Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 55
  2. Perceptions as Targets
     … Work on the concentration.” Push the envelope against those three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not self. Try to make the concentration as constant as you can, as pleasant as you can, as much under your control as you can. Because you’re going to need this as your foundation, as your food and your nourishment, to withstand the attractions of the perceptions that … 
  3. When it’s Hard to Settle Down
     … When you think in these ways, you can actually get the mind into concentration. When we talk about keeping the mind in concentration, what are you doing? It’s not like you’re holding it by the scruff of the neck or putting a chain on it. It’s the way you think about things that keeps you concentrated. And you’ll learn how … 
  4. Complaining Rights
     … You can do that only by developing the path, because it’s only through the path—especially the factors of mindfulness and alertness, that get strengthened with your concentration—that you’ll be able to really comprehend the suffering, to see where it’s connected with the cause, and to see the cause in time. A lot of the trick here lies in seeing … 
  5. Trading Up
     … Now, to do this, you have to have a good solid grounding in concentration as an alternative pleasure. As the Buddha said, you can gain insight into the drawbacks of sensuality, but if you don’t have the alternative pleasure of intense concentration, you’re just going to keep going back to your old ways of feeding off of sensual thoughts. So focus on … 
  6. Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation
     … Early in Ajaan Lee’s discussions of getting the mind into right concentration, he has a lot to say about the factors of the first jhana. There’s directed thought, evaluation, singleness of preoccupation, pleasure, and rapture. He divides those factors into two: causes and effects. The directed thought, evaluation, and singleness of preoccupation are the causal factors. Those are the things you do … 
  7. Guiding Truths
     … From there you develop all the other factors of the path, particularly right concentration, which gives the mind the strength it needs in order to pull away from the craving, to pull out of its old habits. Because the mind needs pleasure, you give it the pleasure of concentration. Once it has the pleasure of concentration, it has a point of comparison from which … 
  8. Just One Person
     … If you’re going to fashion anything—and of course you’re fashioning things all the time—fashion a state of concentration. You’ve got the elements. You’ve got the breath, which can lead to feelings of pleasure or pain. And you’ve got your awareness and all the mental events that go along with trying to stay focused. We were reading today … 
  9. There’s Work to Be Done
     … That’s what the concentration’s for. You’re not just strung out, working really hard, with nothing to keep you going. The concentration is there as food. But as with any store of food, you have to work to make sure it stays well-stocked—and that you’ve got the right balance of foods for your needs.
  10. Tending the Flame
     … This is how you maintain your concentration. You get more and more still, and at the same time there’s less energy put in, but more energy comes out. You could say you’re just getting more efficient at getting your mind to settle down. That’s how people can maintain concentration for long periods of time. And of course, while you’re maintaining … 
  11. Turning Points
     … In fact, he discovered as he pursued that path that it led to a state of concentration with total purity of mindfulness and equanimity. The mind was clear, malleable, and bright. This is how right concentration became the first factor of the path the Buddha discovered. The other seven factors clustered around that as he developed right concentration and then tried using it in … 
  12. The Truth of Desires
    One of the reasons we try to get the mind in concentration is because it allows us to see the intentions that don’t want to be in concentration. If we don’t set up this intention that we’re going to stay here with a breath, one intention, one thought, one perception flows into another, and another, and another. The boundaries get very … 
  13. Confident, Steadfast, Resolute
    Two of the big obstacles to concentration are worry and doubt. You can be worried about the past—in other words, thinking about things you did in the past that could have consequences on into the future—or worried about the future, what’s going to happen. As for doubt, there’s a part of the mind that has been deceived so many times … 
  14. The Gradual Path of Skill
     … It’s not the case that you develop virtue and then move on to concentration and then finally get the chance to develop discernment. You need discernment as you’re developing your virtue and you need to develop discernment in order to get into concentration. If you don’t understand what’s going on in the mind, if you don’t have strategies for … 
  15. A Producer Mentality
     … right view about what’s going to cause suffering, what’s not going to cause suffering, what’s going to take you away from suffering, and then the resolve to do what needs to be done to get into right concentration. But then there are steps between right resolve and the actual concentration. One of the steps is in right resolve itself: being resolved … 
  16. The Treasure of Virtue
     … It’s based on these two things that you can develop mindfulness, and through mindfulness you can get the mind into concentration. So you want to make sure that these foundations are really strong. Right view starts, of course, with the principle that if you act on skillful intentions, the results will be good for the long term. If you act on unskillful intentions … 
  17. In Alignment
     … It’s interesting that when Ajaan Lee, in The Craft of the Heart, talks about the different obstacles in concentration, some of them are your hindrances, but some of them are things like rapture and visions: in other words, things you’ll actually encounter as part of concentration itself, things that are signs that you’re settling down. And you have to be careful … 
  18. Finding the Openings
     … But when the mind is concentrated, you can start looking at those things you hold on to in order to see exactly what is really worth holding on to. After all, it takes effort to hold on. It’s second-nature, it comes easily to us, but it takes a lot of effort to hold on. Especially when things change. You find yourself holding … 
  19. A Centered but Broad Awareness
     … One of his terms for a mind in concentration is the mind that’s enlarged or expanded. The Pali word is mahaggata citta, the enlarged mind; the expanded mind. Having the mind expanded like this is important in several ways. One, it helps keep you from falling asleep. Sometimes it’s all too easy when the breath feels comfortable and you’re focused on … 
  20. Exercising the Mind
     … I remember the first time I read a book talking about how people’s concentration is really much worse than it should be. The author gave an instruction. He said, “Go find a window frame, look at the bottom edge of the window, and then just trace your eyes across it and see if you can move them steadily and consistently across that line … 
  21. Put Some Heart into Your Practice
     … As the Buddha said, if you’re not generous, there’s no way you’re going to get the mind into the right concentration. Generosity requires a certain breadth of heart, where you’re not concerned only about yourself but you also want to think about other people, too. You realize that if your happiness depends on the suffering of others, it’s not … 
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