Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. The Same for Everyone
     … virtue, concentration, and discernment, sorted out in different ways. When you look at the different lists in the Wings to Awakening, you see that the factors are sometimes listed in different orders. For instance, in the noble eightfold path, discernment comes first, and mindfulness and concentration come at the end. In the factors for awakening, mindfulness comes first, then discernment, and then concentration comes … 
  5. Cutting the Fetters
     … Those are the instructions for getting into concentration. Then when you attain concentration, you’re ready to contemplate things. This is exactly how the Buddha says you arrive at a place where the lower fetters have been cut. You start with your practice of concentration. You get really good at it. He compares it to being an archer, able to shoot long distances, fire … 
  6. Where Perceptions Can Take You
     … The perceptions that lead to stability are those that get the mind into concentration. Once you’ve abandoned thoughts of sensuality, ill will, and harmfulness, then the mind can settle down. But when it settles down, it’s going to need a perception to hold it there. This is why we hold on to perceptions of the breath in the body—and why it … 
  7. Lifting the Mind
     … And as it stays, this is where the next stage of lifting it comes in, which is that you gain a sense that you rise up above even the concentration. You can watch the concentration and ask yourself, “Is there anything in this state of concentration that still could be more refined? Is there any stress here? Any sense of being burdened? What are … 
  8. Fires of the Mind
     … If you don’t appreciate these little moments of stillness, if you don’t protect them, then they won’t be able to help you very much, and you won’t have anything from which to develop your concentration. So that quality of appreciation, what the Buddha called “respect for concentration”: This is one aspect of what he means. Respect these little moments of … 
  9. Arising & Passing Away
     … One is to get the mind into concentration. This is why strong concentration is so essential to the path. As the Buddha said, even though you may see the drawbacks of sensual desires, if you don’t have the sense of pleasure that comes from jhana, you can’t withstand them. You’ve got to have an alternative source of happiness, an alternative source … 
  10. Joy in Getting It Right
     … In other words, you want to get it right, because after all, you’re going to be trying to develop a path that’s composed of right factors, everything from right view to right concentration, and they all have to be approached as skills. So you’re not just good, but you’re also inquisitive as to what it means to be really good … 
  11. Saṃvega & Pasāda
     … Trying to get the mind in concentration is good for you and for the people around you. As the Buddha said, if you don’t have the sense of pleasure that comes from getting the mind into concentration, then no matter how much you may see the drawbacks of sensuality—of being attached to the body—you’re going to go back to sensuality … 
  12. Developing the Path
     … Or you stomp all over whatever mindfulness or concentration you may have because it doesn’t fit in line with what you thought concentration should be like. I suffered from that myself in the very beginning. I was pretty sure that if your mind got concentrated, you had to have visions. But there were no visions. I told myself that I must have wrong … 
  13. Look after Yourself with Ease
     … i.e., into good concentration. Goodwill is both a topic of concentration and one of your motivations for getting into concentration. It’s good for the mind to get it to settle down and have a sense of being at ease with the whole body. Think of those images the Buddha gives of the bathman kneading the moisture through the ball of bath powder … 
  14. Dimensions of Right Effort
     … That requires concentration, because concentration is what gives you a sense of well-being inside, so that you don’t feel oppressed or threatened by the stress. When you feel oppressed by it, all you can think about is either pushing it away or trying to run away from it. And in neither way do you understand it. If you don’t understand it … 
  15. Magha Puja
     … This comes down to is virtue, concentration and insight. With virtue, you avoid whatever is harmful to yourself or to other people. And the most skillful thing you can resolve on, that you can aim for, is bringing the mind to concentration, like we’re doing right now. It’s based on the resolve to bring the mind above sensual passion. This is why … 
  16. The Cool Fire of Jhana
     … But once things have settled in, and there’s a sense of really belonging here, you can drop the directed thought and evaluation, and instead of going back to your ordinary state, you go into a deeper state of concentration where you’re just there. The breath is one with the body; the mind is one with the breath. You don’t have to … 
  17. The Cost of Happiness
     … In some of the passages in the Canon, the Buddha talks about very refined states of concentration, such as the themeless concentration of awareness, where awareness is centered but there’s no specific object there. Or the totality of non-dual consciousness. They all sound like very good places. But if you get there, you have to look: To what extent is it still … 
  18. Fear of Concentration
    Some of the problems we have in getting the mind into concentration come simply from an inability or unwillingness to let our thoughts subside. We find our thoughts interesting. We find our inner mental chatter interesting. We’d be hard put to know what it would be like to have a mind where this chatter wasn’t going on all the time. So we … 
  19. Jhāna & Discernment
     … That’s because it’s here that you can observe the mind clearly, both in getting it into concentration and in maintaining the concentration. There’s a passage where he says, “There’s no discernment without jhāna, no jhāna without discernment.” What he means is that if you want to get the mind into concentration, you have to be able to observe it: See … 
  20. Respect for the Precepts
     … When you can look at your actions and realize that you haven’t harmed anybody, that you’ve held to your principles, it gives you the self-esteem and confidence needed to get the mind into the type of concentration that will lead to discernment. Then concentration and discernment will help make your practice of the precepts even more solid and perceptive. One of … 
  21. To Know the Noble Truths
     … And when the mind finally does settle down with a sense of well-being, that’s when you get into right concentration. When the mind is solidly in its concentration, then you can look more clearly at the things that you’re clinging to, starting with sensuality: your fascination with nice sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. Ask yourself: When a sensual desire comes … 
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