Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Learning from Desire
     … You need to employ these things in order to get the mind into concentration. And as you employ them, you get to know them well. I’ve known people who say, “Well, if you try to get the mind into concentration, or you want to get the mind into concentration, then it’s desire and clinging and craving; and there’s going to be … 
  3. Respect for Concentration
     … When the Buddha talks about concentration, it’s always a matter getting the mind to settle down and allowing it to indulge in whatever sense of ease is there without forgetting the topic of concentration. Just learn how to maintain it, stick with it. You can think of it as medicine, a cream you put on your skin. The cream has to stay there … 
  4. Right View & Right Resolve
     … Use those as your means for staying in concentration, and then let the feelings of refreshment and pleasure spread throughout the body. All the thinking and evaluation that goes into that: That’s part of right resolve. The purpose of right resolve as you’ve been doing concentration is to get to the point where you don’t have to keep thinking in those … 
  5. Rightly Directed
     … As one of the Thai ajaans says, when you’re exercising the body you move around a lot, but when you exercise the mind you try to make it still—both for the sake of concentration and for the sake of discernment. Because once the mind is concentrated and you can maintain that concentration for a while, you begin to notice there are still … 
  6. Measuring Progress
     … Part of the problem was that when she was in concentration it was very intense, and she couldn’t even think. She didn’t have the ability that Ajaan Fuang was trying to teach her, which was to pull out just a little bit, not enough to destroy the concentration, but just enough to observe what was going on. She was either in it … 
  7. The Power of Truth
     … The correct way is to follow the path, and part of the path is developing concentration. It’s not simply watching concentration come and go, and saying, “Okay, concentration arises, concentration passes away, that’s an insight.” That’s not an insight. The content of insight is not the three characteristics, it’s the four noble truths. The three characteristics are helpful within that … 
  8. Hindrances
     … So it’s important that you see the value of concentration. Remember that verse we repeat: One with respect for the Buddha, respect for the Dhamma and the Sangha, respect for the training, i.e., the triple training, respect for concentration. It’s interesting: The verse talks about the triple training, which includes concentration, and then emphasizes concentration again. That’s because it’s … 
  9. Sensitive to Stress
     … And that sensitivity comes by learning how to be familiar with your mind in concentration. All too often, when you get into a state of peace in the concentration, it seems like there’s nothing there. It’s like going into a very bright room. The light is blinding, so you don’t see anything in the room at all. You think it’s … 
  10. Mindfulness Gets Intimate
     … And here you’re consciously giving rise to deeper stages of concentration as you begin to realize how you can manipulate causes and effects in the mind to get the mind to settle down even more firmly. This is where you use concentration to develop both insight and tranquility. Nowadays they talk about insight and tranquility as different meditation methods, but the Buddha never … 
  11. The Skills of a Hunter
     … I read a very foolish comment one time by a British professor, saying that back in the time of the Buddha, people didn’t have the level of concentration that we have now, which was why the Buddha had to emphasize it so much. We have to read books, which means we have to stay concentrated. But they never read books, so they never … 
  12. The Dhamma Wheel
     … you keep in mind the fact that, one, you want to stay here with the breath; and then, two, you want to remember how to recognize unskillful thoughts that would come up and destroy your concentration, and distinguish them from the skillful thoughts that are actually part of right concentration, as you begin to get the mind settled down, as you adjust the object … 
  13. Two Roads to the Grand Canyon
     … This is one of the big lessons you learn as you practice concentration. How much pressure do you have to put on the concentration to maintain it, to keep your focus steady, to keep mindfulness continuous? And how much effort is actually getting in the way? In many ways, practicing concentration is like relaxing into a yoga pose. When you first get into the … 
  14. A Safe Harbor
     … Then right mindfulness, in the establishing of mindfulness, becomes the theme for your concentration as you’re focused on the breath, focused on the body in and of itself, developing these qualities of ardency, alertness, mindfulness: That becomes a theme of your concentration. The Pali word for “theme” here is nimitta. Sometimes people talk about the nimitta of concentration as being a light or … 
  15. A Safe Space Inside
     … In this way, your right view helps your concentration; your concentration helps your right view. Virtue helps both of them; both of them help virtue. You’re grounded in what’s called the Triple Training: training in heightened virtue, heightened mind or concentration, and heightened discernment. And even though it’s the path― it’s not the goal― it’s a safe path. The … 
  16. Skills to Make You Free
     … Try to forget about the books you’ve read saying that you shouldn’t get stuck on concentration, or that concentration is a dead end. It’s not a dead end. It’s part of the path. And forget the books that tell you, “You have to move on fast to insight.” The Buddha basically says, “Learn how to settle in. Be at home … 
  17. How to Leave Meditation
    We hear so much about how to get the mind into concentration that we tend to forget the skill of how to leave it. Because these talks come at the beginning of the period, the skill in how to leave doesn’t often get mentioned, although how you leave concentration is relevant to how you get back into it. This talk basically is about … 
  18. Between Right & Wrong
     … As your concentration gets more solid, the things you can see get more refined. As you see more refined things and solve more refined problems, the concentration goes deeper still. The concentration and discernment help each other along. It’s not the case that you wait until your concentration is perfect before developing discernment. To begin with, discernment doesn’t develop that way. It … 
  19. Off the Continuum
     … For example, the duty with regard to right concentration is to develop it. You want to work on it. It’s not something you just watch arising and passing away. There’s a special kind of pleasure that comes with that concentration, because part of what makes the concentration right is that it’s endowed with all the other factors of the path, starting … 
  20. Success by Approximation
     … You’re making concentration: creating a state of concentration in the mind. You’re creating a state of becoming, in which you take on the identity of someone doing concentration in the world of the mind. That, too, requires desire. It’s simply a matter of learning how to refine your sensitivity as to what’s skillful and what’s not. Which kinds of … 
  21. Good & Independent
     … Right now you’re trying to work on your concentration. That means developing mindfulness, keeping in mind this quest for what’s skillful and realizing that, for the mind to maintain its strength to be skillful, it’s going to have to find a source of nourishment inside. That’s what the concentration is for. Try to be with the breath in a way … 
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