Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Choose Your Cravings Wisely
     … In the beginning, you have to think about these things: “What kind of breathing is good? When the breathing is getting comfortable, what do you do to make sure that you don’t just kind of blur out into a state of delusion concentration?”—in other words, concentration without mindfulness, where you’re just very still but not really clear about where you are … 
  3. Oneness is a Water Snake
    When we talk of the oneness of concentration, it means several things. First, you want unity in your will, that you really do want to stay here focused on one object, which means that you’ve got to bring all your contrary intentions under control. They have a phrase in Thailand: “like catching crabs and putting them into a basket.” You’ve got one … 
  4. The Value of Concentration
     … Just keep coming back to whatever concentration you have. When things go well, don’t get complacent. Don’t let the concentration fool you into thinking that it’ll always be there no matter what. After all, it’s something fabricated, something intentional. So learn to treat it as something of value, and that’s when it’ll show you what its true value … 
  5. Alert
    The purpose of getting the mind into concentration is so that it can see itself, both in the sense that it’s quiet enough that it’s not creating disturbances, so anything subtle that shows up in the mind will be very clear, and also in the sense that there should be a feeling of well-being so that it’s willing to observe … 
  6. Why We Practice the Way We Do
     … Those last three also have to deal with the practice of concentration: right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration itself. You make an effort to get rid of unskillful qualities and to develop skillful ones. Now, you start that with the practice of generosity and the practice of virtue. You try to get rid of your greed and your stinginess—the narrowness of the … 
  7. The Values of Stillness
     … And it doesn’t come without concentration. Don’t look down on the concentration or be in too great a hurry to move on to what comes next. With all too many people, when the mind finally settles down a little bit, their next question is, “Well, what’s next? What’s next? When do I get the discernment? When do I get the … 
  8. The Buddha’s Encouragement
     … This is true all the way from the practice of virtue through concentration and discernment. Sometimes in the practice of virtue it’s a matter of brute determination: that you’re just going to see it through, not let yourself get discouraged. One of the images is of a soldier who hears that there’s an army coming; sees the cloud of dust; actually … 
  9. The Reasonable Path
     … The same with concentration. You can get the mind into a dead concentration where you totally have no sense in the body at all, where you enter a state called non-perception. But it’s such a wrong state of concentration that the Buddha doesn’t even list it among the stages of right concentration. So when we’re working in the practice, we … 
  10. Dispassion & Delight
     … So the question is, “Is it worth identifying with that desire?” Well, not really, because you’ve got something better as you work on the concentration. There, you don’t apply the perception of inconstancy, stress, and not-self quite yet to the concentration—because you’re trying to develop it, to get it solid. As the Buddha said, you’re trying to master … 
  11. Leaving Meditation
     … This way, you learn interesting things about the mind, because if there’s no connection between your concentration and your daily life, not only is it hard to get back into the concentration, but you’re also not getting the benefits of your concentration as you go through the day. You may be able to keep your greed, anger, and delusion under control while … 
  12. The Good Fight
     … The other way you learn about the process of becoming is through watching the state of concentration itself. You can do this in two ways. One, just being in a state of concentration and then pulling back a little bit from it, to notice: “What’s going on, how do I keep this concentration going?” You want to do this only after you’re … 
  13. The Dhamma Eye
     … any of the factors of right concentration that you have to let go of to get to higher levels—you just let the action go. And how do you get the mind to see that? Once you’ve settled in, as the Buddha says, you first indulge in the concentration. In other words, you don’t just skip across the different states of concentration … 
  14. The Power of Intention
     … Our ordinary, everyday concentration—what they call momentary concentration—tends to be repelled by boredom, anything the least bit unpleasant. We jump away, jump away, jump away to something else, and then we focus there for a bit, then jump away from that when it gets unpleasant as it changes. So here you have to take that level of concentration and retrain it, as … 
  15. Delight in Concentration
     … But when you get to the factors that go into concentration practice, they’re longer, more elaborate formulae. That’s because concentration is a skill that we have to work on. There’s nothing complicated about telling yourself not to lie and then sticking with that determination. But getting the mind to settle down is a much more complicated process. Ajaan Lee gives the … 
  16. Desire
     … The more solidly you can develop concentration, the easier it is to let go of other things. If the concentration is still wobbly, you’re half holding on to the concentration, and half holding on to everything else in your life, because the concentration hasn’t yet provided you with any sense of security that seems special, seems more reliable than the pleasure you … 
  17. Frame Your Questions Well
     … You see both the world that you create as you create this state of concentration and your identity in that world. Now, when the concentration is really good, really solid, and there’s that sense that your awareness and the body and the feeling of pleasure permeate one another to the point of almost oneness, it seems like you and this world of concentration … 
  18. Desire Is Part of the Path
     … It’s good to keep this in mind as you’re practicing concentration. In the old days, every time you’d hear about concentration, especially in books that came out of the vipassana schools, they’d say, “Watch out for concentration. It’s very pleasurable, very seductive. You’re going to get stuck. You’re going to get attached. You’re going to get … 
  19. Breathing to Awakening
     … But for the insights to get solid, you have to first give rise to a state of concentration. You can say that the seven factors for awakening describe how you go from right mindfulness to right concentration via discernment. Because the next step is, basically, right effort. Once you see what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, you focus on what you can … 
  20. What Are You Doing in the Present?
     … So you don’t try to develop dispassion for concentration until you sense there’s going to be something better. As long as you’re dealing with other things that are not better than the concentration, the concentration has to be your passion. That’s what you’re doing in the present moment: developing that concentration so that you get deeper and deeper insights … 
  21. How to Use the Three Perceptions
     … As for the fourth noble truth, especially when you’re doing concentration right here, you do not want to be telling yourself that “The breath is inconstant, the mind’s concentration is inconstant, I’ve gained an insight, what’s next?” That short circuits everything right there. If you’re going to apply the three perceptions to anything, apply them to your distractions. Greed … 
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