Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. The Brahmaviharas Are Not Enough
     … What the brahmaviharas can do is take you to concentration. Then, based on concentration, you have to develop discernment, and that’s a different practice entirely. It’s based on concentration, and there’s an element of discernment that comes into concentration, but you really have to emphasize the discernment part if the concentration based on the brahmaviharas is going to take you to … 
  3. The Uses of Concentration
    The Uses of Concentration December 29, 2008 Ajaan Lee begins his breath meditation instructions by telling you to breathe in deeply, three times or seven times. Use the wind element in the body to clean things out a little bit. Then allow the breath to find a rhythm that feels just right. See where your sense of ease is right now: which parts of … 
  4. Sense Pleasures & Sensuality
     … As long as you’re not willing to go beyond the practice of concentration, it’s like there being sap on your hand from the branch. You’re stuck. But being stuck on concentration is a minor problem compared to being stuck on sensuality. You actually need the pleasure of jhana to get away from sensuality. Otherwise, all you see are two alternatives: sensuality … 
  5. Nuclear Thinking
     … The skill in the practice lies in learning how to make use of whatever level of concentration you’ve got to deal with wherever you are in the rhythm of the mind. In periods when the thoughts seem to be few and far between, you can’t let yourself be complacent. Build up your concentration as solidly as you can so that, when the … 
  6. The Strength to See
     … In terms of dealing with physical suffering, that’s where concentration comes in. For most of us, our powers of concentration don’t go very far past suffering. Momentary concentration, which is ordinary everyday concentration, tends to get stopped by suffering. Even with just the slightest little bit of displeasure or boredom or dissatisfaction, we’re gone. We’re off someplace else—to say … 
  7. An Island in the Flood
     … But mindfulness and concentration help with your virtue as well, because they give you this center of strength, this island you can stand on, where you feel secure, where you feel well established. When you’re well established, your duties are easier to do. You gain nourishment from the concentration. The Buddha compares concentration to food. This island is not a barren island. It … 
  8. Simple & Basic
     … Respect your concentration. That respect leads to having a respect for everything that surrounds the concentration: looking into what keeps the mind steady, what keeps the mind stable, and trying to get really, really good at it. Because the more precise you are in seeing what’s going on while you’re looking after what’s going on, the more precisely you’ll see … 
  9. Taking Charge
     … When it’s really resolved on those things, where else will the mind go but into good concentration? Then as the mind is really concentrated, it’s able to be secluded from unskillful mental states. And when unskillful mental states come back, you can see them clearly. This is how concentration fosters discernment. And, in turn, the discernment fosters your concentration. You begin to … 
  10. Mental Experiments
     … How is it useful in the practice? Ajaan Fuang once pointed out that even states of Wrong Concentration can be useful if you know how to use them. For instance, you can get yourself in states of concentration where you totally lose any sense of the body — and here I mean strong states of concentration, not that kind of floating, deluded concentration where you … 
  11. The Brahmaviharas on the Path
     … As you sit down to meditate, working on developing your concentration, it’s not only concentration that’s going to get developed. If you learn how to carry the concentration into your daily life, you’re going to gain help with your virtue, looking after the precepts and helping with your discernment. So learn not to compartmentalize the practice. Remember it’s all of … 
  12. To Strengthen the Path
     … And they’re relevant to what we’re doing, as we’re trying to get the mind into concentration, because what is a concentrated state of mind? It’s your awareness filling the body with a feeling of well-being. Right there you’ve got mind, body, and feeling, the first three of the frames of reference. And then there are dhammas, which are … 
  13. Frustrated Desires
     … In fact, in one sutta, the Buddha defines the noble eightfold path as basically noble right concentration and its seven requisites. In other words, concentration is the heart of the path. The other factors of the path are things that help make it right. It’s difficult to wean yourself away from ordinary desires unless you can find some sort of satisfaction someplace else … 
  14. Stillness & Clear Seeing
     … So to protect your mind, you need concentration, staying with one object so that the mind can have a place to rest, gather its strength. In this way, you’re working both with concentration and with insight, together. In Ajaan Lee’s image, it’s like a person walking: You use both your left leg and your right leg. If you just hopped around … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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