Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. Calm & Insight into Pain
     … He says if you want to develop tranquility and insight, you’ve got to work on getting the mind into deep concentration. The concentration itself is calming, but the ability to understand your mind is what allows you to get into deeper concentration, and that’s the insight. Then, once you’ve got deeper concentration, it develops even more tranquility and calm, and the … 
  6. The Path of Giving
     … Learn to use whatever pleasure you can muster to developing concentration, as nourishment for the mind. Use feelings of pain as things to analyze, to understand, because you begin to see the mind in action right around the pain. You see the perceptions that you place on pain, saying, “This is the pain. It’s located right here. It has these characteristics.” If you … 
  7. The Particulars of Your Suffering
     … This is the way the mind gets into stronger and stronger concentration. From there you can move it even to more subtle levels of concentration. When the breath energy is still, your sense of the definition of the body, the surface of the body, begins to dissolve. It’s like you’re sitting here with a cloud of little dots of feeling. You have … 
  8. The Fortress
     … It’s in this area where the qualities of mindfulness, ardency, and alertness, which are associated with mindfulness practice, turn into the factors of jhana, or right concentration. You’re evaluating the breath and then, once the breath is comfortable, you evaluate how to make use out of that comfort. In other words, you’re developing both concentration and discernment at the same time … 
  9. Disenchantment
    One of the traditional principles of the teaching is that when the mind gains concentration, it’s able to see things as they are. Actually the Pali term means “seeing things as they’ve come to be.” There’s an interesting passage where the Buddha makes a distinction between bhava and bhuta. Bhava means a state of being, becoming, the process of becoming, which … 
  10. Breath Meditation: The First Tetrad
     … He got into a state of concentration that he later recognized as the first jhana, the first level of right concentration. And the question came to him, “Could that be the right way?” And something inside him said, “Yes.” So he started taking food again to regain the strength he’d need to get into that concentration. Then, on the night of his awakening … 
  11. Fully Here
     … The insight is there to ferret out where the disturbances are that, one, prevent you from getting into concentration and, two, prevent the concentration from deepening. And then three, they get you stuck on the concentration, so that you can’t gain the kind of insight that really cuts through the defilements. But even that—cutting through the defilements—is with the purpose of … 
  12. Respect Opens Possibilities
     … So you want to gather your mind around one topic, which when you do concentration, is the theme of the concentration. When you listen to a talk, it’s the topic of the talk. Finally, you apply appropriate attention. Appropriate attention means asking the right questions. This is where we can see that the Buddha is not asking you to simply believe everything he … 
  13. The Goldsmith
     … The hour of meditation becomes fifty-five minutes of wandering and then five minutes of concentration. You want to make it a full hour of training the mind with as little wandering as possible. That’s when you’re emphasizing the effort. Concentration is once the mind has settled down, you do your best to keep it there. This is like blowing off the … 
  14. The Brahmaviharas Are Not a Complete Practice
     … So, goodwill is a preliminary practice for getting the mind into concentration focused on the breath. But there are also passages where the Buddha talks about it as a topic of concentration in and of itself. He doesn’t say how you do it. You simply develop the thought, “May all these beings look after themselves with ease,” an interesting way of expressing goodwill … 
  15. Awakening Is in the Details
     … Right now, we’re trying to develop concentration, and sometimes concentration gets advanced by trying to figure out how it’s composed of aggregates. Other times, it gets destroyed if you try to analyze it too much. So learn just the right amount of analysis to keep yourself interested, with a sense of clarity, a sense of all-around protection. Remember that once you … 
  16. Equanimity After Victory
     … So use the concentration to fight off the hindrances and then use it to develop other, subtler forms of discernment. When the mind has come to discernment—the discernment that comes as you peel away layers of fabrication on the mind—then you can arrive at equanimity. But you don’t stop with equanimity in the practice of concentration. You use that equanimity to … 
  17. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … So you want to hold on to a good state of concentration; hold on to the pleasure that comes from the concentration so that you can look at your other forms of clinging and see that they’re really not worth the effort because you’ve got something better here. There’s clinging to sensuality: the mind’s fascination with thinking about how good … 
  18. The Missing Truth
     … Otherwise, they’ll eat away at your concentration. As for skillful qualities, those start with the factors for awakening: mindfulness, your analysis of what’s going on in the present moment, your persistence, a sense of rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. Those are things you try to give rise to when they’re not there. When they are there, you try to maintain them. This … 
  19. Your Own Karma
    The Buddha once described right concentration as the heart of the path. And the other seven factors were its attendants, its requisites. In other words, right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right mindfulness, right effort: These were the things that help make right concentration right. So it’s right that we focus on the concentration practice as the centerpiece of … 
  20. Building Character
     … And when you have that quality of character, you find that it’s even more solid than your concentration. Concentration gives a solidity of one sort. But the solidity of a well-built character can carry you through even when the concentration gets weak, or the concentration has its ups and downs, or the insights don’t come. It allows you to develop discernment … 
  21. Right Speech, Inside & Out
     … You resolve on getting rid of sensuality, but then also on getting rid of ill-will and harmfulness, two types of unskillful qualities, which are precisely the qualities you have to get rid of in order to get into right concentration. So that’s the purpose of right resolve: to steer the mind into right concentration. But the path doesn’t go straight there … 
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