Search results for: "Concentration"
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- Even Animals Can Be Trained… The Buddha talks about trained animals—trained horses, trained elephants—as images for what we’re doing as we practice, especially as we’re practicing concentration. A trained horse. It’s well bred, so it’s beautiful, but it’s also fast and strong. The beauty represents the beauty of a monk’s virtue. The strength represents the right effort that’s needed for …
- The Raft… As Ajaan Lee said, when we’re practicing concentration, we’re actually going against the three characteristics. We think about the three characteristics or the three perceptions to give rise to a sense of dispassion. While you’re in concentration, you use them, you apply them, to your distractions. Anything that would pull you away right now, you try to see how it’s …
- Practicing from Gratitude… Then you find, further, as you protect this state of concentration, that as the mind goes off into its ordinary pursuits, you begin to see more clearly which of those pursuits are actually skillful and which are not, which give rise to needless suffering and which are actually part of the path. This is where discernment begins to grow out of the concentration. As …
- Insight in Concentration… In the Buddha’s teachings on concentration, when he talks about how you can bring the mind to more and more refined levels of concentration, he says to delight in it, let the mind settle in it, get absorbed, really appreciate that level of concentration. Only at the very end do you let go. But until you’ve gotten to that point, you want …
- Train Your Hunger (The Sea Squirt)… After you’ve fed the mind well on concentration, you begin to look at all the other things that would pull you out of concentration, and you see that there’s greed or aversion or delusion involved in going after those things. So, to get past them, the first step is to see, when the greed or the anger comes, how does it come …
- The Pleasure Principle Made Noble… Later on, when he was talking about the different factors of the path, he talked of right concentration as being the heart and the other factors as being supports. So this is the central factor, what we’re doing right now: trying to get the mind into right concentration. Of course that involves right mindfulness, right effort, and all the other right factors of …
- Your Hair Is on Fire… So, what are they? What’s a good way to find them? This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration. Some people complain that concentration is a diversion, that you should go straight to insight to get rid of those problems. After all, we don’t have much time. Still, how are you going to see which movements in the mind are …
- Indulge in the Pleasure of Jhana… You may be afraid, “Are you going to get stuck on the concentration?” Actually, it’s nothing to be afraid of. If you’re not stuck on the concentration, there’s no way you’re going to be able to do it well. There’s healthy attachment to concentration and unhealthy. The unhealthy is when you want to go off and don’t want …
- All-around Alertness… You gain power of concentration from the one-pointedness, but when the mind is one-pointed like that, it’s not going to gain insight. The insight will have to come—for people who tend to be very one-pointed—when they’re coming out of concentration. But it’s also possible to gain insight while you’re in concentration when you have this …
- The Middle Way… Mindfulness is also a matter of getting the mind still, bringing it to right concentration. In some places it’s taught that simply observing the body, observing the mind, is insight in and of itself. But to begin with, there has to be concentration, and these establishings of mindfulness are the topics or themes of concentration. You’ve got to get the mind anchored …
- Medicine – Timely & Timeless… Before you take up the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress and not-self, he has you develop other perceptions first—in particular the perceptions that lead the mind to concentration. While you’re here practicing concentration, focus in on your breath. What keeps you with the breath? A perception, a mental label that says “breath.” And a lot of the concentration practice is learning …
- How to Look, How to Listen… Right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration are factors for heightened concentration, or the heightened mind. But then when he lists the order in which they come as the triple training is accomplished, he starts with virtue and then the concentration, and then—from the virtue and the concentration—you foster discernment. So the message is that right view can come in with right …
- Preparing for Death… As you’re leaving the body and the human realm, the practice of concentration is good for fears around leaving the sensual pleasures of the human realm. We’ve learned through concentration that there is a pleasure that doesn’t require sensuality at all. In fact, you can experience that pleasure only when you put sensuality off to the side. Think of the definition …
- Discernment in Concentration… by turning them into concentration, a state of body and mind where things come together. So it’s important that you realize that as you’re doing concentration you’re also developing your discernment. Discernment is not just a matter of being clever in memorizing what’s in the books. It’s a matter of learning to see a problem, get sensitive to the …
- Remembering Ajaan Lee… There are stories of his being able to stop the engine of a bus, of getting other people to levitate through the power of his concentration. His concentration was amazing. So the fact that you’re thinking as part of the concentration doesn’t mean that concentration is light. It means that you’re bringing all of your mental powers to bear on it …
- The Bridge to Concentration… You’re here not only to look after your own concentration and to have respect for your concentration. Have respect for other people’s concentration as well. Other people here are trying to keep their minds quiet. They’re trying to keep as little greed, anger, and delusion as possible from infiltrating their minds. So avoid expressing things that would stir them up, especially …
- Four Noble Questions… So in this case, doing the concentration is, again, applying the four noble truths. What should you be doing right now? The answer is: concentration. You realize that concentration is something good to do. It should be done; it’s something to be developed. Right there you’re getting into those four noble questions. The mind settles down. What do you do with it …
- Skillful Thinking… If concentration comes, they say, just notice it passing and then you learn something about inconstancy. Well, yeah, but you haven’t got much use out of the concentration. Concentration is something to develop. Make sure you’ve got your duties straight. When you do, then your thinking can be helpful. You know when to turn it on, when to turn it off, which …
- Grasping the Snake… One is that the four main factors of the path, which appear again and again in the lists, are effort, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are the qualities we have to develop within ourselves. The different lists differ in the order with which they place these qualities. Sometimes you start with discernment, and you use that to develop concentration. Sometimes the concentration comes first …
- Ingenuity… Well, you just sit down and meditate, pose the question in your mind, then drop it and put the mind into concentration. Don’t deal with the question while you’re in concentration. Then see what pops up in the mind as you come out. There’s no 100% guarantee that what pops up in your mind will be the right solution, but it …
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