Search results for: "Concentration"
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- Strength Training… The Buddha talks of the path as a path of strength, and the strengths of the mind are conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. The Buddha has one way of formulating the path in these five terms. He himself often compares the path of practice to various skills, and some of them have to do with strength. The skillful meditator is one who can …
- Enlarged Awareness… In this way, you establish a really good solid foundation for your meditation, a good foundation for your concentration. If your concentration is one-pointed, then as soon as anything disturbs that one point even the least little bit, your concentration is gone. But if it has the whole body as its foundation, and you have a sense of your awareness filling the whole …
- Countercultural Conditioning… Breathe in ways that gladden the mind, concentrate the mind, that are conducive to releasing the mind—things that we usually don’t think about. He says that if you pay attention to your breath, it has lots of potential, and it’s going to have an impact on the mind. Then there are new ways of talking to yourself—first, to get the …
- Going Out of Your Way… As the Buddha said, when you’re avoiding unskillful thoughts, that can mean either that the mind is in concentration, or simply that it’s thinking things that are skillful: not based on sensuality, not based on ill will, not based on harmfulness. But that’s not necessarily special. What makes it special is when you decide you’re going to focus in on …
- For What It’s Worth… This, the Buddha said, is an important part of getting the mind into concentration. Sometimes we think that we get the mind into concentration to get the well-being. But he says that there also has to be some well-being first, a sense of gladness. This can be created by reflecting on your virtue, reflecting on your generosity, living in a harmonious community …
- The Elephant Hunter… He says, “You practice the teachings and you get into the four stages of right concentration. Those are like footprints.” Think about that. For those of us who haven’t gotten into right concentration yet, we’re still wandering around in the forest and we haven’t even seen any footprints at all. Someone tells us there are footprints, and we say, “Well, that …
- Believing & Knowing… Conviction, persistence, mindfulness, and concentration are like the beams and the rafters going up. Discernment is the ridgepole—the discernment that leads to the right ending of stress. As the others are going up, they’re going to be a little wobbly. They’re not one hundred percent sure. It’s only when we start having direct insight that discernment really starts yielding results …
- No Dharma Without Karma… As the Buddha once said, there’s no way you’re can reach any of the higher attainments, such as getting into good concentration, if you’re stingy. So there’s no Dharma without generosity. And, two, there’s no Dharma without karma. I keep running into this again and again: people who want to be told that the reason they’re suffering has …
- Wise About Pleasure… That’s the third strength—mindful in such a way that you’re going to give rise more and more to concentration, because this is where you get the strength to keep going. Of the various factors of the path, concentration is the one that the Buddha compares most consistently with food. You breathe in a way, focus on the breath in a way …
- To Be Trustworthy… You can plant concentration. You can plant discernment. For instance, with concentration, you can give rise to a sense of well-being inside the body that doesn’t have to depend on the world outside. The mind gets to settle down. In the beginning, it’s taken with the breath. Try to savor your breath, enjoy it. Get as sensitive as you can to …
- Right View Comes First… You’ve got right view, and then from right view comes right resolve, from right resolve comes right speech, from right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In another description, though, he starts with right concentration. He says all the other factors of the path are requisites for right concentration. But then he describes each of the factors and …
- Look after Yourself Happily… As the mind begins to feel that it’s had enough of concentration, okay, you know there’s work to be done and you can put it to work. If, in doing the work, things start getting unclear, go back to the concentration. The Buddha calls it a home for the mind. So get used to living at home. There are times when you …
- A Memorial to Your Life… It’s basically virtue, concentration, and discernment. We hear so much about how craving is a bad thing in the Buddha’s eyes, but there is the desire that’s part of right effort, and here it’s one of the bases of success. The trick, of course, is to desire the right things and to focus your desire properly on the causes, not …
- Goodwill Plus… The Buddha says you can make it a basis for concentration, what they call the immeasurable concentrations, where you’re focused less on the body and more on the whole world, thinking of goodwill in all directions. The image the Buddha gives is of a man blowing a conch trumpet. As soon as he blows it, the sound goes in all directions at once …
- Stay Centered… Sāriputta and his practice of concentration: how he could parse out all the different mental factors that went into his concentration. And neither of them were just showing off. They weren’t just trying to make the list long. The whole purpose there is to see very clearly what individual events there are in the mind, so that you can see where your craving …
- Determined on Awakening… All the aspects of the path that we follow—virtue, concentration, discernment, all the qualities of mind we try to develop, the ways we live, trying to be modest, trying to be content, trying to find some seclusion, being unentangled: All of these are expressions of those four determinations. All of them advance those four determinations. So the Buddha is basically asking you to …
- Lessons of Right Resolve… There’s a very clear connection between right resolve and right concentration. After all, what is concentration? The mind is firmly set on one object. And how does it get set there? Through your intentions. You have to motivate yourself to do this; the mind doesn’t just come to concentration in a stable way. It can, every now and then, fall into concentration …
- Conserving Your Strength… This is why we work on concentration to build up strength of the mind. The Buddha compares concentration to food for the mind. In other places, he compares it to a home for the mind—in other words, a place where you can rest, gather your strength, and nourish the mind. But simply having strength is not enough. You have to learn how to …
- The World Is Aflame… You use, not sensual pleasure, but the pleasure of a mind that’s concentrated. And so it’s not a middle path of a middling sort of pleasure, or a middling sort of pain. Actually, the pleasure that comes from concentration can be very intense. But even this is a burning pleasure. After all, the verb for doing jhana, jhayati, also means burning. But …
- The Dangers of Sensuality… In the same way, once you get into concentration, you find that it’s a fairly steady pleasure there. Learn to enjoy that. Learn to appreciate that. It’s a floor below which you don’t want to fall. Now, someday you’ll find that, even in the concentration, there are ups and downs. But first learn how to appreciate the steadiness you can …
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