Search results for: "Concentration"
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- The Pursuit of Pleasure… It starts with right concentration and goes on and culminates in nibbana. That’s the kind of pleasure we try to use as our path, because this pleasure is not intoxicated. The mind is not dulled. It’s a pleasure that comes from a sharp mind, learning how to use your powers of observation to sharpen the mind, at the same time that you …
- Ultimate Reality… And you do that through developing the noble eightfold path, which boils down to virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are things you do, and you learn about what you’re doing by being very systematic in what you do. This is why we practice concentration, why we have techniques for concentration, and specific questions to ask about what you’re doing while you’re …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… This is why right concentration is the heart of the path. In those four noble truths that the Buddha taught, this is where happiness lies. The noble truths focus on suffering and stress, but there in the fourth noble truth, at the heart of the truth, is right concentration, and one of its factors is bliss or pleasure, happiness. Another one is rapture. This …
- Determined to Practice… to abandon unskillful behavior, to get the mind into concentration, to develop discernment, to gain release. All these things follow naturally from the initial conditions. The problem is those initial conditions: Those are the things that do require an act of will. They don’t happen on their own. There are two primary ones that the Buddha mentions. One is friendship with admirable people …
- The Garden of Enlightenment… When there’s joy and pleasures, it’s natural there’s going to be concentration, and so on down the line, from concentration to discernment, from discernment to release. These processes are natural, but they don’t just happen on their own. You’re taking a natural process and you’re training it in a particular direction, starting with the precepts, which are an …
- A Handful of Leaves… by developing the qualities of the path, which come down to virtue, concentration, and discernment. Virtue is when you avoid harmful behavior. Concentration is when you get the mind solidly gathered around one object. And that’s to give strength to your discernment, to see exactly what you’re doing that’s causing the suffering and what you can do to stop. That chant …
- Deconstructing Anger… When you begin to recognize these things as you’re dealing with them to get the mind in concentration, you begin to realize that your other mental states, outside of concentration practice, are made up of the same sort of things. This gives you a handle, especially on recognizing how to deal with unskillful mental states, like anger. When anger comes in, it’s …
- The Opportunity to Be Quiet… So this is a good place to be not only for the sense of well-being it gives while you’re right here, but also as a foundation for more mindfulness, more alertness, more discernment, the kind of discernment that really can make you free—even from the need to do concentration, ultimately. But in the meantime, see your concentration, this opportunity to sit …
- On the Surface of Things… That’s what the concentration is: pulling these things together, making them concentric, all centered on the breath. There will come a point where you start analyzing things to separate them out, but even then the analysis should stay on the surface. We like to talk in terms of deep, underlying causes, but when the Buddha uses the word “cause,” especially as it relates …
- Do Jhana… So these are reflections for cutting through the distractions that come up as you’re trying to get the mind to stay with the breath, or whatever topic you’ve chosen for your concentration, because getting the mind into concentration requires, as I’ve said, these two activities. One is keeping track of one perception or one sensation, such as the breath or an …
- Overcoming Complacency… Learn how to latch onto mindfulness, latch onto concentration, latch onto the sense of the breath and the deeper states of concentration that you can get into. Those are good places to hold on to. Because in the image of the bird in the cage, there comes a point when the bird can latch onto the door. When the door swings open, it’s …
- Shoulds & Wants… At the same time, you provide yourself with a sense of well-being through the concentration so that your desires for immediate happiness, immediate gratification, are not totally denied. Ideally, everything should work well together inside—much better than the picture that, say, Freud would give, where there’s a constant battle and your best hope is to negotiate a fragile truce. But you …
- Factors for Awakening… From that there’s calm; from calm there’s concentration. And when the mind is concentrated and calm, it can look at things with a more solid sense of equanimity. As the Buddha said, there are levels of equanimity. The lowest level is what he calls equanimity based on diversity. You simply make up your mind that whatever comes up in terms of sights …
- Truth Without Air Quotes… There was someone one time who asked the Buddha, “What’s the purpose of virtue?” Virtue is for the sake of concentration. “What’s concentration for?” Concentration is for the sake of discernment. “What’s discernment for?” Discernment is for the sake of developing dispassion. Dispassion is for the sake of unbinding. “What is unbinding for?” The Buddha stopped there and said, “No, you …
- Do You Want to Stop Suffering?… As the Buddha said, the main factor in the path—there are eight factors altogether—but the main factor is right concentration, getting the mind to settle down and be with one object with a sense of well-being, with a sense even of rapture, so that the mind can be comfortably in one place. When it’s in one place, it can see …
- The Basic Pattern… get your mind in a state of concentration and then look at it. Don’t make assumptions about what it is, but just look at the intention maintaining that state of concentration. See where there’s any disturbance in it; appreciate where there’s a lack of disturbance. “Lack of disturbance” here corresponds to a lack of harm. The disturbance can be equated with …
- Strategic Thinking… You’re going to want to hold on to the state of concentration that you develop out of learning how to deal with the aggregates skillfully. As for craving for becoming, the state of concentration is itself a state of becoming, something you bring into being and then try to maintain. There has to be craving to do this. The difference here is that …
- Trading Up… In fact, right resolve connects directly with right concentration. The resolve for renunciation connects with the very first phrase in the description of right concentration: “secluded from sensuality.” In other words, you’re not getting away from pleasures so much as you’re getting away from your fascination with thinking about how you want this pleasure, how you want that pleasure, wouldn’t this …
- Renunciation… And this is one of the reasons why we practice right concentration. In fact, the Buddha himself makes the connection between right resolve and right concentration very clear when he talks about transcendent right resolve. It comes down to the factors of the first jhana, the thinking and evaluating that go into getting the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being …
- Fangs in the Static… Then we got to the fourth noble truth—where we have jhana, the practice of right concentration, which includes pleasure and rapture: That, they said, sounded attractive. As I told them, go for the jhana first, go for the pleasures of concentration first, and then as you get more sensitive by creating states of concentration, you find that you ultimately do want to go …
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