Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Joy in Effort
     … When the Buddha singled out three of the most important factors of the path in helping right concentration, they were right view, right effort, and right mindfulness. These are the most important helpmates or requisites for right concentration. These are the factors you want to focus on while you’re meditating: right view, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. They all involve doing things … 
  3. The Need for Right View
     … Now, to do this, you have to develop the factors of the path, from right view all the way through right concentration. The Buddha one time singled out right concentration as the heart of the path, and the other factors as its requisites or supports. Because to see suffering, the mind has to be very still and have a great sense of well-being … 
  4. Refreshing
     … They’re the causes for your concentration. When you focus them on one object, like the breath, and you can maintain those three together—directing your thoughts to the breath, evaluating the breath, paying attention solely to the breath and mind together—then the other factors of right concentration will come in, which are a sense of ease and pleasure, along with a sense … 
  5. Detail Work
     … And don’t think that these contemplations would get in the way of your concentration, that too much interest in things outside will become a disturbance. It doesn’t have to be that way. Think of Ajaan Lee: Among Ajaan Mun’s students, he was famous for having the strongest concentration, yet he also had a very inquisitive mind. If he met up with … 
  6. Why We Bow Down
     … And is it really worthwhile to say that these things are not-self, that you’d be better off not trying to lay claim to things? When you fabricate a really good state of concentration, what proof is there to deny that that’s best there is, so that you should maintain what you’ve got and never let it go? After all, there … 
  7. Different Minds, Different Bodies
     … And you come to realize that the different states of concentration you’re going to gain all have their different uses. So whether it’s the precisely the type of concentration you’d like to get or not, that’s not the issue, or shouldn’t be the issue. The issue should be, once you’ve got the mind concentrated in this way, what … 
  8. Respect for the Training
     … The training is very basic—virtue, concentration, discernment—and in some cases it’s so basic we tend to overlook it. We want to go to the higher Dhamma, things that are more abstract that seem to be more in line with our level of intelligence. As a result, we tend to miss a lot of the really good lessons that can be learned … 
  9. Develop Your Inner Observer
     … It plays a really important role in concentration practice. You get the mind still, and then you watch—because if you start jumping to conclusions or getting impatient, you can ruin the concentration and you don’t gain any knowledge. So your ability to get to this “knower” inside—what the Thais call, phoo roo, or awareness itself—is an important part of developing … 
  10. A Mental Fortress
     … And of course, the soldiers and the gatekeeper need food, and that’s what concentration is for. The Buddha talks about the various levels of jhana, and with each level, the food gets better and better. You have to remember that in order to keep with the practice, you need a sense of well-being. Whatever the level of concentration is, try to get … 
  11. Taking an Active Role
     … Realize that it’s a pleasure based on concentration and mindfulness, so the questions are: How do you extend the concentration? How do you extend the mindfulness? How can you best keep them going? When you take on this more proactive role, you begin to discover there are many more potentials here in the present moment than you might have ever imagined.
  12. The Duties of Happiness
     … That’s at the end of the path, when you’ve taken care of all the members of the mind, and the mind gets more and more unified in its agreement that this is the way you want to find happiness, based on this path of virtue, concentration, and discernment, with concentration the big middle ground that gets the mind right here in the … 
  13. Learn from the Ants
     … So even when he was studying with the teachers who taught very high levels of concentration—the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither perception and non-perception—he saw that they’d developed conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. They devoted good qualities of the mind to this, but they rested content with something that wasn’t ultimate. He, however, wasn’t satisfied … 
  14. Good Fences All Around You
     … Having the fence also helps you become aware of ways in which your mind is unruly, creating a lot of trouble that you might not have noticed otherwise—as when we’re practicing concentration here. We establish ourselves in one of the frames of reference—the body in and of itself, or feelings, mind states in and of themselves—although primarily though the body … 
  15. Full Attention
     … Remind yourself that whatever issue may come up in life, you’re going to need mindfulness, you’re going to need alertness, along with good powers of concentration and discernment. So the responsible thing right now is to let go of all your other responsibilities and work on these qualities. The future is very uncertain, but what is certain is that you’re going … 
  16. Wise about Happiness
    When Ajaan Lee analyses the qualities that you bring into mindfulness practice—and by extension to concentration practice—he singles out ardency as the wisdom factor. Which is interesting. It’s the factor that has to do with effort, the effort you put into being mindful, into gaining concentration, trying to see into your defilements. Ardency is what does this. And ardency is wisdom … 
  17. Take Good Aim
     … I said to him, “You must have good concentration.” He said, “Your mind has to be constant.” In other words, you can’t waver. This is one of the reasons why we’re working on concentration—to develop that steady, constant, unwavering quality of focus that enables our discernment to do its work. And what is the work of discernment? To understand our cravings … 
  18. Freedom from Fear
    Part of the formula for right mindfulness, and the means for getting the mind into right concentration, is “putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” In times when that’s hard, when you have anxieties about what’s going on in the world, fear about what’s going to happen, you have to learn how to get that fear under control … 
  19. Exercising the Mind
     … You start with mindfulness, alertness, and ardency, and you start developing concentration and discernment. If you really are ardent at being mindful and alert, the mind is going to start staying more and more consistently with the breath. It can begin to relax with the breath. All too often, the mind is like a cat that jumps here and jumps there. If it knows … 
  20. Safety
     … The Buddha calls this practice not only right mindfulness, but also a form of concentration. There’s a passage where one of the nuns of the Buddha’s time identified the themes of right concentration as the four establishings of mindfulness. They’re very closely connected. There’s another passage where the Buddha himself talks about focusing on the body in and of itself … 
  21. No Mistakes Are Fatal
     … concentration based on desire and Right Effort; concentration based on persistence, or energy and Right Effort; concentration based on intentness and Right Effort; and concentration based on the mind’s powers of analysis and Right Effort. And he talks about how important it is to reach a balance in all these factors, because your desire can be too strong, too weak. Your persistence can … 
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