Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Mindfulness the Gatekeeper
    The Buddha’s instructions for getting the mind into concentration are in his descriptions of right mindfulness. For example, the body: You keep focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The “body in itself” here means the body simply as its sitting here right now. You don’t think … 
  3. Toxic Environments
     … We’re trying to develop a state of concentration that’s strong—full-body awareness, full-body breathing—so that energetically nobody can invade your space. You see some people defining samādhi, the Pali term for concentration, as calm. And calm is part of it, but calm is a separate factor for awakening from concentration. Calm in Pali is passaddhi. Concentration is stronger. It … 
  4. Dethinking Thinking
     … Why is it that in some of the lists you have discernment coming first, then virtue, then concentration, and in others you start out with virtue, then concentration, then discernment—or mindfulness, discernment, then leading to concentration? What’s going on there? And what patterns are consistent? You’ll find that one pattern is always consistent: that mindfulness comes before concentration. In some cases … 
  5. The Desire for Things to Be Different
     … That’s one of the big lessons in concentration practice, one of the most important lessons: that you can change things. Think of how Ajaan Lee discovered this method: He’d gone into the forest, walked with another monk for three days to a very out-of-the-way place. They were going to spend the Rains retreat there, depending on a hill tribe … 
  6. The Skill of Stillness
     … You have little moments of concentration and you try to stitch them together, because deeper concentration comes from momentary concentration. When I first started out meditating with Ajaan Fuang, I’d hear other people talking about the visions they had in their meditation, or else intense feelings of rapture. I wasn’t getting any of those, so I was assuming that I wasn’t … 
  7. The Pleasure of the Middle Way
     … Right concentration is what provides that alternative: this pleasure of form. This is how it’s a middle pleasure in the sense that it doesn’t get caught in those two extremes. But it’s not out on the midpoint between pleasure and pain. Actually, the pleasure of concentration can be very intense. It can saturate the body, permeate the body, permeate your awareness … 
  8. Noble Ardency
     … These qualities are listed under right mindfulness, but they apply to concentration as well. In fact, there’s no real clear line between mindfulness practice and concentration practice. If you’re very mindful and alert and ardent, the mind’s going to settle down. Right mindfulness is how you get the mind to settle down, and that’s how you get it to stay … 
  9. Dhamma Books & the Actuality
    “One who is ardent with respect for concentration” – one of the passages we chanted just now. Those are the two qualities you want to bring to your concentration practice: ardency and respect. The respect is in the motivation, realizing that there’s a lot to be learned right here, and the only way you’re going to learn from it is to respect it … 
  10. Defilements with Their Bambi Eyes
     … Some of the lists have discernment coming before concentration, such as the noble eightfold path and the seven factors for awakening. And even in the lists where discernment comes after concentration, conviction comes first: conviction that your actions do matter. And where do your actions come from? They come from the mind. This means that you’ve got to get the mind under some … 
  11. Dealing with the Hindrances
     … It’s not right concentration, but it is a type of concentration, though. It’s a concentration with blinders. It focuses so much on the object and particular details of the object that you’re blinding yourself to a lot of other its other aspects. So here the function of appropriate attention is to take off the blinders, to look around at what you … 
  12. Equanimity & Power
     … The path to the end of suffering involves right concentration, and right concentration has pleasure and rapture; more pleasure, more rapture; pleasure without rapture; and finally, equanimity, when the mind has been fed off of the pleasure of concentration. It’s like the equanimity that comes at the end of a meal. You’ve had enough, the needs of the body are satisfied, and … 
  13. A Unified Committee
     … So you have to be convinced in the worth of concentration: *samadhi-garu atapi—*one who is ardent with respect for concentration. Respect, faith, trust: They all go together. You have to trust concentration. It may not seem obvious how it’s going give rise to insight or when it’s going give rise to insight, but you have to trust that it’s … 
  14. Concentration as Wilderness
    The Buddha compares coming into meditation, coming into concentration, to leaving your home and going into the wilderness. Of course, there are lots of different ways that people go into the wilderness. Once I was on a hike in Zion, going up to Angel’s Landing. There weren’t that many people on the trail that day, but there was one point where you … 
  15. Reflect on Your Actions
     … So reflect on your actions while you’re concentrating and as you’re coming out of concentration. Reflect on your meditation; reflect on what you’re picking up as you leave concentration. This will help you reflect on all the other issues going on in your life, such as he way you approach a project and the way you learn how to handle it … 
  16. Contentment vs. Initiative
     … You use your concentration to get the mind still enough to see what’s going on so that you can start asking questions. But here, as with your use of your wealth outside, you have to have a sense of proportion. How much concentration do you have? How much can you apply to a particular problem? How do you notice that you’re analyzing … 
  17. A Happiness Based Inside
     … This gets easier as your concentration gets stronger. The more stillness in the, the more easily it can catch these other little movements of the mind as it goes out. But at the same time, you have to reflect. It’s not simply the power of concentration that’s going to enable you to give up your attachments to wanting to feed off this … 
  18. Signs Along the Road
    In the Canon, when they talk about the nimitta of concentration, they’re referring to the theme you focus on. In the passages that describe it, the themes are the four establishings of mindfulness: remaining focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The same with feelings in and of themselves … 
  19. A Path of Skills
     … It’s in the course of getting the mind concentrated that you begin to see where your cravings are; what you’re holding on to; the things that you hold on to that prevent you from getting into concentration; the things you crave that disturb your concentration: You see them a lot more clearly because you’re aiming at this one focal point in … 
  20. Effort against the Hindrances
     … In other words, we want to make concentration arise and to provide the conditions for discernment. As for unskillful thoughts that get in the way of concentration, we want to make sure they don’t arise. If they do arise, we want to speed up their passing away. As a group, those thoughts are called hindrances, and there are five altogether: sensual desire, ill … 
  21. Whole-Hearted Concentration
    Whole-Hearted Concentration July 11, 2023 Samadhi, the word that we translate as concentration, is defined in the Canon as cittass’ekaggata: singleness of mind. It’s worth exploring the levels of meaning of that term. There’s the singleness: Eka means one. Agga is a controversial term. Some people translate it as “point,” to convey the idea that your awareness should be reduced … 
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