Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 60
  2. Saying No to Distraction
     … Our real business is how to develop a state of concentration and maintain it. The voice in the mind says, “Well, I want to understand this thought first”: Keep that for later. Right now, you want to understand concentration. If the mind is settled, what can you do to keep it here? If it’s not settled, what can you do to get it … 
  3. The Uses of Pleasure & Pain
     … But buried down in number four, the path, you find the most important factor of the path, right concentration, which involves getting the mind focused on the breath with a sense of ease and rapture. This rapture comes from seclusion: seclusion here meaning that you’re not thinking about past, not thinking about the future, you’re right here with the present moment. Things … 
  4. How the Dhamma Protects
     … We develop the mind, develop our powers of concentration, develop our powers of discernment. That puts us in a position where these things don’t touch us. After all, look at the human world. Look at your own body. Once you’re born, there’s going to be aging, there’s going to illnesses, there’s going to be death. Even inside your own … 
  5. May I Look After Myself with Ease
     … So, in addition to learning how to concentrate, you need to have respect for concentration. This is part of the path to true happiness. It has to be developed. To understand that is an important part of right view. You’ve got to protect this, learn how to have this sense of being centered in the breath, in the body, not only while you … 
  6. What Right Mindfulness Remembers
     … right view all the way down through right concentration. So mindfulness is not simply a matter of being open and accepting of everything that comes by or comes up or comes in. There’s another place where the Buddha defines mindfulness as the ability to remember, to keep in mind what was said and done long ago. So how does that apply to what … 
  7. Discernment
     … Ajaan Fuang used to say that the discernment that comes from concentration is special. It goes deeper into the mind than discernment not based on concentration. When you’ve heard the topics of discernment—four noble truths, five aggregates, six sense spheres, the properties, dependent co-arising—you can hear them, you can think about them, you can talk about them, but if you … 
  8. Borrowed Goods
     … the verbal fabrication of directed thought and evaluation, and just the underlying intention even in the higher levels of concentration—the intention to stay here, to stick with one object. And then there’s consciousness: the awareness of all these things. In this way, you’re using all five aggregates to make them into a path, to turn them into concentration. You use them … 
  9. Doing Meditation
     … We talk about practicing concentration, developing discernment. In English, these things are nouns. In Pali they have nouns for them, too, but they also have corresponding verbs, which is one of the reasons why I prefer to translate paññā as discernment rather than wisdom. In English we don’t have a verb for “wising,” but we do have a verb for discerning. So remind … 
  10. A Full Range of Archery Skills
     … This is one of the reasons why we’re practicing concentration—both because as the mind gets more still you see things more clearly, and also because as you deal with your defilements and get your mind to settle down, you learn an awful lot: which defilements you have to put off for a while, which defilements you have to deal with right away … 
  11. Subduing Greed & Distress
    The Buddha’s instructions on mindfulness are basically instructions on how to get the mind into concentration. They describe two activities: One is remaining focused on a particular frame of reference in and of itself. Like right now we’re focused on the breath: That’s the body in and of itself. The second activity is subduing greed and distress with reference to the … 
  12. The Noble Pursuit of Happiness
     … There’s another passage where he said that the other seven factors of the path are the requisites for right concentration, or noble right concentration. And the pleasure that comes from that concentration lies at the center of the path. So he realized the pursuit of pleasure in and of itself was not necessarily bad, it was just a matter of how you went … 
  13. Filling in the Buddha’s Outline
     … Crave to have right view, right resolve, all the way down through right mindfulness and right concentration. That’s a kind of craving, too, but it’s a good one. There has to be the desire to develop the path. Otherwise, the path doesn’t happen. The rest of the Buddha’s teachings basically give more detail on those issues. And, as he said … 
  14. Precept Meditation
     … So the precepts not only help develop the skills you need for concentration but also provide a context and motivation for gaining discernment and insight. As for the eight precepts, those move into another area of training for the mind. Again, Ajaan Suwat: “The eight precepts add the element of restraint of the senses.” Each of the added precepts places restraints on the types … 
  15. When Aging Closes In
     … When you have that conviction, it nurtures your mindfulness so that it grows into concentration. From the concentration, you learn how to nourish the body with the breath so that you can counteract at least to some extent the effects of aging, the effects of illness. Having the breath as an alternative place to put your awareness also puts the mind in a much … 
  16. Right View
     … But after a while, you began to notice that there’s a little bit of stress in the concentration, a little bit of inconstancy here. Can you move the mind onto a new perception, to a new state of concentration where there’s less of that stress? Learning to ask yourself that question is what develops your concentration, develops your meditation, and develops your … 
  17. Right View, Right Attention
     … That’s why he inclined his mind into concentration. So you try to apply the same standards right now. This is a time for concentration so that anything that’s not related to the breath, just put it aside and hold onto the breath. This requires three qualities. Right view, remembering that the stress and suffering that the mind feels is not something that … 
  18. Two Kinds of Middle
     … You tune your conviction, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment to the level of effort you can manage. In that way your practice stays in tune. In this case, the middle is a midpoint on a continuum. You can slide up or down the continuum and it’s not all that difficult. The question of how much you push, how much you pull back: There are … 
  19. Strength in Humor
     … This is where mindfulness comes in, along with the need for concentration. Mindfulness and concentration are also strengths to nurture you and to give you a sense of well-being in the midst of difficult situations. If you feel nourished inside, it’s a lot easier to deal with the craziness in the world. You don’t get sucked into it out of weakness … 
  20. Circumspection
    In the bases of success—the four qualities that are needed for concentration to succeed—the fourth one, vimamsa, has lots of different translations. One is “discrimination” in the good sense of the term, as in having a discriminating palate. “Analysis” is another. The Canon never really explains the term clearly, so there’s room for lots of different interpretations. One of the Thai … 
  21. The Train Trestle
     … There is some impermanence here, some inconstancy, but relative to a lot of other things in life, this state of concentration is pretty constant. It allows you to put down your guard a bit. As the Buddha said, settle in here. Indulge in the pleasure of the concentration, because the mind needs that sense of pleasure. Otherwise, it’s going to go out looking … 
  22. Load next page...