Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. Becoming Consummate
     … When you give rise to concentration, don’t throw it away casually. So many people come here to meditate, and at the end of the hour, the mind is beginning to get a little bit concentrated, but as soon as a little beeper rings up, that’s it. It’s gone. Ajaan Lee used to call it frog concentration. In other words, as soon … 
  11. Bringing Right resolve
     … I was talking about the noble eightfold path, and he objected to the idea that right concentration had to be jhana. He said there are two types of right concentration: the right concentration in jhana, and the right concentration in vipassana. He said that to believe that right concentration has to be jhana is simply dealing with pariyatti Dhamma, the Dhamma that’s been … 
  12. The Five Faculties Confirmed
     … Those are sets that deal with effort, mindfulness, and concentration. The next two sets, which are basically identical—the five faculties and the five strengths—contain effort, mindfulness, and concentration, and they add two more faculties: conviction and discernment. These two faculties provide the framework for our practice. It’s because of conviction that we’re practicing, and it’s for the sake of … 
  13. Just Rightness
     … You bring your mindfulness to an awareness of the body right here in and of itself, and, using that as your object, you try to develop right concentration, the kind of concentration that’s balanced, that allows for alertness, that allows for mindfulness to be really solidly established. The Canon uses the word jhana for concentration, right or wrong. There are jhanas mentioned in … 
  14. Still
     … heightened virtue, heightened mind, i.e., concentration, and heightened discernment—and then he adds respect for concentration. Because this is already included in the training, why does he have to add concentration again? It’s because people tend to overlook it, not to value it. After all, we’ve read so much about how you don’t want to get stuck on concentration, that … 
  15. A Home for the Mind
     … This is why the Buddha said that a good state of concentration requires both tranquility and insight. It’s not the case that all the insight comes after the concentration. The ability see clearly is a prerequisite for good concentration as well. The concentration and the discernment help each other along. The more solid your concentration, the more refined your discernment. The quicker and … 
  16. A Refuge from Death
     … You learn to look at them, especially if you’ve got a state of concentration going in the mind, and you can compare the ease and well-being, the sense of fullness that comes from being concentrated as opposed to the tension, the grasping, the hunger that comes from grasping after any sensual pleasure you can find. You compare them and, after a while … 
  17. To Comprehend Suffering
     … Now, to actually observe suffering in those terms requires good powers of concentration together with right view, which is why you have to develop a path. And concentration, to be *honest *concentration, requires virtue. It also requires mindfulness and alertness, so that you can watch what’s actually happening in the present moment. It’s in this way that the duties of the four … 
  18. Everyday Feeding Habits
     … So you want to be able to maintain your concentration because. After all, if you find yourself feeding on things outside or on attitudes that are really unhealthy inside, you’ve got to give yourself something better to feed on. This is why we practice concentration: so that we have a sense of stability, a sense of being centered and self-sufficient as we … 
  19. Anupassana
     … This is where the anupassana turns from concentration into insight. The difference between concentration and insight is basically the questions you’re asking. With concentration, the right question is: “How do I get the mind to settle down? How do I get to enjoy the object? How do I get to be continually with the object, become one with the object?” And then you … 
  20. Do, Maintain, Use
    Ajaan Fuang used to say that there are three steps to doing concentration. One is learning how to do it. The second is learning how to maintain it. And the third is learning how to put it to use. The doing is not all that hard. You find an object that you like. A good place to start is with the breath. Make the … 
  21. Deconstruction
     … So when concentration comes up, you don’t just let it go, let it go. When mindfulness comes up, you don’t let it go. Everything in the path has to be developed—and that takes work. Once, when the Buddha was talking about breath meditation, there was a monk named Arittha who said, “I do breath meditation.” And the Buddha asked, “What kind … 
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