Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Noble Right Concentration
     … But then you notice, as the mind gets concentrated, that even in concentration there are ups and downs in the level of stress, ups and downs in the level of focus. You try to iron those out. And to some extent, you can. But there are certain things that, even in the most stable level of concentration, are a little bit uneven. After all … 
  3. An Exercise in Sensitivity
     … Simply in the practice of concentration, there are subtler tasks that you have to do with your discernment beyond getting the mind into concentration, but getting it into concentration exercises your discernment already. So learn to appreciate concentration. You know that chant we have that talks about respect. One of the things you respect is the training, and another thing you respect is concentration … 
  4. Concentration & Renunciation
     … It’s interesting that in the ten perfections, concentration is not listed. But it’s there under renunciation, because without the concentration you can’t renounce pleasures. As the Buddha once said, no matter how much you may know the drawbacks of sensual pleasures, if you don’t have the pleasure of concentration, the sense of ease that comes getting the mind to settle … 
  5. Helping Others
    The Canon often presents a linear picture of the practice, where you work on your virtue and then you work on your concentration and then on your discernment. We like to think it’s nice and stepwise that way. But, in practice, we discover that you have to work on all three at once. Virtue without concentration gets very dry after a while and … 
  6. Jhana & Insight
     … That’s the vocabulary the Buddha uses as he starts talking about the stress in concentration: “disturbance.” The principle is: If you’re not a real connoisseur of pleasure when you’re doing concentration, then you don’t really understand stress. There will be lots of subtle stresses and disturbances that you actually mistake for pleasure. So the concentration provides a foundation not only … 
  7. Discernment
     … that we don’t just do virtue and then concentration and then discernment. He said that your discernment has to foster your virtue and concentration, your concentration has to foster your virtue and discernment, and, of course, your virtue fosters concentration and discernment. They help one another along. But the important point here is that discernment is strategic. It’s not something you read … 
  8. People Who Think Too Much
     … Try to keep that sense of concentration balanced inside as you move around. You’re going to learn an awful lot about concentration in the process. The more you can maintain it in different situations, the more you learn about it. The more you learn how to put it to use, the more you learn about it—not only the concentration, but also all … 
  9. The Buddha’s Vipassana
     … The level of understanding you’re going to have will depend on the level of your concentration. It’s not that you wait until a certain level of concentration and then you start analyzing things. Your discernment and your concentration grow together when you use them together. When you have a low level of concentration, you’ll be able to see things with a … 
  10. The Safety of Jhana
     … the pleasure of concentration. So allow yourself to pursue this pleasure, this happiness, as much as you want. Sometimes you hear about the dangers of concentration, or the dangers of getting stuck in the pleasure of concentration, as if people starting to practice concentration are opening themselves up all sorts of new dangers they’d never encountered before. Actually, the danger of being attached … 
  11. Concentration as a Skill
    When the Buddha was searching for a path to the deathless, the first piece of right view that he discovered was that concentration was the path and that it was something to be developed. This is a skill that we’re working on here—how to get the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being, focused on one topic. It can … 
  12. Using Your Many Minds
     … As your concentration gets stronger, you begin to see more refined levels of pleasure, more lasting levels of pleasure than you’ve known before. That helps you let go of the types of pleasures that interfere with that, that are not as satisfying. Ultimately, you reach the point where you can let go of any form of concentration, because concentration contains the most subtle … 
  13. The Gatekeeper’s Duties
     … You’re trying to develop concentration. After all, concentration is what the Buddha calls the heart of the path, and the duty with regard to all of the factors of the path is to develop them. So you don’t just watch concentration come and go. You create the causes. Then you nurture those causes and maintain them, so that the concentration will last … 
  14. Building a Home for the Mind
    The texts often talk about concentration as being a home for the mind—*vihāra-dhamma: *the place where the mind can settle in. Before you can settle in, though, you have to build a house. As Ajaan Lee said, the work in building this house is in the directed thought and evaluation. You find a topic that you like to think about, and then … 
  15. Cooking the Mind
     … When the books talk about the different stages of concentration—momentary concentration, and then access concentration and then finally fixed penetration—you have to remember that they’re not radically different things. It’s just that the momentary concentration gets stitched together so it begins to get deeper and deeper and deeper. Fixed penetration comes from momentary concentration. So don’t throw away the … 
  16. Adjusting the Flame
    The Buddha compares getting the mind in concentration to lighting a fire. You want the fire to burn just right. Remember the ordinary mind is like a blazing fire. The mind in concentration is like a well-adjusted one. So calm things down. Adjust the flame. Remember the verb we’re using here, jhāyati, is used with a steady flame, not one that’s … 
  17. Concentration Isn’t Dumb
     … The people who like to think a lot are the ones who have to figure concentration out: how to get the mind to want to settle down, how to talk to it, how to give it encouragement, how to have some respect for concentration. You also figure out, “Okay, what are these things I’m putting together to create a state of concentration?” You … 
  18. Drowsiness
    Drowsiness March 7, 2021 The Commentary describes three stages of concentration: momentary, neighborhood, and fixed penetration. The way it explains these has to do with kasina practice, but the terms have been adopted for other types of concentration as well. And because these terms are not explained in the Canon, different ajaans have come up with different ways of describing them. One common explanation … 
  19. How to Leave Concentration
    As you’re sitting here trying to get the mind into concentration, the natural thing to talk about is how to get in: what to let go of as you leave the world outside, how to focus, how to work with your breath, and how to work with your mind, your awareness right now, so that it’ll be willing to settle down. It … 
  20. Look at Yourself
     … He had the triple training, again not because he liked the number three, but because virtue is necessary for concentration to be solid and for concentration to be honest concentration. Honest concentration is necessary for discernment to be honest discernment. There are ways in which discernment fosters your concentration and your concentration fosters your virtue, but that’s only after you have some foundation … 
  21. Getting Familiar with Concentration
     … You see the mind’s ability to create happiness simply through concentration, and you need that to get a perspective so that you can compare things when other insights come. Exactly what kind of ease, what kind of insight do they give to the mind that’s another order from concentration? If you’re not familiar with concentration, often these neurotic breakthroughs that simply … 
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