Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. To Go Where You’ve Never Gone Before
     … After all, the mind simply in concentration is luminous. As someone once pointed out, there’s that passage in the Canon saying that when the universe devolves, most beings go up to the Brahma levels, the levels that correspond to the second jhāna and beyond. They hang out there until the new universe comes back into being. Then they fall. So maybe we have … 
  3. Asalha Puja
     … It was a path that involved comprehending suffering, and for using the pleasure of right concentration as an alternative to either sensual pleasure or physical pain. Right view, which was part of the path, was focused on the question of how to understand suffering. In other words—why is it that we suffer? Where is the cause? Then he set forth four noble truths … 
  4. The Best Place to Practice
     … Our tools in getting the mind concentrated are not to make these things just simply go away by making the mind quiet. We make the mind quiet so that we can see these things in action more clearly. And then you want to use that foundation of concentration—or whatever shred of it you may have when the defilements are roaring in your ears … 
  5. Contentment
    One of the important principles in starting concentration practice is learning how to start out small. You’re given one thing to look at: the breath. Most people will look at it for a little while and then they’ll say, “Well, what’s next?” The answer is, “The breath is next. The next breath, and the next breath, and the next one.” This … 
  6. Serial Clinging Is Still Clinging
     … Ananda, going through a list of the different stages of concentration, starting with the fourth jhana and going higher, talking about how when you get to the highest level of concentration, you realize there’s a pure state of equanimity. As long as you’re attached to that equanimity, you won’t be able to gain awakening. But if you learn to see that … 
  7. Evaluation
    The word vicara, when it’s used in everyday Pali to describe everyday affairs, means “evaluation.” One of Ajaan Lee’s discoveries—or main contributions to understanding the Buddha’s teachings on concentration—was to point out that it has the same meaning in concentration practice. The reason that this is a discovery is because the commentaries define it in a different way. In … 
  8. Strength from the Basics
     … generosity, virtue, and meditation; or virtue, concentration, and discernment. Keep focusing on the basics, even when they seem awfully simple. Virtue, for instance, consists of the intention to hold by the precepts, to hold by the rules. It may not feel very creative to hold to rules rather than expressing yourself, but then again there are parts of life where self-expression and creativity … 
  9. Not-self
     … The same when you’re practicing concentration: anything that would pull you away, you have to regard as not-self. You hold on, though, to the breath, or whatever your object of concentration is. You develop qualities of virtue, concentration, and discernment so that you can apply them to that problem of why you crave things even though the craving itself causes suffering and … 
  10. Patience & Endurance
     … The reason for these instructions is that to get the mind into concentration, to be able to observe it, you have to start with a certain level of non-reactivity. The way the Buddha teaches this is interesting. He has you hold these images in mind, saying to “tune in” to that kind of energy. What’s the energy, say, of your bones right … 
  11. Strong Against Anger & Fear
     … That’s the basis of all the strengths the Buddha recommended—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: They’re all based on heedfulness. That’s a point that’s not stressed often enough. We hear so much about interconnectedness and the joy we should find in being interconnected—that somehow, if we appreciate our interconnectedness, we will be nicer to one another. Whereas the Buddha … 
  12. Purity of Heart
     … This involves using the food of contact, intellectual intention, and consciousness, but you turn these things into good, strong states of concentration: a more harmless form of feeding. That way, you have something to compare: There’s this kind of feeding, and then there’s the ordinary kind of feeding that goes on out there in the world outside. Which would you rather be … 
  13. A Sense of Space Inside
     … But when you realize, okay, you can be with the breath and these thoughts can come up and you don’t have to go with them, that’s when concentration gets stronger. You realize that you have this alternative place to stay, and by making it really comfortable and spacious, you make it easier to stay here without falling asleep. That sense of space … 
  14. Skillful Desire
     … As when you’re getting the mind concentrated right now: There has to be the desire to do it. It’s not going to happen on its own. But simply wanting it to happen is not going to make it happen, either. You have to take that desire and focus it on the right steps. Try to breathe in a way that’s comfortable … 
  15. Lift Your Mind
    The Buddha’s basic instructions for concentration practice are found in his description of right mindfulness. You’re doing two things: One, you’re giving the mind a focal point, a theme to stick with, and then two, you’re putting aside all other thoughts. He describes the focal point as being focused on the body, in and of itself—how you experience the … 
  16. Equanimity on the Path
     … For instance, when you’re getting the mind into concentration, anything that comes up that’s not related to the concentration, you’re just going to have equanimity for. Now, this may be temporary. It may be an issue that you have to deal with when you leave concentration. But for the time being, you want to keep the mind on an even keel … 
  17. Feeding Off the Future
     … The factor of the Buddha’s path that’s most directly related to nourishment is concentration. You learn to feed off a sense of well-being, even rapture, refreshment, that can come from being with the breath and allowing the comfortable breath sensations to spread through the body. You want to be able to tap into the sense of nourishment that comes from within … 
  18. Some Assembly Required
     … Everything from right view through right concentration helps you see through things you’ve chosen wrongly in the past, things you’ve assembled wrongly in the past. You see how things come into being and you realize that you’ve been playing a role—and not necessarily a good role. But as you make it more habitual to play a better role, you find … 
  19. Intelligent Design
     … Fourth and fifth are concentration and discernment. The discernment there is to help find ways over the obstacles that we all inevitably find on the path, and the concentration is to give your mind the food it needs to keep its energy up. The texts talk about persistence as a requisite for concentration, but the relationship goes the other way as well. Do your … 
  20. Steering the Raft
     … Get the mind into concentration. As the Buddha said, as you go from level to level in the concentration, different levels of fabrication fall away. They fall still. The chatter in the mind that you need to get yourself into right concentration can take you to a point where you don’t need to chatter anymore. You can develop a perception of the breath … 
  21. Happiness Without Conflict
     … What are the images the mind paints for itself of those pleasures? As you’re working on concentration, you don’t focus only on the concentration. You also focus on understanding the things that would pull you away. This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration to begin with: to give the mind a good place to stay where it can look … 
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