Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Concentration Nurtured by Virtue
    Toward the end of his life, the Buddha gave a Dhamma talk that he repeated many times, and it started with the phrase, “Concentration nurtured by virtue is of great fruit, great benefit.” Notice what he’s saying there. He’s not saying that you can’t get into concentration without virtue, although many people have misinterpreted his words in that way, and in … 
  3. Read the Breath
     … That’s our ordinary concentration. And that’s the concentration we have to develop. You can’t drop it and say, “Well, I want stronger concentration. I’ll try look for it someplace else.” It doesn’t exist someplace else. It exists in learning how to make that momentary concentration more continuous. You’ll notice that the little gaps in momentary concentration are caused … 
  4. How Much Concentration Is Enough?
    How much concentration is enough? Enough is when you can observe your own mind in action. And because the actions of the mind exist on many levels, there are going to be many levels of concentration. As a general rule of thumb, the more concentration, the better—as long as it’s mindful. Sometimes you hear that mindfulness and concentration are two separate states … 
  5. Long-Term Welfare
     … But in the meantime, don’t be in a great hurry to overcome your attachment to concentration. Many people practice concentration once or twice—“Ah yes, concentration is inconstant, stressful, and not self, it doesn’t last”—and think they’ve gone beyond it. That’s short-circuiting the practice. It’s like being given a ladder to take you up to true happiness … 
  6. Samatha, Vipassanā, Jhāna
    When the Buddha would tell monks to go meditate, he wouldn’t say, “Go do samatha,” or, “Go do vipassanā.” He’d say, “Go do jhāna,” right concentration. As for samatha and vipassanā, he explained those as qualities in the mind. He didn’t have a specific samatha technique or vipassanā technique. He said you needed both qualities to get the mind to settle … 
  7. Insight from Developing Concentration
     … Otherwise, your concentration is destroyed. But you can learn both from the process of getting the mind into concentration and from managing to say No to those distractions. Each time a distraction comes up and you catch the fact that you’ve left the world of the concentration and entered another world, you can decide to drop that world and go back to the … 
  8. Uncertainty
    One of the biggest obstacles to concentration is the hindrance of uncertainty. It can manifest itself in several ways. One is when you’re not sure if you’re doing it right. Another is when you’re not sure that you can do it. Another is when you’re not sure that it’s worth doing at all. If you’re bothered by these … 
  9. The Guarantee of Concentration
     … Sometimes you hear of people who’ve gained awakening without strong powers of concentration. Well, how do they know? I must admit I’m always leery of these accounts. A little bit of concentration develops and they’re told, “Let it go, don’t get attached to it.” Well, that’s not what the Buddha taught. Concentration is part of the path, and the … 
  10. Centered
    Centered January 24, 2017 The Pali word samadhi is usually translated as concentration. I know at least one teacher, though, who objects to that translation on the grounds that we associate the idea of being concentrated on something with being tense. The spot where we’re staying concentrated is a concentrated spot of tension. As he points out, that’s not the quality we … 
  11. Take Care of Your Tools
    The things we do in the practice—learning to be generous, virtuous, developing concentration, even developing discernment—are all tools, means to an end. One of our problems is that once we understand that they’re tools, we tend not to take very good care of them. We think, “It’s just a tool. I’m using it for the sake of something else … 
  12. The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha
     … As long as your concentration is imbued with the other factors of the path — right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness — it’s perfectly safe. They sometimes talk about getting stuck on concentration or becoming a concentration junkie, but those are cases where the concentration lacks the other elements of the path. Your understanding of why there … 
  13. Just-Right Concentration
    Ajaan Fuang often made the point that for concentration to be right, it has to be just right: in other words, not too still and not too active. Too still is when everything blanks out. Either you’re going into delusion concentration, where things are pleasant and kind of like a mist, but you’re not really sure about what you’re focused on … 
  14. Jhana: Responsible Happiness
     … So the danger is not in having concentration; the danger is in the wrong views that you might bring to the concentration, or that might prevent you from getting into concentration. For the biggest danger is not having concentration. We hear so much about the dangers of concentration, but the dangers of not having it are a lot worse. If you don’t have … 
  15. Three Stages in the Practice
     … Sometimes you hear that mindfulness and concentration are two totally antithetical qualities: that mindfulness is a broad, open, acceptance of things, whereas concentration is a narrow focus, exclusive of all else. If that were the case, you couldn’t practice mindfulness and concentration together. But that’s not how the Buddha described mindfulness and concentration. The two qualities go together. Mindfulness gets fully purified … 
  16. Learning by Doing
     … a good state of concentration, deeper states of concentration. If you want to know the factors that come prior to sensory contact, make a state of concentration out of them. That’s how you really get to know them. So, when we say that concentration leads to discernment, it’s not simply because it makes the mind still, although that is an important part … 
  17. Respect for Concentration
    Respect for Concentration July, 2001 We just chanted about having respect for concentration. This is an important principle to keep in mind because all too often the stillness of our minds is something we step on. An idea pops into our heads and we go running after it. We leave our home base very quickly and then find it hard to get back. We … 
  18. The Power of Choice
     … People whose concentration is simply a matter of staring on in, staring on in, find that they’re either in the concentration or out of the concentration. Even the slightest little bit of thought is going to destroy that kind of concentration. But if an element of exploring and evaluation is part of the concentration itself, you can be in the concentration and pull … 
  19. Setbacks
     … virtue, concentration and discernment. They feed off one another. The standard explanation is that virtue nurtures concentration, concentration nurtures discernment, discernment leads to release. But the actual Pali explanation of this is that, “Concentration nurtured with virtue leads to great rewards. Discernment nurtured with concentration leads to great rewards. When the mind is nurtured with discernment, then it’s released from the effluents.” In … 
  20. Inner Poise
    “One who is ardent with respect for concentration,” both while you’re here and when you go back to your home life: It’s an important principle to keep in mind, as it’s something we forget so easily. Just keeping the mind still, keeping one thing in mind: It’s a part of the path that doesn’t have a lot of bright … 
  21. Fire Prevention
    Right effort is included in the concentration section of the path. The standard formula says that you give rise to desire, exert your persistence, uphold your intent to prevent unskillful qualities that haven’t yet arisen from arising; to abandon those that have arisen; to give rise to skillful qualities that are not there yet, and when they are there, to develop them to … 
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