Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Inner Wealth Management
     … It’s also one of those things that helps the mind get into concentration. If you have ill will for the people around you, that’s going to carry into your meditation and spoil it. So develop goodwill as wealth. Develop concentration as wealth, and regard the problems that come up in concentration as challenges and not as obstacles. You run into pain. In … 
  3. An Island in the Flood
     … You’re trying to create a state of concentration. There are people who say that mindfulness practice is one thing, concentration practice is another thing, but the Buddha wasn’t one of those people. As he said, it’s through the practice of right mindfulness that you get to right concentration. If you look at the factors of the path, the instructions for how … 
  4. Doing, Maintaining, Using
    Ajaan Fuang once said that there are three stages to concentration practice. The first is learning how to do it. The second is learning how to maintain it. And the third is learning how to put it to use. The doing is not all that hard—focus the mind on the breath. The breath is right there. You don’t have to go scrounging … 
  5. Initiative
     … Each person should go back and protect whatever concentration they’ve had. That’s the second principle. The third principle is that you enjoy your meditation, but don’t just wallow in it. There’s going to be a sense of well-being from the concentration, and it’s an important part of the concentration. After all, concentration is food for the other elements … 
  6. A Safe Haven Through Alertness
    One of the Pali terms for concentration is vihāra-dhamma, “a home for the mind.” It’s a place where you settle in and dwell with a sense of peace, security, well-being. And as we all know, it takes a heap of living to make a house a home. Sometimes it’s easy to settle down with the breath and sometimes it’s … 
  7. Right Resolve
     … There’s a passage where the Buddha says that right resolve, which is one of the factors of the path, finds its highest expression in doing right concentration. In other words, you have to reflect on the fact that your quest for happiness is going to have to depend on your own actions, and you don’t want to harm anybody else in the … 
  8. Grief & Regret
     … They call come down to having this foundation with concentration. Goodwill does lead to concentration—it’s one of the topics that leads the mind to be still—so try to make sure that every day is a day that you have some time for concentration, when the mind can gather itself together and be its own self for a time and get a … 
  9. A Post-goodness World?
     … So as you’re trying to get the mind into concentration and other thoughts come in, you can ask yourself which is going to lead to longer-term happiness: those distracting thoughts, or the state of concentration you can develop if you really stuck with the breath? This is one of the reasons why the Buddha recommends you develop the perception of inconstancy before … 
  10. You’re Doing Something Wrong
     … He was missing an important part of what Ajaan Lee called “concentration work.” We often come to concentration thinking we just get to rest, and there is an element of rest. But there’s also work to be done: first, to get the mind into a proper, balanced state of rest. Sometimes you get so quiet that you fall asleep, which is not what … 
  11. Inner Critics
     … This is why concentration is an important part of the path. But it’s not the whole path. Sometimes you hear the mistaken notion that when you reach a certain level of concentration you automatically attain a certain level of awakening. Well, you don’t. People can go through all the jhanas and all the formless states and still not see anything. They see … 
  12. Freedom, Conditioned & Not
     … So it’s even more skillful to get the mind into concentration. When you’re in the various levels of concentration, getting the mind deeper and deeper into absorption, the level of skill becomes more refined. You begin to notice that certain perceptions weigh on the mind; even the perceptions that keep you in concentration can be a weight. You learn to let those … 
  13. Calm & Insight
     … So those are the questions for insight: “How do I regard fabrications? How do I learn how to view them with insight?” The Buddha says you develop both of these qualities—calm and insight—by trying to get the mind into concentration. And you get the mind into concentration by working with these qualities. The two sides help each other along. In other words … 
  14. Stick to Your Duties
     … We’re focusing on developing right concentration through right mindfulness and right effort—all of the concentration factors of the path. Make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath and put aside any other thoughts that have to do with the world. Whatever the world is doing out there right now, that’s not your business. Your business is the … 
  15. Dhammacentric
     … When he was able to do that, he was able to get the mind into patterns of skillful thinking, and then from there into concentration, and from concentration into awakening. It was because he was able to put his stories to the side, and to put the center simply in looking at things in terms of cause and effect right there in the present … 
  16. Be Observant
     … There’s a passage where he talks about noble right concentration and its seven supports, or its seven requisites, putting concentration right there at the center of the path. The concentration is what allows you to watch things, to observe things from a steady place. This is why we have to spend so much time working on this. It’s like building an observation … 
  17. The Bright Tunnel
     … If you try to understand it without any concentration, it’s hard to maintain your focus. At the same time, it’s hard to maintain a sense of not being threatened by the suffering. This is why we work at developing our concentration, because concentration involves not only a focus but also a sense of wellbeing with your focus. You stay with the breath … 
  18. One Thing Clear Through
     … But when you have the sense of ease and well-being, even the sense of rapture and fullness that can come from the concentration, then it’s a lot easier to be radiating goodness out, because you’re producing nourishment that’s immediately apparent inside. You develop the five strengths: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment. These are a food for the mind that’s … 
  19. Strength of Mindfulness
     … In the list of the strengths, mindfulness comes between effort or persistence on the one hand, and concentration on the other. And the three are closely related. I’ve seen it explained sometimes that the Buddha taught two different paths: the path of effort and concentration on the one hand, and the path of mindfulness on the other. And the two, as they’re … 
  20. Taking Responsibility
     … Because for most of us, this pleasure of concentration becomes one more dish on the smorgasbord. We like to have concentration and we like to enjoy our old pleasures as well. But when you get the mind in a good solid state of concentration, you’re in a much better position to look back and say, “This pleasure I get from the concentration: How … 
  21. Right View Tells You What to Do
     … For instance, as we’re sitting here meditating, trying to get the mind into concentration, we start with right mindfulness: trying to focus on the breath in and of itself, putting aside any thoughts that have to do with the world outside. Those are the two activities: focusing on the breath, and clearing out other things that get in the way. And then we … 
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