Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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