Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 77
  2. Respect for Heedfulness
     … If you search around in the Noble Truths you find happiness—pleasure and rapture—tucked away under the fourth Noble Truth, in Right Concentration. That’s the kind of happiness you can learn from, the happiness that comes together with mindfulness and real clarity. Because on the one hand it puts the mind in a state where it can see suffering and not be … 
  3. The Buddha’s Map
     … For instance, the Buddha teaches us how to put virtue, concentration, and discernment together. These are all things that we have to put together. Our intention to observe the precepts is something we put together. The precepts themselves are sketches. But they’re very useful sketches. If they were too complex, too detailed, they’d be hard to hold to, because they’d be … 
  4. Energy
     … Again, you realize the pleasure comes from the mind’s being focused, from its pulling itself out from all its ordinary concerns or by being concentrated on the breath. So you maintain that concentration. Whatever pleasure fills the body, it’ll do whatever work it needs to do. Sometimes we’re afraid that if we don’t wring every little last bit of intensity … 
  5. The Saints Don’t Grieve
     … He describes progress through stages of concentration as stage-by-stage release. Simply getting the mind to stay consistently with the breath, you’re released from unskillful mental states, released from sensual desires. That’s a state of freedom, but there’s a part of the mind that doesn’t see it that way. And that part of the mind gets a lot of … 
  6. For the Cessation of Dukkha
     … right concentration. In other words, he followed right concentration to the point where he understood the four noble truths and fully developed right view. That’s when the path was complete. As I said earlier, that’s where the Dhamma really began. So when we’re here, we’re right on the way. We’re in the right spot so that we can develop … 
  7. Groundwork
     … Evaluation together with directed thought here are the discernment factors of concentration practice. The Buddha identifies them with a high level of what he calls right resolve. In ordinary right resolve, you resolve not to indulge in thoughts of sensual pleasures, not to indulge in thoughts of ill will, not to indulge in thoughts of harmfulness. Then as the mind begins to settle down … 
  8. Self-Correct
    The Buddha’s instructions for getting the mind into concentration are found in his description of right mindfulness. You start by keeping the body in and of itself in focus. The “body in and of itself” means just taking the body in its own terms—your direct experience of the body right here, right now, without reference to how it looks to other people … 
  9. Perfecting the Mind in an Imperfect World
     … At that point, the most skillful thing is to find a way of bringing the mind into right concentration. Now, all of this involves actively cultivating certain mind states and actively trying to check other ones. In other words, we’re not here just to watch things come and go. I was actually reading a book a while back that made a distinction between … 
  10. Get Out of the Way
     … But she later said that she was exhausted at the end of the treatment because she had been using her powers of concentration just to focus, focus, focus, and not allow herself to have any reaction to the pain. Afterwards, Ajaan Fuang went to visit her and asked her how it went. She explained, and he told her, “You can’t use just your … 
  11. Training the Mind to Train the Mind
     … This doesn’t settle those issues once and for all, but it does enable you to clear some space in the mind where you can develop some skill in concentration. As your concentration gets stronger, your discernment gets more refined. The more still you can make the concentration, the subtler the things you’ll be able to see. And if you’re tempted to … 
  12. Why We Train the Mind
     … One is looking at the drawbacks of not having a concentrated mind, of not being mindful, of not being alert. As the Buddha said, we’re a slave to craving, and craving is a huge blind monster that thrashes around. When we’re a slave to craving, we get pulled along wherever the craving goes, as it fastens on this object as being desirable … 
  13. No Happiness without Restraint
     … What suffering are you causing for yourself? So learn to bring the mind into concentration. That’s allow you to focus on this issue—and by focusing here, you can solve the problem. And when this problem is solved, then there’s nothing else to be a problem. All of this comes from learning how to restrain the mind and keep it focused on … 
  14. Just Events
     … He said, “You’re just using concentration. You’ve got to use your discernment, too. Using concentration in a case like that takes a lot of energy. But if you use your discernment and say, ‘Okay, the awareness is one thing, the pain is something else, the body is something else,’ then you can hold that perception in mind. Then there’s a lot … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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