Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 66
  2. Look at Yourself
     … Even around really refined states of concentration, as the Buddha points out, it is possible to get a state of concentration, and your reaction is the wrong one: the pride that you’ve developed this state that other people haven’t been able to develop; that comparing mind, what Ajaan Maha Boowa calls “the fangs of ignorance.” It’s one thing to have a … 
  3. The Power of Perception
    When you’re concentrated on the breath, you’re trying to hold one perception in mind: just the label, “breath.” Think for a minute about what the breath can be. It can be the feeling of the air coming in and out through the nose; it can be the feeling of the energy coursing through your body. It’s all part of what they … 
  4. The Middle Way
     … qualities of what you do, what you say, how you think—or to look at it in another way, virtue, concentration, and discernment. What we’re working on right now is the concentration. How are you going to make your concentration part of the middle way? For one thing, you have to look at the other ways that your mind is tempted to deal … 
  5. Verified Confidence
     … After all, you can use the brahmaviharas to get the mind into good, strong concentration. There’s one passage where the Buddha says you can get into the first jhana with the first brahmavihara, the second with the second, the third with the third, the fourth with the fourth. But there’s another where he says you can use the concentration based on the … 
  6. Preparing to Die Well
     … Even though eventually we try to let go of all states of becoming, we do that first by developing a skillful state of becoming—right concentration of the mind—which gives a standpoint from which we can gain practice in letting go of grosser pleasures, grosser attachments. The main attachments you let go when you’re developing concentration are the hindrances, beginning with sensual … 
  7. Working Hypotheses
     … Then the Buddha also compares the mind in concentration to a fire, but it’s a different kind of fire. The flames of greed, aversion, and delusion are like the flames of a bonfire. They flicker here, flicker there. They’re so unstable, so erratic, that you can’t really read by them. And they create all sorts of weird shadows, lots of false … 
  8. Play with the Breath
     … All too often that’s our idea of what it means to focus or to concentrate, so we tense up around the parts of the body where we’re concentrating. That interrupts the flow of the energy, doesn’t feel good. So spread your focus in a more scattershot way. Wherever you focus, you relax. Wherever you focus, you relax, like an atomizing beam … 
  9. The Need for a Purpose
     … Someone asked the Buddha one time, “What is virtue for?” “Virtue is for the sake of developing concentration.” “What’s concentration for?” “Concentration is for the sake of developing discernment.” “What’s discernment for?” “For the sake of release.” “What’s release for?” “For the sake of unbinding, total freedom.” “What’s unbinding for?” The Buddha said, “No, stop there. Your question is going … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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