Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Full, Focused Attention
     … The more consistently you stay here, then the more concentration develops. So all these factors—right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration—have to work together if you’re going to gain any results. And it’s not necessary that you draw distinct lines between them. Bring them together. The mindfulness and the effort slough into the concentration, and the path all comes together … 
  3. The Burning House
     … So even though concentration provides us with a home here in the present moment, it’s a burning house. For the time being, as we work on our concentration, we try to find a room to stay where it’s cool, where things are fireproof, or relatively fireproof, so we can figure out what’s going on in the rest of the house. But … 
  4. Remorse
     … In other words, you develop concentration; you develop discernment. Having concentration as an alternative to sensual pain and pleasure puts you in a safe place, so that when pains come, you have an alternative place to go. That way, the pains don’t have to drive you around. And as you’ve learned in getting the mind to settle down: If, when you’re … 
  5. Right Effort
     … Sometimes you hear that if concentration comes, just note the fact the concentration is there, don’t get attached to it. Just watch it go away, and you’ll see the truth of inconstancy. That’s not what the Buddha taught. Your duty here, once you’ve given rise to it, is to generate the desire to develop it, to bring it to culmination … 
  6. Your Judgments Matter
     … The more intense your concentration, the more one-angled you get, which is one of the reasons why we develop the kind of concentration that spreads your awareness around and makes a lot of use of your powers of evaluation. You’re not told that you have to breathe in a certain way. It’s up to you find whatever way of breathing seems … 
  7. Rooted in Desire
     … Even before you get to concentration, the Buddha says you want to gladden the mind. So you gladden it with things that are in line with the Dhamma. Gladden it with generosity; gladden it with virtue. Then you can get it glad with concentration and discernment. The path creates a sense of well-being. It doesn’t lead only to nibbāna. That’s not … 
  8. Your World to Practice In
     … Years back, I was teaching in Malaysia, and I was told that laypeople shouldn’t be doing concentration practice because it’s so hard. They should just do mindfulness practice instead. But an important part of the concentration is that it gives your meditation a sense of refreshment, a sense of nourishment. When the Buddha compares the different parts of the path to a … 
  9. The Mind Like Water
     … There’s another analogy where the Buddha talks about the different hindrances that come up as you’re trying to use your mindfulness to get the mind into concentration. Sensual desire is like dye that you put into the water. Ill will is like boiling the water. Sloth and torpor are like slime and algae that grow in the water. Restlessness and anxiety are … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. The Buddha’s Filters
     … How does the path do its work? The heart of the path is concentration, what you’re doing right now. You’re creating a state of becoming right here. You’ve got the desire for quietude in the mind, for clarity in the mind. And your world is here in the body, as you feel it from within, in the present moment, and you … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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