Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Skillful Fear
     … This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration, one of the reasons why it’s so important that we have a sense of well-being that comes as we focus inside on the breath. It takes strength to go against our immediate knee-jerk reactions and to think about the long term. So to sustain yourself as you’re waiting for the … 
  3. Training the Whole Mind
     … There are things you have to think about, things you’ve got to plan for, things you have to ponder, where you take all the powers of the mind you’ve trained in concentration and put them to other uses. That way the benefits of the concentration permeate your whole life, everything you do. So it’s an all-around training, not just learning … 
  4. Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds
     … The conversation gets less and less until you begin to notice that the concentration itself can take you only so far. Then you look around to see where the clinging still is. Well, you’re clinging to the concentration, but you don’t want to go back to cling to the things that you left as you got the mind into concentration. So the … 
  5. Mindfulness Immersed in the Breath
     … In this way, as you get absorbed in the breath, you’re not even thinking about trying to make the mind concentrated. The concentration comes from your interest in the breath. If the mind is not interested in the breath and keeps wandering off, ask yourself: What is it that’s attracting the mind away? Sometimes it’s random stuff. In that case, you … 
  6. Alternative Conceptions
     … But here you use your imagination in the present, thinking of different ways of fashioning the present, different ways of fashioning your feelings and your perceptions, so that you can create the ease and well-being of right concentration. And then the concentration then becomes a good basis for insight, not simply because it makes the mind still enough so that you can see … 
  7. The Not-Self Discourse
     … Right concentration is made up of all five aggregates. Do the best thing you can with the aggregates and then reflect on what you’re doing. You push against those three perceptions: inconstancy, stress, and not-self. You try to make your concentration as constant as you can, as easeful as you can, and bring the mind as much under control as you can … 
  8. Meditation as a Skill
    When the Buddha describes concentration practice in the noble eightfold path, he describes in terms of three factors: right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. The formula for right effort, which is the first of the three, begins with desire: the desire to develop skillful mental states, the desire to abandon unskillful ones. As for unskillful ones that haven’t yet arisen, you try … 
  9. Gradually Sudden
     … If you develop your powers of concentration, develop your mindfulness, and focus on the question of how not to fall for these things, the steps gradually begin to slow down, and you can see them clearly. When you see them clearly, you begin to see how empty many of them are. The mind does have its funny reasons. And one of the reasons it … 
  10. In Restraint Is Strength
     … It’s as if the concentration were something in your lap, and as soon as you get up from the seat, it’s fallen off onto the floor. One of the first rules of meditation is that when you leave meditation, you don’t fully leave it. Try to maintain as much of the concentration as you can. As you get up and walk … 
  11. Advice for a New Monk
     … Even if there’s concentration, it’s going to be very partial concentration, with huge blind spots. So for the sake of your own peace of mind, you want to make a resolve that you’re not going to act in any harmful way at all. You’re not going to speak in any harmful way at all. This is the first quality that … 
  12. What Is Skillful?
     … And it’s also not the case that the insight is going to come only after you come out of concentration. While you’re doing the concentration, as I said, you run up against a lot of things in the mind you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. So be alert to what’s going on. And as the Buddha recommends that you stay with … 
  13. Self-Control
     … That’s the Buddha’s gift to us, showing us the skill of learning how to treasure our virtue, our concentration, our discernment, as our most important possessions—how to protect our intentions to make sure that they’re not simply pushed around by negative things outside. You look around at the world and it’s hardly ideal at all. We’re living in … 
  14. The Challenge of Right View
     … As in concentration: All the stages of concentration up to dimension of nothingness are all called perception attainments—as when you’re focusing the body right now. Learn how to perceive the sensations of the body as breath sensations and view how they relate to one another in that sense. All the way down to the little physical sensations: See them all as breath … 
  15. Practice in Dying Skillfully
     … Beyond the sensual pleasures, there’s the pleasure of concentration. If you’ve had some experience with concentration, that’s where you want to go. If you can’t manage anything higher than that, try to gain a sense of being still with a sense of ease that doesn’t have to depend on sensual pleasures. That can help wean you off the fear … 
  16. The Door of the Cage
     … This is where he brings in the practice of concentration, and has us form a right view around the concentration. This is a habit and practice you can cling to, and, as I said, the habit-and-practice clinging that he provides you with is going to be pivotal. This is going to be the central one that he focuses on. In terms of … 
  17. The Most Important Thing to Be Doing
     … That’s why we work on concentration, to get the mind to settle down and have a sense of well-being. You soothe the mind with the breath. The question often arises, “How much concentration do you need?” The Buddha talks about different levels of jhana, as he calls them, but we’re not here to focus on jhana, we’re here to focus … 
  18. Patience & Tenacity
     … We hear all the time that you need concentration first before you can gain insight. But a lot of practical experience, backed up by what the Canon says, indicates that there has to be some insight to do the concentration. You have to understand the mind to some extent before you can get it to settle down. That means you’ve got to figure … 
  19. A Point of Balance
     … As I’ve said many times before, the heart of the path is right concentration. Only when the mind is balanced in right concentration can it get away from these currents of craving that keep pushing, pushing, pushing. So as you focus the mind right here on the breath, you’re putting yourself in a position where you really can solve the problem of … 
  20. Comfortable with Yourself
     … The Buddha said that when the mind is rightly concentrated, that forms the heart of the path. All the other elements of the noble eightfold path are ancillary, because the path depends on this sense of well-being, of getting along inside. If the different things that come together to create the present moment, that compose the present moment, are on bad terms with … 
  21. Persistence
     … And you can see this most clearly when you get the mind in concentration. So develop your concentration. So there are the guidelines for what kind of effort is going to be needed at any one time. And finally, there’s the amount: How much effort is too much? How much effort is too little? This is something you’re going to have to … 
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