Search results for: "Concentration"
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- Against the Grain… So when the Buddha says to indulge in the pleasure of concentration, he really means it. Learn to take that as your source of food, your source of nourishment. The more satisfaction you find in the concentration, then the easier it will be to see the ways in which your old ways of eating really are harmful. That’s because you’ve found a …
- Exploring Contentment… He gained really high levels of concentration from his study with his two teachers, but he realized that those levels of concentration didn’t constitute the total end of suffering. They just led to very refined states of mind in the present moment and very refined rebirths. But when the power of that practice was over, he’d fall back down to where he …
- Commit Yourself… This is the only way your momentary concentration is going to turn into anything stronger, what they call access concentration, when you finally do let go of other things. You’re not yet totally with the breath, but you’re getting there. Things are getting comfortable. It feels nice. This is where you have to be careful. Once it starts feeling nice and pleasant …
- One Point, Two Points, Many Points… That enabled her to get the mind into concentration really quickly. What all this shows is that concentration is an individual matter. Different people find that their minds settle down in different ways. And there’s room in the practice of concentration for you to experiment and see what works for you. There’s no one ideal method that’s going to suit everybody …
- De-thinking… This way you can give rise to insight in the process doing concentration. The Buddha never separated concentration practice from insight practice. Always he said that you develop tranquility and insight in order to attain concentration, and then once the concentration is there, you use the concentration to develop further tranquility and further insight. The two are all part of the same process. But …
- Attention with an Agenda… The word for unification that the Buddha uses here, ekaggata, is the same word he would use for concentration in general. So you concentrate on the talk, and then finally you apply appropriate attention. Notice, that’s appropriate attention, not bare attention. The Buddha never talks about bare attention. He talks only about two kinds of attention: appropriate and inappropriate. Appropriate is when you …
- Be Decisive… That’s how concentration arises in the mind. You make up your mind that you’re going to do this, and you do it. And then you just keep on doing it. As for the nibbling-away conversations that come at the edge of your concentration, you don’t have to pay attention to them. Just keep focusing in, focusing in, focusing in. What …
- Things as They’ve Come to Be… In other words, you need to develop tranquility and insight just to get into jhana to begin with, to get into good states of concentration. Then when you’ve developed that concentration, you can use it to develop qualities of tranquility and insight even further. So try not to see the two qualities as separate. When you’re steadying the mind, you’ve got …
- Unlimited Compassion, Limited Resources… So you need a combination of concentration and discernment. The discernment is what allows you to see which of those attitudes is appropriate for which cases. The concentration gives you the strength, the wisdom gives you the insight into your own motivations about why you might want to help somebody else, whether you can really trust those motivations or not. The combination of concentration …
- Inner Voice Lessons… Once the concentration gets really solid, then you can start turning your spotlight on those voices, the control center for your concentration. But don’t be in too great a hurry to do that. You want the concentration really solid before you take those voices apart. So the training of the mind is not a process of stamping out all the mental chatter in …
- Equanimity in Action, Equanimity at Rest… In concentration, it’s simply a matter of now learning how to apply these activities to the breath and keep them with the breath—to keep the conversation on topic. Don’t let it wander off into other areas. And learn how to evaluate wisely. As Ajaan Lee points out in the factors for the first jhana, directed thought is basically concentration, singleness of …
- But Not Sick in Mind… And the first step is to get the mind into a good solid state of concentration so that has a place where it can step back from all these activities and see that it doesn’t have to hold on to them, because it’s got something better to hold on to: a sense of stillness here in the present moment. And that concentration …
- Examine Your Happiness… But in the beginning of your concentration practice, you want to focus on the steadiness. That’s what motivates you to get into the concentration to begin with and to try to stay there. We often hear the Buddha talking about how the five aggregates are stressful because they’re inconstant, and as a result we’re taught not to identify with them, but …
- Unparadoxical Happiness… What’s selfish about a happiness that doesn’t deprive anybody of anything? If you could go out and concentrate people’s minds for them, that would be a noble activity, but you can’t. What you can do is get into a concentrated mind state yourself and be an example to other people. People around you will pick up a sense of ease …
- Appropriate Attention, Appropriate Intention… Like right now, we’re here trying to give rise to the state of concentration. That’s the appropriate duty with regard to the path. You develop it. You don’t just watch and say, “Oh, here comes some mindfulness…and there it goes” or, “Here comes a moment of concentration…and there it goes…” That’s not insight, that’s laziness. There’s …
- Practicing for Dispassion… So the best way to prepare for the unexpected is to develop those qualities through practicing concentration. So you use concentration as a foundation for developing dispassion for these distractions. The concentration not only makes you more clear-sighted, but also gives you a sense of well-being, something you can feed on so that you can stop feeding on things that would pull …
- Pride in Your Craft… Sometimes it’s something that you needed to do in order to get the mind into concentration, but the skills you need to get the mind in the concentration and the skills to keep it in concentration are slightly different. In the beginning, you’re fighting off all kinds of distractions. Then, as those distractions fall away, some of the tension that was needed …
- A Committed Relationship… For example, it’s very easy when the mind gets concentrated to say, “Well, that’s enough concentration. Now I can move on to something else.” But you have to remember, you need this skill in all sorts of situations. This is where the recollection of death comes in as something very useful. If you stay concentrated only as long as you need for …
- Heedfulness All the Way Through… So if you’re really heedful as you’re mindful, you want to get the mind concentrated and still. This is the fourth strength. That’s when the mind gains power, because it can rest. Of the different qualities involved in the practice, concentration is the one the Buddha identifies with food. You nourish the mind. You nourish its sense of well-being simply …
- The Three Perceptions as Tools… Particularly with concentration: Some people see their concentration come and go, and they decide that that’s insight—concentration is inconstant, stressful, not-self, out of your control. But that’s a misapplication of the perception. After all, we’re here to not be lazy, to commit ourselves to the practice of concentration, to reflect on the practice of concentration as we’re committed …
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