Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. The Karma of Perception
     … And again, these perceptions can lead to states of concentration. As the Buddha said, the perception of not-self can take you to the dimension of nothingness. Which may be why some people think of the perception of not-self as automatically insight, and that it automatically leads to something beyond concentration. But the Buddha notes that if you don’t develop it with … 
  14. A Connoisseur of the Breath
     … There’s the mind state that’s trying to maintain concentration. And then there are the various mental qualities, either the hindrances that are coming in to interfere with your concentration or the factors for awakening or the factors of jhāna that are helping you along. You really want to make use of all four frames. Staying with the body helps you observe feelings … 
  15. The Brahmavihāras Aren’t Enough
     … As you get your mind into concentration with any of these topics, you reflect on the fact that this concentration is fabricated. Whatever is fabricated, you perceive in line with the three perceptions of being inconstant, stressful, and not-self, or in line with variations on those perceptions: a disease, a dart, alien, empty. In other words, look at the state of concentration itself … 
  16. Worries & Regrets
     … Ideally, they should go together, insight and concentration. Your insight develops your concentration; your concentration develops your insight. Remember that you need both, so that the concentration can strengthen the insight and the insight can help protect the concentration. It’s when the path has all its factors functioning together that it can really do its work.
  17. Fabricating Around Pain
     … We’re trying to bring the mind into a state of concentration with as much mindfulness and alertness as possible. And the mind finds it easier to stay concentrated when it’s with something that’s pleasant, so that instead of feeling a need to send your awareness outside, you can allow your awareness to fill the whole body where you’ve created a … 
  18. Timeless Practice
     … This kind of insight helps get the mind in concentration. And then the concentration, of course, gives you more solid states of mind where you can see things more subtly, so that your insight into other, subtler unskillful states gets more precise. This combination of tranquility and insight based on concentration, and concentration based on tranquility and insight is what’s going to undercut … 
  19. Consciousness, Awakened & Not
     … Then it gets subtler in the practice of concentration. Obvious forms of harm have been cleared away, but there’s still the burdensomeness of the fact that concentration has to be fabricated. You’re very conscious of this fact in the beginning as you’re trying to get the mind into concentration and you find it difficult. But as you get more and more … 
  20. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. “Concentration” in both cases means the jhanas, but the theme leading you to develop those jhanas, and from there on into discernment, is something that varies. Some people can just work with the jhana itself. You look at whatever state of concentration you have settled into and you examine it to see: Where is there still any stress … 
  21. Reflections
     … What’s going on in the process of concentration? What are you doing? The first question you have is: Is there still some disturbance here? There are many levels of concentration, some less disturbed than others. Those are the ones you’re aiming for. If you see that there is a disturbance, you try to drop whatever’s causing it. The Buddha says it … 
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