Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Friends with the Dhamma Wheel
     … The path, of course, is the noble eightfold path, starting with right view and ending with right concentration—basically, virtue, concentration, and discernment. You develop that. That’s what you work on. That, of the noble truths, is the one that you have to develop passion for. The other three duties all start with dispassion. But with this one, you first have to be … 
  3. Birth Is Suffering
     … We do that by trying to form a state of concentration. We get hands-on experience with bodily fabrication in the breath, verbal fabrication in the way we talk to ourselves, and then mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions—seeing how we put these things together to create a state of concentration. Then, as the concentration deepens, some of them will peel off. That’s … 
  4. Not-self in Context
     … As he said, the Buddha started out by taking what was inconstant in his mind and turning it into something constant—in other words, creating a state of concentration. He took what was stressful and turning it into ease. He took what was not-self and bringing it under his control. It’s only when you’ve done that, that you’re ready to … 
  5. Skills for Dying Well
     … Some people say we’re not supposed to have a physical sense of well-being in concentration, because concentration is supposed to be divorced from sensuality. Well, the pleasure of form is very different from the pleasure of sensuality. Sensuality, of course, is your fascination with thoughts about the pleasures of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensastions. The pleasure of form is something else … 
  6. Lift Up Your Mind
     … That’s integral to the concentration. And it’s in getting the mind concentrated that way that you can see things a lot more clearly. You can’t get the mind into jhana without at least some insight into how the mind fabricates things. Then as the mind settles down, it can see things more clearly—allowing you to settle down more deeply, more … 
  7. Goodwill Is Respect
     … Try to get the mind concentrated. You don’t just brush it off, saying, “Gee, thinking about concentration sounds really tense. I’d rather have a path that’s easy and more relaxed.” Even if concentration doesn’t come easily to you, it’s a necessary part of the path, so you have to do your best to give rise to it within you … 
  8. Unhindered at Death
    When we usually think about the hindrances, we think about the Buddha’s comment that before you get the mind established in its frame of reference, before you establish mindfulness properly, before you get into concentration, you’ve got to clear the hindrances out of the way. So we tend to think that the hindrances are mainly a problem with getting the mind into … 
  9. Enjoying the Path
     … Not only does it provide a comfortable place for the mind to stay while you’re walking on the path, remember what the Buddha said, that right concentration is the heart of the path. The factors of right concentration include ease, pleasure, rapture, equanimity—good qualities to have in the mind. It’s meant to be enjoyable. There are some places where the Buddha … 
  10. The Mind Isn’t Hot
     … You learn concentration in the midst of what someone once called this booming, buzzing confusion: all the sensory data that’s coming in all the time. When you’re practicing concentration, you simply decide you’re going to hold on to one sensation, one notion, one idea, and anything else that comes up, you’re not going to go there. So think “breath.” When … 
  11. Mindful Judgment
     … Mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment: These are all things we have to some extent, and what we’re doing is learning how to take what we’ve got, to appreciate the good things we’ve got in the mind, and improve the conditions for their growing. It’s not the case that the mind is innately good or innately bad. It’s got good qualities … 
  12. Mindfulness as Refuge
     … Now the teachings on establishing mindfulness are basically the Buddha’s instructions for how to get in concentration. So it’s the mind in concentration that you’re going to have to rely on. You develop this by, as the Buddha says, keeping track of the body, ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That means you … 
  13. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … Here the Buddha says the food for a monk is the food of concentration. Tying the mind down means that if you’re going to stay in concentration, you can’t just wander around wherever the mind may go. Any thought that would pull you away, any desire that would pull you away, you’ve got to say No. At the same time, you … 
  14. When This Is, That Is
     … Those can be a part of right concentration. The perceptions you have can be part of right view, but also right concentration and right mindfulness as well. The thought constructs you have, directing your thoughts to the breath, evaluating it: These become part of right concentration. Your awareness of all this becomes part of the path, too. In other words, you take all the … 
  15. Dharma Medicine
     … You see it: “Simply because I was perceiving it in a particular way, that was causing the problem.” This is why we spend so much time in concentration practice, because as the Buddha said, concentration is a perception attainment. You stay centered by holding a particular perception in mind. You try to sort through all the possible perceptions you can apply to what you … 
  16. Smoothing It
     … For the sake of concentration, for the sake of giving the mind a place to rest, you take the second option. You pursue that until you run into times where the second option just doesn’t work. Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about the time when he had developed a fairly reliable concentration practice, until one night the pain in his body got so bad … 
  17. Think Your Way to Stillness
     … Because we’re trying to develop a concentration that is centered but all-around. All the Buddha’s images for right concentration talk about full body, full body, full body. There is that word “one-pointedness”—or in English it’s one pointedness, but in Pali it’s ekaggatā. But it doesn’t necessarily mean one-pointed. Eka- is one; agga can mean the … 
  18. Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions
     … Then there’s the practice of concentration: This is right mindfulness and right concentration. You find that these alternative forms of pleasure are better to pursue—and that you can tap into them. Addictive views, of course, have to be replaced with right views. One of the lessons of right view is that the important issue in life is not the pleasure that you … 
  19. From Heedfulness to Purity
     … Do you want to hold onto it or do you want to let go? So you bring the mind to the concentration usually with some confused motives. And the concentration, the mindfulness, allow for the discernment that’s going to allow us to see where the confusion lies, because we begin to see that it really does cause suffering, causes stress one way or … 
  20. Top Priorities
     … And the simple fact that the path centers on right concentration should give us an important message. There are a very limited number of things that we really have to focus on, that we really can benefit from developing, and there are a lot of things we have to let go. If you try to straighten out everything in life, the job never gets … 
  21. Alone with Your Mind
     … If nothing really clear comes, then you tell yourself, “Okay, I’ve got more work to do in terms of concentration,” and you go back to that. One of the important skills in concentration is learning how to put a question aside. They may be important questions, but you tell yourself—after looking at your ways of trying to deal with the questions and … 
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