Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Getting into the Body
    One of the Buddha’s terms for concentration is adhicitta, which can be translated as “heightened awareness” or “the heightened mind.” It can also be translated as “heightened intentness.” In other words, you really do pay careful attention to what you’ve got here, the object you’re focused on—in this case, the body, the breath. Give all your attention to how the … 
  3. Not-self in Context
     … And even though the Buddha doesn’t have you apply this teaching across the board until after you’ve developed some pretty strong powers of concentration, still he teaches it ahead of time so that you can apply it to other things that would pull you out of the concentration. If any distracting thought comes up, you realize, “Okay, it’s there, but it … 
  4. The Mirror Inside
     … It’s one of the nice things about concentration practice: The purpose is to create a sense of well-being. Some people don’t like the word concentration because it sounds too tense, but it’s precisely the quality that you’re trying to develop: You give the mind a center, and everything you’re doing is gathered around that center. And it’s … 
  5. Right Mindfulness
     … There’s the feeling associated with the breath, there’s the mind state 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 that are helping it along. You want to be able to make use of all four. Staying with the body helps you … 
  6. Pain & the Middle Way
     … the mind in concentration. From that perspective, you can start understanding what’s going on as the mind gets involved in pleasure, in sensual pleasure, and as it gets involved in pain. It’s not impossible for the mind to be concentrated even though there’s pain in the body. This is something that a lot of us misunderstand. The texts do describe pleasure … 
  7. Afraid of Inner Pleasure
     … So having both this energy from the concentration—that sense of well-being from the concentration—and right view about what we have to be wary and heedful of: That can help us go more easily through the world.
  8. From Compunction to Release
     … Then you apply the same principle as your mind gets deeper and deeper into concentration. You learn to appreciate the deeper states of concentration. You compare them with the shallower ones and you see that the deeper ones are a much more worthwhile, a more satisfying place to be. Even though some of the deeper ones don’t have the bells and whistles of … 
  9. Insight Is Seeing What’s Worth Doing
     … What’s worth doing? When you’re working with your concentration, the concentration is what’s worth doing. The distractions are not. And you want to learn to see them as inconstant, stressful, and not-self as a way of getting some dispassion for them so you can see that they’re not worth it and free yourself from them. As the concentration develops … 
  10. Take Time to Evaluate Your Life
     … This is where mindfulness practice slides into concentration practice. The Buddha never made a clear distinction between the two. As mindfulness moves toward concentration, that element of mindfulness turns into directed thought. You remember to stay with one object that you’re thinking about. Your alertness and ardency combine into another factor that the Buddha called evaluation. This is where the concentration also involves … 
  11. The Focus on Suffering
     … As you develop these factors, you bring the mind to concentration. As the mind gets into good deep concentration, your tranquility and insight can do more refined work. This is when you really learn how to discern suffering, even on very subtle levels. The more advanced stages of insight, when they’re talking about emptiness: It basically comes down to this ability to get … 
  12. Calming the Breath
     … If your concentration is too one-pointed, then when you move the point, you’ve lost your concentration. If the object of your concentration is broad—like the whole body—then thoughts can move in, thoughts can move out, and it’s as if they go through a screen on the window. The screen stays in place. The wind goes through the screen, but … 
  13. Equanimity
     … And then, based both on insight and on concentration, you continue to develop the path, fabricating the path, using whatever further concentration and insights you can develop. First you pry away any distractions from the mind that would pull you out of concentration, and then you apply the same analysis to the concentration itself. There’s an interesting passage in the Canon where the … 
  14. Imperturbable
     … They didn’t think that if he was in that concentration he’d be able to recognize those things, so they went to complain to the Buddha. And the Buddha said, “Actually, there is that concentration. It wasn’t quite pure, but that does count as the imperturbable concentration.” Now, imperturbable concentration is pretty advanced—at least the fourth jhana, and some of the … 
  15. Analyzing Anger
     … We use the concentration as a basis, we use our thoughts of goodwill, as I said, as a baseline, and our concentration as a basis so that you can watch the mind carefully and see the subtle movements inside the mind. For the time being, you don’t turn this analysis on the concentration. In the Canon, the Buddha talks about seeing the five … 
  16. Undefeated Goodwill
     … This shows the connection that the Buddha often talks about between right resolve and right concentration. As he says, when you’re getting the mind into right concentration, you’re secluded from sensuality, you’re secluded from unskillful mental qualities. In other words, you’ve successfully acted on your right resolves—which are to resolve on renunciation, resolve on non-ill will, resolve on … 
  17. Clinging-Aggregates in Context
     … In fact, of the different factors of the path, right concentration is the one where you’re going to be looking at the five aggregates very carefully, because you’re feeding on them. The Buddha compares concentration to the food for the path. So as you fix this food and enjoy it, you really got to get hands-on experience with these activities of … 
  18. Standing Where the Buddha Stood
     … Once he had stabilized his mind in good, solid, strong states of concentration, he directed it to insight — which means that the insights he got were the way experience looks from the point of view of someone in good, strong concentration. That’s where all the terms, all the ideas and concepts come from. So if you want to understand the ideas and concepts … 
  19. The Battle of Your Selves
    We sit here trying to get the mind into concentration, to get it focused on the breath, and all of a sudden we find it someplace else. By that I mean without any sense that we intended to go someplace else, it’s just that we’re there. This is a good lesson in how your self is pretty arbitrary, and how there are … 
  20. Balancing the Bases for Concentration
     … The more refreshing the breath, the more blissful the breath, then the easier it will be for the mind to settle in, and the concentration can start doing its work. Concentration is a really important part of the path that’s often overlooked. It’s the part of the path that heals the mind. Many times you come to meditation with a sense of … 
  21. Distraction & Drowsiness
     … If your thinking spins off onto other topics, you’re going to get dizzy—in other words, your concentration is not going to get solid. But if you hold on to the breath and think about the breath for a while, you actually get deeper and deeper into concentration. This sort of evaluation is not just one step to get through as quickly as … 
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