Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Safety in an Uncertain World
     … So we add concentration. As the Buddha describes concentration, it’s basically feeling tones of pleasure, rapture, and the calm of equanimity after the mind has been nourished with pleasure and rapture. We’re feeding the mind so that it’s not so hungry for quick fixes. That way, it can learn to trust itself more. But even then we’re still subject to … 
  3. Rooted in Desire
     … Of course, to deal with pain, we need to have a sense of pleasure someplace as our foundation, which is why we practice concentration. Right effort leads to right mindfulness. We’re remembering to give rise to skillful qualities and we’re remembering to try to abandon unskillful ones. Right mindfulness then forms the theme around which right concentration develops. So this desire to … 
  4. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … This is why the Buddha said that the first step of right concentration includes directed thought and evaluation. It’s not as if you haven’t been doing directed thought and evaluation, and suddenly you have to do it to get concentrated. You’ve been doing it all along. It’s your internal chatter, which is the basis for all speech. What we’re … 
  5. The Heart of the Teachings
     … It’s in this way that developing the skill in your concentration purifies the mind on one level. And then it goes deeper as you apply the same process to more and more subtle things that are invading the mind, until finally even the state of concentration itself becomes something you want to let go of. You see that it, too, is inconstant, stressful … 
  6. The Need for Stillness
     … This is how concentration and discernment work together. All of what they call the noble dhammas—virtue, concentration, discernment, and release—are all related to stillness in this way. Virtue is a way of stilling your actions, the things that you used to do without thinking. Suddenly you realize: “I can’t do that anymore.” You begin to see that those actions you’ve … 
  7. Mental Stirrings
     … And again, that’s an insight that comes from concentration practice. It’s why the Buddha never had a separate concentration technique or a separate insight technique. The way of getting an insight is simply learning how to pose the right question in the mind. And then you look for the answer by making the mind very, very still, trying to catch it as … 
  8. Blessings
     … We’re focusing on the breath, we’re trying to develop right mindfulness, right effort and right concentration—all of that based on right view. These are all qualities of the path, factors of the path that we want to develop. This is why we use the breath as a gathering place for the mind. Be aware of where the breath comes in and … 
  9. Look After Yourself with Ease
     … We sometimes hear that you develop the precepts or the virtues that correspond to the precepts and then you practice concentration and then you develop discernment. But these three parts of the path are all interrelated. After all, the noble eightfold path starts with right view and right resolve, which are factors of discernment, and then moves into virtue and on to concentration. So … 
  10. Attachment to Views
     … In other words, you try to keep your concentration going, keep your concentration solid, keep your virtue solid. When any insights that arise, you see how they can be used right here, right now. If they’re not useful, let them turn into coal and feathers. But don’t keep them. Put them aside. I had a student once who, because of some memory … 
  11. Expanding Your Awareness
    The mind in concentration, the Buddha calls mahaggattam cittam, the enlarged mind, or the expanded mind. There are two ways you can expand it. One is through developing the sublime attitudes: “May all living beings be happy. May they be free from stress and pain. May they not be deprived of the good fortune they have attained. All living beings are the owners of … 
  12. Appropriate Attention Plus Admirable Friendship
     … In other words, you don’t say, okay, here’s a little bit of concentration, I’m going to watch it deteriorate and learn the truths of inconstancy, stress, and not-self. That’s not how you treat concentration. You treat concentration as something to cherish, something to carry gently but firmly in your hands. The image the Buddha gives is of a baby … 
  13. The Challenge of Faith
     … The other way to develop discernment is to look at the intentions that are making up your state of concentration: To what extent do they place a burden on the mind? You can watch this, seeing the ups and downs of your concentration, the ups and downs of the level of stress in your concentration. That way you begin to detect very subtle movements … 
  14. On Being Non-reactive
     … When you’re working on mindfulness, he says you’re trying to work on getting the mind into concentration. We’re not just here to be noting things coming and going. We’re directing the mind in the right direction, to concentration—because, after all, the path includes right concentration. You can’t do without it. In the analogies he gives for right concentration … 
  15. Not-selfing Your Selves
     … And it’s by focusing all your clinging right here that—when you finally do turn around and look at the concentration itself or look at the acts of discernment that you’ve been doing as part of the concentration—you can begin to see that they, too, are fabricated. They, too, carry a level of stress. The fact that your clinging has been … 
  16. All About Change
     … As you peel away the different layers—first the distractions to the concentration, and then as you get into concentration, you begin to see the activities that you’re doing to get the mind to settle down, and after a while, you see that they’re no longer necessary. You can stay there with less and less and less activity. That provides you with … 
  17. True to the Teachings
     … That’s what we’re doing now as we try to bring the mind to concentration. When the mind is concentrated, try to balance that concentration to make sure it’s not just a dull stillness. Make the mind mindful and alert, so that you can actually look into your own mind to see where there’s still any falseness in there—in the … 
  18. Mindful All the Way
     … So, for the Buddha, mindfulness practice and concentration practice are not two separate things. They’re one and the same. The instructions in mindfulness are basically telling you how to get the mind in concentration. Then the descriptions in right concentration tell you the different stages you go through as the mind begins to settle down. But first you have to focus on the … 
  19. The Dualistic Path
     … To this end, the Buddha teaches you to meditate, to develop the sense of pleasure, ease, refreshment that can come with concentration. It’s part of the path. So as you work with the breath, allow the breath be comfortable. Try to get more and more sensitive to how the way you breathe can lead to a sense of comfort or discomfort in the … 
  20. Terror & Revulsion
     … Now the Buddha has you develop this feeling as the mind has developed concentration. Through the practice, you’ve been learning these strengths of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, these strengths that nourish the mind. As you practice, you want to feed on these things. But ultimately they put the mind in a position where it’s so strong that it doesn’t … 
  21. Like Earth and Space
     … And also get into concentration. When you have those two qualities working together—tranquility and insight—that’s when they both get strong. In fact, earth is one of the topics of concentration. As the Buddha said, you’re off in the wilderness and you’re away from the disturbances of household life, but you still have the disturbances of being in the wilderness … 
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