Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Sensuality Is a Fetter
    The path factor of right resolve is very directly related to the path factor of right concentration. The beginning of the formula for right concentration says that being excluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful qualities, you enter the first jhana. “Unskillful qualities” here are the wrong versions of the factors of the path, everything from wrong view down through wrong concentration. You have to … 
  3. Sensuality
    In the beginning phrase in the description of right concentration—vivicca *kamehi vivicca akusalehi dhammehi—*secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful mental states: What does it mean to be secluded from sensuality? I’ve read a couple of different explanations. One is that you’re secluded from sensual pleasures. But that’s impossible. Just sitting here in the cool evening: That’s a sensual … 
  4. The Karma of Not-self
     … Ultimately, when the concentration has done its work, and you’ve let go of everything else that would destroy your concentration or knock it off balance, then you can start turning around and looking at the concentration itself, seeing that it, too, has limitations. You start applying the perception of not-self to this as well. That’s one way that you can break … 
  5. Slings and Arrows of Ordinary Fortunes
     … Mindfulness leads naturally into concentration this way. The concentration gives you a sense of well-being. And if you find yourself getting worked up about how the mind is not settling down tonight, tell yourself there must be someplace inside here where things are at ease. If you don’t like focusing on the breath, if the breath is getting all tangled up—the … 
  6. The Right Touch
     … We’re not here to do only “right” mindfulness or “right” concentration; we’re trying for “just right” mindfulness or “just right” concentration. Think in *those *terms. Think in terms of balance. The image in the Canon is of a person holding a baby quail in his hand. If he holds it too tightly, the quail’s going to die; if he holds it … 
  7. Doing the Right Thing
     … And if it’s not there after you leave concentration, maybe it wasn’t that important to begin with. That’s how the concentration helps you to see clearly, and how it gives you some insight already just in learning how to wrestle the mind down to get still. You’ve learned some things about your mind right there. Then there’s the issue … 
  8. Being a Buddhist
     … When you practice concentration to develop your discernment, you realize that the concentration—even though it’s a better pleasure, a more stable pleasure than you can gain from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, or thinking about things—is still fabricated. And remember how good fabricated things can be: They can fall apart. You want something that’s not fabricated, something that’s … 
  9. Stubborn Clinging
     … You’re monitoring this at the same time as you’re doing it, creating the sense of concentration inside. Ajaan Lee was once teaching an old scholarly monk in Bangkok how to meditate. At one point the older monk complained. He said, “Wait a minute, we’re supposed to be doing away with states of becoming but when we’re meditating it seems like … 
  10. Sensual Passion
    In the Buddha’s description of concentration practice, he says that you’re aloof from sensuality, aloof from unskillful qualities in the mind. The word sensuality—kāma in Pali—is often misunderstood. Sometimes it’s translated as aloof from sensual pleasures. But the Buddha doesn’t have you search out a really difficult, painful place to practice. You try to find a place that … 
  11. Developing Absorption
     … It might be right view, right resolve, all the way down through right concentration. Like right now, we’re working on right mindfulness, right concentration—and we’re passing judgment. There are certain things that will come up in the meditation that we have to let go. When the Buddha defines right mindfulness, which leads to right concentration, he talks about two activities. The … 
  12. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … So the pleasure of concentration is one of the ways we keep ourselves sustained on the path. The Buddha, when he was describing the noble eightfold path, at one point called right concentration the main factor, while the rest were the auxiliary or helping factors. Right concentration is where you get to use pleasure in a skillful way, a pleasure you gain while staying … 
  13. Questioning the Hindrances
    There’s an interesting passage where the Buddha says that you need both tranquility and insight in order to get the mind into right concentration. The Pali terms are: for tranquility, samatha and insight, vipassana. You need them both for there to be right concentration. This goes against the idea you sometimes hear that the Buddha taught two very distinct kinds of meditation. One … 
  14. A Good Path to Be On
     … Be creative in your concentration. Be creative in your discernment. You’re going to have to ask questions of the mind about why it’s attached to this thing or that. When there’s pain, physical pain, is there some way you can be with the pain and not suffer from it? When there’s the pleasure of the concentration, how can you learn … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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