Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Firmly Intent
    The Pali word that we translate as concentration, samadhi, the Thais translate as “being firmly intent.” You start with an intention, and you keep it there. The Thai phrase for being firmly intent literally means to set up the mind firmly. You don’t want it to fall down. So set your mind on the breath. Set your mind on getting the mind to … 
  3. Pleasure on the Path
     … An important part of the path is right concentration, and right concentration has some very intense pleasure and rapture. It was the Buddha’s realization that sensual pleasure and pain were not the only alternatives—or as he put it, that sensual pleasure was not the only escape from pain. There’s an alternative: the pleasure that comes from what he calls form, your … 
  4. Can Do
    There’s a passage in the Canon that says, “Concentration nurtured by virtue leads to discernment. Discernment nurtured by concentration leads to release.” When we hear that, we should keep it in mind, because when we come to the practice, we’re coming out of ignorance. We’re going to be doing things that, in many cases, we’ve never done before. And yet … 
  5. The Right to Repair Your Mind
     … And nobody can stand there in your mind and say, “Look! Right here, right here, right here!” This is one of the reasons that when you get the mind concentrated, the kind of concentration you want is all-around.* *You’re fully aware of the body, fully aware all-around. A lot of the clingings and cravings of the mind hide behind the scenes … 
  6. Me, Me, Me
     … One of the reasons we practice concentration is to give the mind a good solid foundation where it can do this patient and precise kind of work. We give it a place where it can stand so that it can be separate from its other clingings. This is a habit and practice that you’re going to be developing: the practice of concentration, the … 
  7. Streams of Anger
     … Ajaan Fuang had a student once whose powers of concentration were very strong, but she complained it wasn’t making any difference in her life. In fact, it seemed that the stronger her concentration got, the stronger her anger was when it came out. As Ajaan Fuang pointed out to her, you can’t just depend on your concentration to calm things down like … 
  8. Feeding While You Work
     … So if you find you’re having trouble—you’re slipping off and just enjoying the quality of concentration and then finding that you’ve lost the concentration—try to remember any manual skill you’ve mastered. It could be music or a sport or anything where you had to develop a continuous awareness of what you were doing and the results of what … 
  9. Strengthening Your Goodness
     … So as you’re going to be feeding on the pleasure of your concentration, you have to have some manners in your feeding. If you forget the breath, the cause of the comfort will dissipate, and either the comfort will go away or else you’ll go into state of what’s called delusion concentration, where there is a sense of ease but you … 
  10. Calming Mental Fabrication
    When the Buddha teaches concentration practice—breath meditation practice—he gives you a physical fabrication to focus on, i.e., the breath coming in, going out, and then he gives you a verbal fabrication, the instructions, “Keep track of the breath; remain focused on the breath—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” So you keep reminding yourself … 
  11. Analysis of Dhammas
     … That’s one of the ways in which it manifests itself as you’re doing concentration practice, because these factors for awakening start with mindfulness and end with concentration. They basically show you how to use your discernment, when you start out being mindful, to get it into concentration. The key is basically learning to adjust the mind and the object of the mind … 
  12. Discerning the Middle Way
     … And as Ajaan Fuang pointed out often the “right” in everything from right view all the way through right concentration means just right view, just right concentration. And finding that point of just right requires that you use your powers of observation, along with your ingenuity. Sometimes the point of just right doesn’t lie halfway between two extremes; it lies outside the continuum … 
  13. Acceptance
     … If you’re mindful and alert as you try to develop skillful qualities and let go of unskillful ones, the mind comes to concentration. And concentration is characterized by pleasure, rapture, equanimity, a strong sense of wellbeing. This is what gives us energy on the path. When the Buddha gives analogies for the different factors of the path, he often compares concentration to food … 
  14. Switzerland Inside
     … In fact, the Buddha said, without generosity, if you really are stingy, there’s no way you’re going to get the mind into good solid concentration, or if it is in concentration, it’s not going to be for your own good. It would be the kind of concentration that gets focused on all the wrong things. So you want to make a … 
  15. Feeding Instructions
     … But what is insight practice? It’s getting to get the mind into a good state of concentration and then being able to observe the mind in concentration. So you’re not going to move anyplace else. But first you need to feed the mind, because this is the nature of the mind: It feeds. The problem is, it feeds in all the wrong … 
  16. Above the World
     … It specifically refers to concentration practice but then beyond concentration to discernment and then ultimately to release. That’s the mind that’s really heightened. In other words, instead of spinning around after the world, we lift our minds up above it, so that no matter how the world spins, what direction it spins, whatever its ups and downs, the mind isn’t effected … 
  17. The Hedgefox
     … You learn how to get the mind into a state of concentration where it can drink the well-being, drink the sense of refreshment that comes when the mind can settle down and, at the very least, be secluded from its sensual desires. It has a chance to rest in seclusion. As it gets more concentrated, the concentration becomes then the basis of the … 
  18. Moral Intelligence
     … This is how concentration is related to virtue. In other words, externally you may follow the precepts but if your heart is still killing and stealing and having illicit sex, then it’s not a virtuous heart. You have to bring its preoccupations into line, which is what we do when we concentrate. We use mindfulness to remind ourselves that this is where we … 
  19. Relationships
    Meditation, concentration practice, gives us a chance to put down our burdens and responsibilities. Even if we can’t let go of them for good, at least it gives us a chance to rest. You focus on your breath and that’s your only responsibility. Be with the breath. The breath is already happening. There’s nothing much you have to do. You don … 
  20. The World of the Body
     … That’s your foundation in concentration practice. That’s the foundation of insight. At least you’ve got something to keep you grounded. If you get into more formless types of concentration, it’s very easy to slither and slip around, because all you have is the perception of space or of knowing to keep you in place. But if you’ve got the … 
  21. Dispassion Is Freedom
     … Without any passion for the path, it’s hard to develop virtue, hard to develop concentration, hard to develop discernment. So you do concentrate passion on the path. As it says in that chant we have from the Ariyavamsika Sutta, you develop a passion for developing and a passion for abandoning: developing skillful qualities, abandoning the unskillful ones. You want to take your pleasure … 
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