Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Guarding the Truth
     … We’re trying to get the mind into a state of concentration. As it settles in, you begin to see what’s going on in the activity of concentration. There’s directed thought and evaluation. The Buddha calls that verbal fabrication. You’re working with the breath. That’s bodily fabrication. You have a perception of how the breath comes in and out of … 
  3. Timeless
     … Why? Giving the mind better food with concentration is going to help you with that, because otherwise, if you’re hungry, then when anything comes up, you just go for it. But when you can satisfy some of your hunger with the concentration, then when other things come up and you feel tempted to go, you can begin to see, “Oh, this is why … 
  4. When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath
     … That third step in the tetrad, concentrating the mind, can be read as corresponding to the higher jhanas, beginning with the second, when you give rise to a sense of pleasure and rapture that doesn’t come through thinking about good Dhamma topics that are secluded from sensuality. This is a pleasure and rapture based on concentration. You’re focused. You stop talking to … 
  5. Attached to the Body
     … It’s not only a topic for discernment, it’s also a topic for concentration. As you think about these things, it helps the mind calm down. And when you get into a good state of concentration, and you’ve got this kind of thinking in the background, it helps keep the mind in that concentration. Of course, the more concentrated you are, the … 
  6. Your Inner Teacher
     … That kind of concentration has a good solid basis. So there’s a lot to explore here in your sense of the body, seeing how the energy flows down the nerves, through the blood vessels in the different parts of the body. Once you have a sense of one spot in the body that seems at ease, see if you can spread that sense … 
  7. Make the Most of This Breath
     … Virtue and concentration, on the one hand, and discernment on the other, he said, are like two hands. When you’re washing your hands, your left hand washes your right hand, your right hand washes your left hand. That way, they both get clean. In the same way, your virtue and concentration wash your discernment, and your discernment washes your virtue and concentration. So … 
  8. The Middleness of the Path
     … Given the level of concentration, given the level of mindfulness you have, maybe you can only settle it down a little bit for the time being, and yet you want more. It’s not good enough, especially if you’ve had better meditations in the past. The current meditation isn’t measuring up, so you try to push, push, push it back to where … 
  9. All Three Functions of Mindfulness
     … This is what he found—that from the concentration he could develop in the mind in a way that leads to a happiness that goes even deeper, that goes beyond the concentration. So, check inside yourself. Develop the qualities that the Buddha talked about. See if they lead to the same result.
  10. Challenges
     … As long as it’s going to feed, feed it the food of concentration, feed it the food of mindfulness. The pleasure of what they call form, i.e. the body as you sense it from within, is a higher form of pleasure than the pleasure of sensuality: the pleasures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. The pleasure of form is something is … 
  11. Healing Breath
     … When you simply bring the mind to concentration, that doesn’t solve all the mind’s problems, but it does put it in a position where it can start using its discernment in a deeper and subtler way. But it’s important that you not be in too great a hurry to rush through the concentration to get to the discernment, because the work … 
  12. Unchanged by Loss
     … Right mindfulness, of course, is a series of instructions on how to get the mind into right concentration. You need something inside that’s solid so that you’re not tempted to give up on your virtue, give up on your right view when things outside suddenly change, and conditions are a lot less comfortable than they were. So we work on the concentration … 
  13. Doing Nothing
     … You start out with mindfulness, and then there’s a quality called analysis of dhammas, analysis of present qualities of mind, and that’s this ability to know what’s skillful and what’s unskillful, to see which states of mind drain your energy, which states of mind make it difficult to stay concentrated. Then you try to figure out ways to get around … 
  14. The Four-in-One Establishing of Mindfulness
     … persistence, rapture, calm, concentration, and equanimity. All these things are right here, at least in potential form. This is one of Ajaan Lee’s favorite themes: Everything you need to be mindful of is right here, right now. That’s when your mindfulness is established, when you stay with these things right here, right now. In the texts, the Buddha talks about how when … 
  15. At Home with the Breath
    One of the traditional terms for concentration practice is vihāra-dhamma, a home for the mind, a dwelling for the mind. The verbs for different states of jhāna show what you do: You enter and dwell. You make yourself at home. So here’s the breath, coming in and going out. That’s going to be your home for the next hour. And as … 
  16. All Four Tetrads at Once
     … As the concentration gets deeper, as you’re going from one level of concentration to another, you want to see the factors that you’re dropping as inconstant, not worthy of passion, so that you can put them down. Then, when the concentration is solid, you begin to notice that even it has its inconstancy. There are risings and fallings in the level of … 
  17. Producing Experience
     … Our training in concentration teaches us that how we approach the present moment is going to make a big difference in how the moment is experienced. You can develop skill in the way you focus on the breath, the way you adjust the breath, the way you develop sensitivity to what’s going on in the body. These are all things you do as … 
  18. Cutting Edge Perceptions
     … But the things that get in the way of the concentration can be perceptions as well, these mental fabrications that weigh you down, place obstacles in your way. Based on those perceptions you can actually create sensations in the body that become uncomfortable. So the first thing to do when you notice that there’s a sense of dis-ease in the body, a … 
  19. The Duty to Understand
     … It becomes your object of meditation, simply for the purpose of concentration. They say that concentration isn’t fully mastered until the state of non-return, which is also the point where the fetter of sensual desire is cut. So this contemplation is very useful. If you really want the mind to settle down, and you notice the things that obstruct you from settling … 
  20. Perception
    One of the lessons you learn from practicing concentration is how powerful your perceptions can be. The way you perceive the breath has a huge impact on what it feels like to breathe and on your ability to settle down with the breath. If you feel that you have to fight for your breath, and that there’s only a little channel by which … 
  21. Acceptance
     … That’s not.” You notice as you get deeper and deeper into concentration. You’re on a certain level of concentration and you began to realize that that level of concentration is still not totally at peace, is still not totally quiet, it still has some level of stress. Then you figure out what you’re doing that’s causing the stress. As you … 
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