Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 33
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. The Allure of Sensuality
     … While we’re working here on concentration, one of the prerequisites for concentration is that you put aside sensuality and get your mind secluded from sensual thoughts. This doesn’t mean that you’re secluded from sensual pleasures. The pleasures themselves are not the problem. The problem is the fact that the mind keeps thinking about these things and planning how it would like … 
  13. Potentials for Awakening
     … That ability to say No is what allows you to develop concentration, because now you’re going to look for pleasure someplace else. And here the Buddha opens the field wide. Whatever pleasure you can get from concentration is going to be a good thing, because unlike sensual pleasure or the pleasures of sensual fantasies, the pleasure of concentration puts you in a state … 
  14. Large Perspective, Small Focus
     … It’s so much easier to blame things outside, so much harder to look inside and see “What am I doing right now that’s weighing down the mind?” But if the mind is in concentration, then it’s in a much better position to do that. One, it’s because to get the mind in concentration you have to deal with those forms … 
  15. A Refuge Inside
     … How did he find happiness? By developing mindfulness and alertness to give rise to concentration in the mind. He used the concentration to develop discernment that led to release. So you take his example and follow it in your own life. You try to develop mindfulness and alertness as well, to gain a sense of being centered and at home in the present moment … 
  16. Pleasure & Pain
     … You see what kinds of pleasures are really worth avoiding because they get in the way of the pleasure that comes from concentration. Then you learn to maximize that pleasure from concentration so that you can understand pain. You see these things as part of a causal network. You develop the pleasure of concentration so that you can understand the fabrication that goes into … 
  17. Learning from Sensual Desire
     … What do they do to fool you every time they appear and you go for them? This will require good concentration. The irony is that you need to get the mind past these hindrances to really get into good concentration. But that’s just an irony in theory. In practice, what it means is that you fight them off and work on your concentration … 
  18. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … If you really stick with this, you can bring the mind to states of concentration, the concentration you need in order to maintain this stance of being able to step outside your thoughts. In the factors of awakening, this concentration is described as four of the factors: rapture, serenity, concentration, and equanimity. These are the qualities you need to gain the strength not to … 
  19. Self-starting
     … Then as your mindfulness develops, it moves into right concentration. As the Buddha said, the factors of the different establishings of mindfulness are the themes of right concentration. So as you go through those last three factors of the path, you find that right concentration contains right mindfulness, and right mindfulness contains right effort. They’re all part of one another. So what do … 
  20. Trust in Heedfulness
     … Once you can maintain a good state of concentration, the next step is to look at what’s going on. In what way is this concentration empty of prior disturbances? In what way is there still disturbance in it? And where? If you look carefully enough, you find that the disturbance is related to something you’re doing: the way you’re creating that … 
  21. Single-minded Determination
     … That’s what concentration is for. As things keep coming up, you realize, “This isn’t really an intention I want to abide by, and that’s not either.” So you cut them away, cut them away, until you run into the really big defilements, the really important ones. Sometimes they’ll knock you off base again, which is a sign that your concentration … 
  22. Load next page...