Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Bringing Daily Life into the Practice
     … You’ll be bringing those two activities, or those two skills, into your concentration, so make sure they’re well trained before you apply them to concentration. You’ll find that your practice will go a lot more smoothly. The fourth principle is seclusion. You’ve got to find time to be off by yourself—away not only from other people but also from … 
  3. You’ve Got Friends
     … right view and right concentration. With right concentration, you take the breath as your ally. You try to step out of purely mental concerns and focus on the physical sensation of breathing. Then see what you can do to make that comfortable. When I talk about the breath, it’s not just the in-and-out movement of the air, it’s the whole … 
  4. A Good Independent Self
     … As long as you’re working on concentration, there has to be the desire that acts as a center, as a kernel for the state of concentration, and you don’t want to snuff that out. So you’ve got to train your inner critic to be a useful critic. You read so much about how you should try to get rid of the … 
  5. The Breath All the Way
     … The Buddha takes this even deeper, into the subtlest levels of concentration. Each level has a certain element of stress that’s very subtle, but it’s there. When the mind gets focused on a level of concentration, sit with it for a while to get to know it really well, until you recognize what’s really going on in that state of concentration … 
  6. Attention & Intention
     … The noble level of right resolve carries all three of these intentions to a higher level in focusing on the intentions that put the mind into the first jhana, the first stage of right concentration. It’s in this way that these two mental functions—attention and intention—work together in guiding the path. Then, based on the acts of attention and intention in … 
  7. Magha Puja
     … This refers to getting the mind into concentration but also to lifting it above its ordinary concerns, seeing that a lot of the things that you’re concerned with out in the world are really not worth that much time and effort after all. They’re not worth getting worked up about, certainly not worth getting involved in in a way that’s going … 
  8. Questioning & Acceptance
     … First you develop a strong sense of concentration, and then, when you’ve mastered enough, you can start investigating it. And the questions apply in this way. You focus, say, on the sense of form here in the concentration: the form of the body, the breath, the earth property, the wind property, the water property. You ask: Is this constant? The states of concentration … 
  9. Reflections on Kamma
     … You need the pleasure and the sense of fullness and refreshment that come from concentration so that you can look at your actions and not get knocked over when you realize you’ve done something unskillful or when you uncover some unskillful habits of mind that you had denied were there. The strength of concentration, the sense of being nourished by your concentration, also … 
  10. Unskillful Voices
     … The Buddha talks about concentration as a strength. The images he uses to illustrate concentration usually revolve around food on the one hand and water on the other. Concentration is food and water for the mind. It’s what gives you nourishment, refreshment, strength. Without this kind of food and water, the meditation gets very dry. As I said, when you start to be … 
  11. Wandering Aimlessly
     … So when the mind wanders, as it’s going to do in the course of the hour, realize that it’s a problem not just in terms of developing concentration. Get the mind concentrated and then learn to look in a very subtle way at the movements. If you apply the Buddha’s approach, that’s how you learn what the problem is, that … 
  12. Rightly Directed
     … Remember that the practice of mindfulness, when it’s done properly, leads to concentration. It gives you a good focus. So all these qualities are strengths. The virtue comes under conviction, together with persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. This is what keeps you strong in doing good. And if you can maintain that strength all the way through death, then a good destination can … 
  13. Separate
     … They talk about the oneness of concentration, and it is one in two ways: first, in the sense that you have one topic; and second, in the sense that that one topic fills your awareness. You’re basically blocking out any interest in other things so that you can catch your awareness. Ajaan Fuang’s image here is not a pretty one but makes … 
  14. Keep It Simple
     … The other five factors all work together, particularly the factors for right concentration. Start out with right effort: Look at the mind, see what’s skillful in the mind and what’s not skillful. You know that mindfulness and alertness are skillful, so you stick with them. Try to be alert to the breath and keep remembering to stay alert to the breath. For … 
  15. On Top of Your Actions
     … Without them, you really can’t get the mind into right concentration. A lot of people want to go straight from right view to the meditation side. But the meditation side of the practice has to work its way through right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort. So you want to make sure that all those factors are present. At the … 
  16. A Quiet Spot
     … In fact, when the sense of concentration gets solid and begins to spread out through the body you find that it’s much more expansive than your ordinary states of awareness. And it’s all right here. So we start out with this little corner, this little spot. Look after it. Make sure it’s still. Make sure it’s quiet. Make sure your … 
  17. W.W.B.R.
     … Ajaan Maha Boowa calls this discernment fostering concentration. He wrote a whole book on the topic. As he says in the book, sometimes things don’t go right in line with the way they’re listed in the texts: that first there’s virtue and then there’s concentration and then there’s discernment. He says your defilements don’t stand in a neat … 
  18. Three Virtues for the Mind
     … This is another reason why we practice concentration. By showing goodwill for ourselves, it makes it easier to act in a way that’s kind, compassionate, and empathetic with other people. Finally, there’s the issue of right view, realizing that our actions do give results. They might not give results as quickly as we’d like, but they do give results. If we … 
  19. Breath Meditation: The Third Tetrad
     … At first, don’t be too quick to try to analyze the state of concentration when you get into it. Just see what you can do to keep it going. Then, as you get more and more proficient at keeping it going, you can begin to notice: “What in here is still an unnecessary burden? How can I stay concentrated, but with less effort … 
  20. Meditation as a Skill
     … You’re mindful, alert, or as the passage says in terms of right concentration, you have directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to the breath and you evaluate how things are going. Then the results are going to come: a sense of ease, a sense of well-being, a sense of refreshment. You don’t have to create those. Those come as … 
  21. A Meditation Karma Checklist
     … As soon as you find a nice restful spot, you’ll stay there either with some alertness, or if you really want to rest, you let go of the alertness and go into delusion concentration. This is why the ajaans always say at the very beginning of each meditation session to make sure that your intention is clear. We’re here not just to … 
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