Search results for: "Concentration"
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- Adjust the Flame… I remember reading a piece by a monk, of all people, saying that you shouldn’t do concentration practice, because concentration practice is focused on one object, and it’s an attachment to that one object. Instead, you should let the mind wander around from object to object, and just note where it’s going. But that wandering around is clinging, too: serial clinging …
- Collecting Your Tools… And don’t worry about getting stuck on concentration. That’s the kind of thing you can get unstuck from pretty easily. It’s a lot harder to get unstuck from your ideas. Often, things come up in the course of your concentration. Because as the mind centers in on the present moment, your sense of your body changes, your sense of your mind …
- The Carpenter’s Adze… You want to steady the mind—make it more concentrated—or gladden the mind. How do you do that? You deal with mental fabrication. You look at your perceptions, you look at your feelings, and ask yourself, “Which ones can I change so that the mind does become more and more glad to be here, more and more steady, more and more concentrated?” So …
- Cleanliness is Next to Mindfulness… The texts talk about these four bases of success specifically in conjunction with concentration, but a common teaching all over Thailand is that if you want to succeed at anything, you’ve got to develop these qualities of mind and apply them to whatever you have to do to succeed. And regardless of what areas of your life you develop them in, you can …
- The Food of Feelings… That, in particular, is what the practice of concentration is about. In the various analogies given in the Canon for the different aspects of the path, concentration often shows up in the role of food. Good food at that. Sugar, honey, molasses, butter: things that taste good and are good for you. So this is one of the things we have to work on …
- Big Desire, Detailed Focus… When you have these three qualities working together—mindfulness, alertness, and ardency—that’s how you get the mind into concentration. It’s also how you use the concentration to understand what’s going on inside. But the results don’t stay just inside. They spread out in all directions. And they take the mind to a place where it’s beyond all directions …
- No Happiness Other than Peace… But concentration is not the goal, because there’s a certain amount of effort that has to go into keeping the mind concentrated. And it’s an acquired taste. Some people sit here and they’re miserable for a whole hour. What we’re learning is how to be here happily, how to create a sense of well-being here, so that we can …
- Judging Your Thoughts by What They Do… The concentration gives you strength, keeps you grounded in the present. But remember: The present moment isn’t everything. The present moment has its own input—in other words, in terms of your intentions right now—but it’s also got things coming in from the past that are going to have an impact now and on into the future. You want to take …
- Matters of Life & Death… This is what the concentration provides, which is why it’s not a waste of time when you do find pleasure in the concentration, that you learn how to maintain it. It’s a balancing act, learning how to stay there and not disturb it. It’s as if you find yourself floating, and it feels just right. There’s a weightlessness, a lightness …
- Factors for Stream Entry… You’re trying to work on developing right concentration. Feed the mind with right concentration, so that when you look at the other ways you’ve been feeding it all along, you can begin to see: “This is an area that’s unskillful, and I’d be better off not feeding there. Not only would I be better off, but the people around me …
- Taking the Buddha at his Word… He was referring specifically to concentration practice, but his statement applies to other areas of the practice as well. When some people come to the practice, they want to be told what to do and they don’t want to have to think about it. They want a series of instructions that they can follow—1,2,3,4—and then at the end …
- Delight in Persistence… If you feel that “It doesn’t make much difference whether my mind is concentrated or not, whether I understand my mind or not,” you’re not going to put in the effort. But if you see that it really does make a difference, that’s how you motivate yourself, that’s how you give rise to the desire. Then you stick with it …
- The Buddha’s Shoulds… You should develop the path; you should develop concentration. Anything that gets in the way of your concentration right now, you let go. And when you do this, you find that we benefit. That’s what the whole purpose of the teaching is. The Buddha’s teachings are strategic. They’re meant to bring people to that goal. They’re not just a description …
- In Line with the Truth… That’s an expression the Buddha uses to describe the mind in concentration: the sense of well-being that’s not just in your head. It’s throughout the body. You develop alertness, watching what’s going on, to check and make sure that everything is where you want it. If it’s not, you can change. This way, the mind develops concentration, thinking …
- To Comprehend Suffering… As the Buddha said, it’s when the mind is in concentration that it can see things as they’ve come into being, i.e., before you’ve manipulated them and dressed them up into something else. Just see the raw materials as they are. The mind in concentration can see them. The mind out of concentration can’t see them in that way …
- Seeing Through Your Defilements… This is a part of concentration called directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to the breath and then you evaluate it. Is it good, is it not good? Is the mind staying with it or is it not? What would be better? What would work better? Then try to keep your conversation on topic. Don’t be surprised if the mind will …
- Afraid of Pleasure… It’s interesting that when he later formulated the noble eightfold path, he started with right view and ended up with right concentration, which is the four stages of jhana. But in the story he reflected first on jhana, and decided to make that the path. There are other passages in the Canon that talk about the path as being essentially right concentration with …
- A Path for a Noble Desire… Based on that, all the other factors of the path follow, all the way up to right concentration, because for this message to really sink into the mind, you’ve got to get the mind focused. You’ve got to give it a sense of well-being that doesn’t depend on things outside. This concentration is not the goal of the path. After …
- Meaning & Purpose… If you can’t have any desire in your practice, and you have to spend all your time analyzing dhammas, you’re not going to be able to complete the whole path, because concentration is part of the path. That person was saying: Trying to get the mind into concentration is actually an unskillful activity. The Buddha never said that. It’s a strategic …
- Choosing Freedom… It’s not the case that when mindfulness comes or concentration comes, you just watch it come and go, and think you’ve had some great insight. Concentration comes? Okay, you try to maintain it. Learn how to maintain it and not crush it or squeeze it. Allow it to stay. Allow it to grow. And learn what needs to be done for it …
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