Search results for: "Concentration"
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- Faith in the Practice… We hear that the practice starts out with virtue and then goes to concentration and then to discernment. But actually, you have to develop all three at once: virtue in your day-to-day actions, while trying to develop your concentration and your discernment at the same time. This way, they strengthen one another. Now, for most laypeople the five precepts are plenty, but …
- In Context… We’re here practicing concentration, trying to get the mind to settle down, stay with one object, the breath. That requires thinking, it requires an intention, it requires a sense that you’re going to benefit from this—and also, a sense that you’re competent to do this. After all, concentration is something you do. The whole path is something you do. But …
- Intent… This is a formula for how you get into concentration. And underlying it is a very important quality for succeeding in concentration, which is intent. You want to be totally intent on what you’re doing right now. Let the past and the future fall away. They don’t have to get involved right now. This means you can unburden yourself of a lot …
- The Right Attitude to the Body… You take those as themes for your meditation so that you can develop a sense of ease, a sense of rapture, a really good solid base for your mindfulness and concentration. Then as you maintain this full-body concentration, getting more and more sensitive to how the energies in the body can be used to create even stronger states of concentration, you can ultimately …
- Refreshment… This is one of skills we need to develop as we develop concentration. Some people complain about the word “concentration” as a translation for samadhi, but samadhi is very much a matter of the mind being centered, with all its activities being centered on one thing. There’s something concentric about it. The skill lies in not putting a lot of force and tension …
- The Same but Different, but the Same… It’s not that you do concentration and only when your concentration gets really good do you gain insight into the mind. You’ve got to have some insight into how the mind works from the very beginning. Otherwise, you can’t get the mind to settle down. Some people find it easy, but it’s not always easy even for them. There’ll …
- Dualities… Where is your food and water going to come from? What kinds of animals are there out there? So you bring the mind into concentration. Drop the perception of wilderness and just be with the object of your concentration. And then take a while, after the mind has settled down, to notice that it’s freer than it used to be—less burdened. There …
- The Prison Break… Those are the feelings that come from getting the mind in concentration. And that requires that you be intent on doing this. Again, there are people who warn that if you try to get the mind into concentration, there’s going to be a sense of self doing the concentration, or the sense of self that’s going to benefit from the concentration—as …
- The Path to Stream Entry… Right mindfulness is basically the Buddha’s instructions on how to get the mind into right concentration. So all the factors do come together. As the Buddha once said of his teachings, “There’s nothing lacking, and there’s nothing in excess.” So try to be virtuous and discerning in your concentration. Try to be discerning and concentrated as you practice virtue. And then …
- The Fires of Sensuality… It helps the mind be more inclined to get into concentration, and then the concentration helps provide you with an alternative form of pleasure. After all, if you’re going to drop one form of pleasure, you have to find another one to take its place. This is why the pleasure of fully inhabiting the form of your body, which is a higher level …
- Right Livelihood… We in the West tend to overlook our need for the groundwork provided by concentration. The Buddha himself compared the happiness, pleasure, and equanimity that come from concentration to kinds of food. His image was of a fortress at the edge of a frontier, and different qualities in the path correspond to different aspects of the fortress. There’s discernment, which is like a …
- The Humane Quality of the Path… But otherwise, you develop your discernment and concentration by working on being with the breath and then maintaining your concentration. It requires discernment to maintain concentration. It’s not simply through force of will, it’s also through understanding what’s going on in the mind, understanding the ways the mind tends to hide things from itself, the ways it suddenly slips off seemingly …
- Fire Escapes… What we’ve got here is the map of the noble eightfold path, the map about right concentration and its seven supports, its seven requisites. In addition, there are instructions on how to use right concentration, how to analyze what’s going on in the concentration, so that we can begin to understand how the mind puts suffering together and how we can start …
- Negative Emotions… His concentration was strong enough so that he could focus on the feeling of the fear until the feeling of fear dropped away, and he dropped into a very deep, deep state of concentration, standing there in front of the tiger. When he came out of that concentration, the moon had moved quite a ways. He realized he’d been in that concentration for …
- The Strength of Heedfulness… But concentration gives you an alternative: You can have a sense of well-being, a sense of intense well-being throughout the body simply by the way you breathe, by the way you relate to the breath. That’s one way in which concentration teaches you not to get stuck on pleasure. Another way, is that it requires that if you’re going to …
- Willing & Observing… Those are the two sides to the concentration practice. You want to stay with one spot in the body as your central focus. But you find as the concentration develops that, say, the sensation of breathing at that central focus is going to get more, and more subtle, harder and harder to keep track of. This is where your ability to keep your whole …
- Heeding the Deva Messengers… And if you’re heedful about what you’ve learned from the past, you realize you need to get the mind into concentration because that’s the best of all possible states of becoming, both as a pleasant abiding now and also as a source of knowledge about becoming. If you’re heedful about your concentration, you have to realize, okay, it’s not …
- The Breath Soufflé… This is how the breathing moves from mindfulness of breathing into concentration based on the breathing. Actually, it’s concentration from the very beginning. The Buddha doesn’t make any clear distinction between concentration and mindfulness practice. After all, mindfulness has the role of remembering to do what’s skillful and to abandon what’s unskillful. If something unskillful comes up, you’re mindful …
- Change Your Perceptions… So we work to overcome sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and anxiety, and uncertainty or doubt, to bring the mind into concentration. And we get the mind into concentration by changing our perceptions. When the mind is in concentration, then you can apply the four noble truths. Ask the questions of the four noble truths: “Where is the suffering right now …
- Knowing & Acting… The Buddha said that right concentration forms the center of the path. There are eight factors all together in the noble path, but right concentration forms the heart. All the other seven factors, he said, are requisites to help look after concentration to give it the right balance, give it the right tone, give it the right level of alertness. The concentration, though, is …
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