Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Useful Thinking
     … The Buddha talks about concentration practice as the heightened mind. You’re giving the mind a sense of pleasure that doesn’t have to depend on sensory objects. He calls this the pleasure of form. Or if your concentration gets really solid and very refined, you’ve got formless pleasure as well, which lifts the level of the mind. As long as you’re … 
  3. Establishing Priorities
     … As the Buddha said, using your powers of analysis is actually one way of leading the mind into concentration. For people who can’t calm the mind simply by sticking with the breath, it’s good to look into the breath as a process to explore. How does the breathing affect the body? How does the effect of the breath on the body have … 
  4. No Who or Where
     … This is a state of becoming that we’re creating as we get the mind into concentration, but the more you can keep it at the level of events, it’s a transparent* *becoming. You get to see the process as it’s happening. It enables you to see the process that happens when parts of the mind want to destroy the concentration and … 
  5. A Slave to Craving
     … As the Buddha says, when the mind is settled in concentration and is satisfied, when it has a sense of enjoying being here, Mara can’t find you. Mara can’t see you. This is even before you’ve gained awakening. So this is a safe pleasure. Once you see a safe and blameless pleasure, then you can look at the other pleasures you … 
  6. Visakha Puja – True Homage
     … The flowers stand for concentration as the mind blooms. The candles stand for discernment that throws light on our actions, revealing to us how we cause suffering and how we can learn how not to cause suffering. Those are the symbols, but we don’t want just the symbols. We want the reality. So let’s meditate. Focus on your breath. Know when the … 
  7. Preparing to Meditate
     … That’s when simple mindfulness practice turns into concentration practice as you develop this awareness of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out, and then the breath growing calmer. So focus on what you’re doing with the meditation, and the results will have to come. All too often we sit here and say, “When are the results going to come … 
  8. Stepping Out of the Waves
     … There is a pleasure that comes when the mind settles down, and that’s actually part of the concentration. You don’t want to let that go quite yet, but the excitement that comes when the meditation is going well, and the opposite mood that comes when the meditation is not going well, are things that you have to steer a clear course through … 
  9. Comfort Dhamma
     … What are the most useful conventions for getting you to what really is the ultimate truth, which is release? Sometimes it’s hard to let go of your old way of looking at things, and the practice of concentration helps smooth the way because of some of the things you learn about yourself as you get the mind concentrated. One, you learn about your … 
  10. The Wisdom of Tenacity
     … Many people come to meditation wondering, “When is the mind going to settle down? I don’t see any concentration at all.” The problem is that it does settle down in little bits and pieces, but then we trash those little bits and pieces of concentration, those little bits and pieces of stillness. They don’t seem impressive. They don’t seem like anything … 
  11. Riding an Elephant to Catch Grasshoppers
     … You may wonder why he doesn’t include concentration in the list. It may be because virtue and right view are the foundations for right mindfulness. Right mindfulness, of course, is how you get the mind in concentration. So once you’ve got the foundations, you’ve got the rest of the building as well. Your right view keeps you focused here inside: What … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. Three Recollections
    One of the basic principles of getting the mind into concentration is that you have to gladden it first. There are lots of ways of doing this. Sometimes just thinking about doing the concentration is enough to get you glad. You have an opportunity to sit here with your eyes closed, and with no other responsibilities right now. You don’t have to deal … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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