you so that you can have what’s called a developed mind in a developed body. But the practice of right concentration also helps in other ways. You’re developing two qualities, tranquility and insight, at the same time. This is a point that’s often misunderstood. People equate right concentration with tranquility, and … 
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