Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 69
  2. Unattractive
    As Ajaan Fuang used to say, the breath is the basis of our skill here, and concentration focused on the breath is the safest of all the concentration practices. It’s the one where you can see most clearly the stages of jhana as the mind settles down. You can see the different kinds of fabrication: bodily, verbal, mental. Bodily, being the breath itself … 
  3. A Total Training
     … And you might say, “Well, where’s my freedom to think?” Well again, you’re free to make yourself suffer if you want to, but do you really want to? How about bringing the mind to think about things that really are helpful in leading to happiness instead? This is why the Buddha stressed right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration in the practice … 
  4. Laying the Infrastructure
     … We tend to think of insight practice and concentration practice as two separate things. But where does the insight practice come from if it doesn’t have this good foundation of stillness? After all, it’s only when you’re still that you can see subtle things move. So the time spent on concentration, being very careful to watch this very mundane thing, the … 
  5. On an Even Keel
     … But no, you look at the path itself, and you can see that pleasure and equanimity play a huge role in the right concentration. The four jhanas are defined by their feeling tone. You want to develop pleasure, you want to develop rapture, but you have to learn how to do it in such a way that you don’t destroy your concentration. So … 
  6. No One Size Fits All
     … As you’re trying to get the mind into concentration, the big questions are: “How do you get the mind to settle down? How do you get it to enjoy where it is and get some refreshment out of it?” Then there are the questions of insight. Here again, the Buddha didn’t teach one single technique. He just set up some questions: “How … 
  7. Blowing Bubbles
    Blowing Bubbles April 11, 2013 One of the first instructions you get in practicing concentration is that if you notice you’ve wandered away from the breath, try to come back as quickly as possible. And just because it’s a basic instruction early on doesn’t mean that it’s something to forget later on in the practice. It really is important because … 
  8. The Evening News
     … You get sensitive to when there’s rapture and pleasure coming from getting the mind concentrated. Then you see how those things together with the perceptions that go with them—the perception of the breath, the perception of the feelings, the perception of the body—have an impact on the mind. They fabricate the mind. Then you allow that impact to calm down. With … 
  9. A Small, Steady Flame
     … The word jhana, or concentrated mental absorption, is related to a verb, jhayati, that means “to burn.” Pali has lots of different words for the word “burning,” and jhayati is used to describe a steady flame, like the flame of an oil lamp. The words for “burning” used for other types of fire — like a raging bonfire, a wood fire, or a forest fire … 
  10. Dealing with Pain
     … You’re trying to work up your own strength, because it requires strength of concentration to be able to comprehend exactly what it is around the experience of physical pain that becomes mental pain. So you don’t want to take it on too quickly. Develop the qualities of the path—your mindfulness, your alertness, and your concentration—so that they’re strong enough … 
  11. Dispassion Isn’t Depression
     … We fabricate them into a state of concentration and then we try to keep maintaining that state of concentration. Of course, in doing that we can learn a lot. It’s like the Army Corps of Engineers trying to keep the Mississippi River in its channel: Over the course of the many years that they’ve been trying to do this, they’ve learned … 
  12. Put Your Books Back on the Shelf
     … You’re not showing any intelligence at all.” And then I realized, “Why do I have to be intelligent, commenting on the breath? What’s there to be original about being in concentration?” Ajaan Lee would often say, “There are times when you have to be willing to be stupid.” In other words, you don’t have to have a clever comment on what … 
  13. Infinite Good Humor
    When teaching concentration, the forest ajaans rarely go into detail about a particular technique. Instead, they talk about developing a particular attitude, one of samvega: looking around and seeing that all the things that you might want to think about are not really worth thinking about, looking at the mind’s own tendency to go after those things, and realizing that you don’t … 
  14. Protection Through the Practice
     … You’ve got to make your concentration bigger, your goodwill bigger: All the good qualities of the mind you have to make large. Remember the Buddha’s examples: making your mind like earth, making your mind like the river Ganges, making it like space. Space is infinite. If your concentration or discernment get larger, then you begin to see that the perceptions you’ve … 
  15. A Victory that Matters
     … This is why you’re practicing concentration. You try to develop a state of good solid concentration in the mind with a sense of ease and wellbeing that can come simply from being with the breath, being absorbed in the breath, filling the breath energy throughout the body with a sense of healthy energy. This puts you in a good position to compare things … 
  16. The Buddha’s Tools
     … So this is why his strategy—based on right mindfulness, getting into right concentration—allows you to see the mind a lot more clearly, and again, in the terms that he recommends. When you’re getting the mind into concentration, you find that you’re dealing with form, the form of the body, of the breath; feelings of pleasure and pain, neither pleasure nor … 
  17. The Origination of Suffering
     … As the Buddha said, to get the mind in concentration, you have to be secluded from sensuality. Any thoughts that come up about sensual pleasures, you have to put them aside. Instead, you create a state of becoming here around a different kind of pleasure, the pleasure of form: the body as you feel it from within. And you try to adjust it so … 
  18. Don’t Limit Yourself
     … As for concentration, you keep your focus. With concentration, you’re trying to keep your focus going as long as possible. And again, it enables you to see things you didn’t see before. It gives strength to the mind, gives a sense of well-being to the mind. You start knowing things about the mind that you didn’t think you could know … 
  19. A Divine Seat
     … The Buddha talks about getting the mind into concentration as a divine seat. Get the mind into the first jhana, and there’s a sense of ease and rapture filling the body. You can work it through the body. When you’re sitting in that state, you’re in a divine seat. So create a divine seat for yourself tonight. Focus on the breath … 
  20. Stay
     … And it’s an important concept to keep in mind as we practice, especially as we’re working on concentration. We’re trying to bring the mind into balance and then maintain that balance. Sometimes the getting into balance is the harder part, and sometimes the maintaining is the harder part. You want to be good at both. Getting into balance means you have … 
  21. Wandering On, Shooting Arrows
     … Based on conviction comes joy, and from joy there comes concentration, from concentration comes discernment, through discernment you finally get to release, and then to the vijjā—the knowledge—that cuts through everything. So, it’s that switch to conviction that makes the difference. Ordinarily, the Buddha says, when we encounter suffering, there are two responses. One is bewilderment: “How does this happen? Why … 
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