Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 44
  2. Success Through Maturity
    Success Through Maturity November 2, 2017 There are four qualities that the Buddha said can bring about success in the practice of meditation, and in particular, success in concentration: desire; persistence, or effort; intentness; and using your powers of judgment wisely. Of those four, three are omitted in modern instructions in meditation. In fact, the three are said to be bad in modern meditation … 
  3. Where Your Mind Gravitates
     … So we get the mind into concentration, give a few karate chops to the things that would pull it out of concentration—in other words, deal with these issues in a way that gets you past them quickly, so you get the mind in a position of strength—and then you’re going to have to turn around and look more carefully at its … 
  4. A Simple Path Through a Complex Map
     … When you’re starting out, he talks about virtue, concentration, and discernment. In doing so, he’s actually getting you to loop things back through name and form, right past attention and intention. So, without giving you the terms or giving you the whole picture, he’s getting you started on the right approach—how to use these functions in the mind. With virtue … 
  5. Your Main Foundation
     … This analysis of mind states works its way up to more subtle things, like a mind that’s concentrated or not, or a mind that has reached a state beyond which it has ever been before or not. Those deal with more refined states of concentration. And then finally there are mental qualities, things that get in the way of your concentration like the … 
  6. Dhamma in Vinaya
     … All of them can be conducive to getting the mind into concentration. Then you can bring the same analysis to your concentration practice. You have the intention to stay with the breath. And you’ve got the object, which is the breath. Then there’s your perception. What perceptions are useful? You can perceive the breath as a whole-body process. You can perceive … 
  7. Commit & Reflect
     … As you work on getting the mind more and more at ease in the concentration, more and more inclined to want to get into concentration, more skilled at it, you begin to see where there’s the craving that causes the suffering, where there’s the ignorance that causes suffering. You see where you’re putting unnecessary burdens on the mind through your lack … 
  8. Using Right Resolve Rightly
     … In other words, you’re focused on the directed thought and evaluation of concentration: “How do I get to understand my breath? How do I get to understand whatever it is that I’m going to take as my object for concentration and adjust it in a way, adjust the mind in a way, so that the object and the mind fit together, and … 
  9. Unraveling the Present
     … When you’re dealing with concentration, it morphs into questions like: Is your mind really still? Is it really solid? Is it really centered? Then, when you start looking at the rest of your life from the point of view of that concentrated mind, look for the stress, look for the impermanence, look for the extent to which these things are not under your … 
  10. Comparing Mind
     … so that you can begin to have a range of comparisons as to what kind of concentration is skillful concentration, what kind of concentration is a little foggy; when you’re putting too much pressure on it, when you’re not putting enough. You need things to compare. And this is a skillful use of the comparing mind. The Buddha calls this “analysis of … 
  11. A Poker Mind
     … For instance, your main duty right now is to develop concentration because that’s part of the path. So in the beginning, we take the first three frames of reference—body, feeling, mind—and we try to bring them together. They may not fit quite together at first, which is why we have to do a lot of directed thought and evaluation: figuring out … 
  12. Forest Bathing
     … So he watched the fear in his mind, and got deep into concentration as the fear fell away. He just stood there in concentration. He came out, and the moon had moved quite a bit. He must have been in concentration for a couple of hours. The tiger was gone. As a result of this experience, Ajaan Khao learned an important lesson about fear … 
  13. Chickens from Hell
     … One of the purposes of getting the mind into concentration is to step back from the whole process and learn to see it as it’s happening. At the same time, we practice concentration to give the mind an alternative place to feed. Otherwise, we’ll just keep feeding on whatever the chickens produce. When the Buddha provides analogies for different parts of the … 
  14. The Whole Elephant
     … the development of concentration, the development of some of the psychic powers that come from concentration. But the vision of the deathless: That’s the whole elephant. And it’s something human beings can see. I was talking with a scholar recently who was saying that he didn’t think that any conditioned human being could see the deathless. As far as he was … 
  15. Make the Most of What You’ve Got
     … But if your concentration is solid and still, and there’s a good sense of well-being in the concentration, you can look at these other states of becoming and have a sense of dispassion for them. They don’t have the pull that they would normally have. If you’re feeling hungry and depleted, it’s very easy to come up with a … 
  16. The Making Of
     … You’ve got your intention to stay with the breath, and the act of attention, where you’re actually paying attention to what’s going on, asking questions to help solidify your concentration. And there are more perceptions and feelings. So you’re learning how to think in terms of dependent co-arising as you get the mind into concentration. This gets you more … 
  17. Negotiating with the Committee
     … And for the sake of concentration practice, that’s often enough. Just put them aside. While you’re practicing concentration, you’re developing a really important skill, so that you can learn how to negotiate with all the voices in the mind. That requires learning how to give rise to a sense of immediate pleasure, rapture even, here in the present moment, using very … 
  18. Analyzing the Breath
     … This is the kind of concentration that has discernment as one of its integral factors. In terms of the bases of success, it’s the fourth one: concentration based on the powers of analysis. So give it a try. Explore what’s actually happening as you just sit here. The breath comes in, the breath goes out, the breath spins around in place, gets … 
  19. A Meditator’s Environment
     … The Buddha talks about how a good background in virtue is important for concentration, because it keeps your concentration honest. There’s so much that can happen in a quiet mind. Sometimes you get the idea that anything that arises in a quiet mind can be trusted, but that’s not the case. A lot of people go crazy through their concentration because they … 
  20. Look at Yourself
     … So there is concentration that comes from thinking, concentration that comes from insight. That moment of tranquility when you see, “Oh, this is not really worth going after,” and you get the mind to settle down: That’s tranquility and insight working together to get the mind in concentration. Then, of course, once the mind is concentrated, your insight is sharper; the tranquility is … 
  21. Toward Release
     … And then the next question is, what do you do with that calm? What do you do with the concentration and equanimity that go along with it? The Buddha talks about developing the factors for awakening even further. He says that, based on seclusion—by which he means the mind secluded in concentration—you try to develop dispassion. You do that by looking at … 
  22. Load next page...