Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. Space for Sustained Contemplation
     … Otherwise you can sit here and think about them all the time, and there’s no concentration at all, at least not right concentration. So whatever way you can think of why the body is not worth all that attention, or all that pride, or all that shame, or lust, or whatever, use your ingenuity until you can see that this is nothing to … 
  7. Inner Refuge
     … This is the help that concentration can give you. But the concentration on its own is not enough. You have to have the discernment to realize that once the concentration has given you a sense of ease and well-being, you’re in a good position to look around at the mind’s normal preoccupations, its normal understandings of things, and start calling them … 
  8. A Pervasive Well-being
    When we talk about practicing concentration, we often talk about bringing the mind to oneness, or a state of one-pointedness or singleness. It’s important that we understand what this means and how you do it because there are two ways of explaining the Pali term ekaggatā. One is that the mind is at one point. Eka means one, agga means point or … 
  9. Vitakka & Vicara
     … They serve a real purpose in getting the mind into concentration and keeping it there. They also help take the mind to higher levels of concentration, when you use them to analyze a particular level of concentration to see what’s still causing unnecessary stress in that level, so that you can drop the cause. And they help to protect the mind if it … 
  10. Insight into Pain
     … When you’re practicing concentration, you want to be very clear that this is an action, this is an activity you’re doing. You’re thinking and evaluating one object. You hold a perception in mind. As the Buddha said, the levels of concentration are a series of perception attainments, all the way from the first jhana up through the dimension of nothingness. At … 
  11. A Sense of Direction
     … You move on to concentration. Again, concentration causes no harm to anybody. At the same time, it gives you a pleasure that’s above the ordinary. Because if the only pleasures you know in life are sensual pleasures—i.e., the pleasures of beautiful sights, beautiful sounds, fragrant aromas, delicious tastes, nice tactile contacts—they require taking a lot of resources. And if you … 
  12. Freedom through Restraint
     … We’re disciplining the mind when we practice right mindfulness and on into right concentration. This is a part of concentration some people don’t like. There’s that interpretation of mindfulness as being broad, open, and accepting, whereas concentration is narrow and restrictive. And in one sense it is, because you’re keeping the mind within bounds. But the same thing applies to … 
  13. Delusion Concentration
    Delusion Concentration November 19, 2010 When you meditate, there are two problems on two sides that you have to watch out for: pain and distraction on one side, and pleasure and stillness on the other. Now, you’re going to meet with these things inevitably. What you have to watch out for, though, is how you approach them, how you deal with them. If … 
  14. Dwellings
     … In fact, the most important work is the work you do as you examine what’s going on in your mind when it’s concentrated. But before you can do that examination you have to get it well-concentrated. Otherwise, the thought of examining it might destroy the concentration itself. So for the time being, just try to make this a comfortable place to … 
  15. Deep Understanding
     … You learn to pull yourself out of your scribe knowledge that comes from listening and thinking and reading, and gain a knowledge that comes from actually working with the things in and of themselves—not just the idea of mindfulness or the idea of concentration, but the actual experience of mindfulness, the experience of concentration. And it’s through this kind of understanding that … 
  16. Dwelling in Emptiness
     … Ajaan Fuang once noted that a lot of people, if concentration comes too easily, don’t understand it. Then on the days when it doesn’t come easily, they’re really up the creek. What in the past was easy, all of a sudden is hard, and they don’t have any handle on the situation. The people who have some difficulty getting the … 
  17. Four Noble Truths to One
     … You develop, basically the triple training of virtue, concentration, discernment. In the beginning, these duties are four separate duties, but they’re interconnected. After all, as you develop the path, you begin to abandon some of your passion for your craving as your right view begins to see through the things you used to crave. And particularly, as you develop right concentration, that gives … 
  18. Metta
     … We’re trying to get the mind into concentration. Ill-will is one of the hindrances that keeps us out of concentration, so we want to do a little heading off at the pass. This is so that thoughts of ill-will don’t come up in the course of the meditation, or if they do, we can remember the goodwill we’ve been … 
  19. Balancing Effort & Patience
     … This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration: to block these unskillful things from coming into the mind so that you give rise to skillful states in their stead, and then you try to maintain and develop them. This starts with mindfulness and goes up through the other factors of awakening, which basically are a recipe for doing concentration practice, getting the … 
  20. Judging Mindfulness & Concentration
     … As you do this consistently, the mind is going to get into concentration. Sometimes we’re told that mindfulness practice is one thing—you’re alert to what’s going on in the present moment without trying to change anything—whereas concentration practice is something else: They say you try to change things so that the mind gets fairly narrowly focused, to the point … 
  21. Breathing Easy
     … So if you find yourself shrinking back from concentration, think of the dangers you’re in for if you don’t have this concentration to depend on. And if you find other thoughts getting in the way of the concentration, remind yourself, you’ve got the breath right here. It’s not destroyed by any thought that comes in the mind. So you want … 
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