Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 32
  2. The Wisdom of Dualities
     … You get the mind into a state of concentration, then you get it into another state of concentration, and you can compare the two. Or when you come out of concentration and you see the mind going for something, you can ask yourself, “Well, which is better? The mind when it was concentrated, or the mind when it’s running around?” The fact that … 
  3. A Connoisseur of Happiness
     … In fact, you need the stillness of jhana to look objectively at the pleasures you’ve been attached to so far in your life, to see that they’re no match for the pleasures of concentration. Only then are you encouraged to ask yourself: Are there any drawbacks to this state of concentration? Is there something better than this? That reflection becomes a solvent … 
  4. For Your Benefit Here & Now
     … Your concentration leads to discernment and your discernment leads to more concentration. They work together. Just be careful, though, when you’re going for the pleasure, that you don’t abandon the breath. This is something that’s all too easy, especially when there are people out there telling you that that’s what you’ve got to do. I was talking to someone … 
  5. A Master of Your Thoughts
    Ajaan Fuang used to say there are three important parts to concentration practice. The first is learning how to do it; the second is how to maintain it; and the third is how to use it. The “doing it” is a simple matter of bringing the mind to the breath—or if you want, to buddho, to the parts of the body, or to … 
  6. Reflect
     … This gives you training in mindfulness and alertness, which are the skills you’re going to need for concentration. When you practice concentration, you have to keep one object in mind, like the breath. And then you have to observe how it’s going. Is it comfortable? Is it not? How can you breathe in a way that gives rise to a sense of … 
  7. Remember This
     … If your energy level is down and the mind is getting depressed, what can you do to lift your spirits? When the mind is wired and scattered all over the place with lots of frenetic energy, what can you do to calm it down? If the mind isn’t concentrated, what can you do to get it concentrated? If the mind isn’t in … 
  8. Focused on Your Duties
     … The big problem is that, if the mind can’t get into concentration at all, you’re going to go looking for your pleasure in other places and you’ll get blinded by your craving again. It’s only when the mind is in concentration that you can see things clearly. All the background noise has settled down. So don’t be afraid of … 
  9. The Chess Game
     … Then you turn around and learn how it pry loose your attachments to that state of concentration. You let things go in the proper order. Many people are afraid of getting attached to concentration. As soon as the mind settles down for a little bit, feels good, “Whoops, got to let that go.” That aborts the whole path right there. You’ve got to … 
  10. Choosing Sides
    Choosing Sides November 8, 2013 When you read the factors of the path, one of the first things you notice is the word right, which implies that there is also a wrong view and a wrong resolve—all the way down to wrong concentration. And the Buddha doesn’t leave it just implied. There are passages where he talks explicitly about wrong view and … 
  11. A Complete Training
     … This is why the Buddha has you contemplate not only things outside—things that would have pulled you away from your concentration—in terms of the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self, but also the concentration itself. You can think of the five brethren when they listened to that sermon we chanted last night. Here they had already gained some measure of concentration … 
  12. The Problem Is Birth
     … As you’re sitting here trying to get the mind into concentration, you’re creating a state of becoming where there’s something you want, you see the world in which that thing is located, and then you move into that world. In this case, what you want is stillness. It’s in the world of the body, as you breathe in, breathe out … 
  13. The Pursuit of Happiness & Goodness
     … As you avoid the disturbance, you get into a higher level of concentration, and then things that were part and parcel of the previous level of concentration suddenly become a disturbance. So you’re becoming more and more of a connoisseur of the level of stress in the mind, the level of disturbance in the mind. This, too, develops your discernment, develops your alertness … 
  14. Virtue Fosters Concentration
     … And they’re going to have a huge impact on your practice of right mindfulness and right concentration. So that’s one area of virtue that’s helpful to concentration. Another area is restraint of the senses. This one is obvious: If you go around gathering up images of things you like to look at, or hearing about things that you hate to hear … 
  15. Clinging
     … It may be because of this reason that some people object to the idea of calling samadhi “concentration,” because they think concentration has to be tense. It doesn’t. It’s centered. The trick is to focus on something and disperse the energy there at the same time. Wherever you notice there’s tension in the body as you make your survey as you … 
  16. The Kamma of Concentration
    The Kamma of Concentration February 16, 2017 Years back, I was asked to write a review of a book on positive psychology—the psychology of how people find happiness—and to approach it from a Buddhist point of view. One of the things I noticed, as I was reading through the book, was that there was no consideration of what the impact of your … 
  17. Encouraging Perceptions
     … Sometimes you hear that concentration basically deals with the perception or the mental label of something, whereas when you’re developing insight you’re dealing with the actual experience, but that’s not the case. The two go together, the perception and the experience, both in concentration practice and in insight practice. When you’re trying to concentrate, you use the perception of the … 
  18. Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea
     … But when the mind is well-fed with the concentration, you look at a lot of the activities that held some attraction for you, and you can see that they’re not worth it. As the concentration gets more solid and your discernment gets more subtle, you begin to see areas where there was some stress you didn’t see before. Again the question … 
  19. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … You look for it once you’ve really gotten solidly established in that state of concentration. You ask, “Okay, where is the element of stress here?” The only way you’re going to see it is to see it coming and going. It’s going to flicker even in the steadiness of the concentration. Concentration is not totally set. It’s got its ups … 
  20. In the Present
     … There are states of concentration where things get narrowed down to a very precise time in the present moment, but you’ve got to maintain the concentration. It doesn’t maintain itself—so even there, there’s a duty. Other times, when the mind is not in concentration, you’ve got to figure out, “What do I need to do? What are my duties … 
  21. The Path of Happiness
     … Sometimes you see in modern teachings, vipassana especially, the idea that there’s a danger in right concentration. But the Buddha never said that. It’s always presented as a necessary part of the path. Sometimes it’s easy to get complacent because after a while you find that when you can master this kind of concentration, you can tap into it whenever you … 
  22. Load next page...