Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. The Lightened Mind
     … This, the Buddha said, is how you begin to develop discernment within the practice of concentration so that the concentration itself isn’t heavy. It gets lighter and lighter as you drop away the various factors of the lower levels of right concentration and go to the higher ones. You see where there’s unnecessary stress in the mind, and that it’s not … 
  3. Skilled in Leaving Concentration
    The Canon talks about the skills associated with concentration practice: skill in entering, skill in staying, skill in leaving. You might think that skill in leaving is the easiest out of the three—just jump right out, no problem. But that’s not what the Canon means. It means that you don’t really leave fully. At the very least, you stay in the … 
  4. Skills for Awakening
     … And then to support all this, you need the qualities of calm, concentration, and equanimity. Calm keeps you balanced and at ease so that you can stick with your craft easily for long periods of time. Concentration keeps you focused on what you’re doing. Equanimity is needed to observe things carefully so that you can make clear and accurate judgments. Here, as we … 
  5. Mastering Pleasure & Pain
     … Otherwise, your concentration turns into drowsiness, or what Ajaan Lee calls delusion concentration. The mind is still, you’re not asleep, but you’re not very clear about where you are: concentration lacking in mindfulness and alertness. That’s what you’ve got to watch out for as the pleasure begins to grow. But again the important point is that you don’t avoid … 
  6. A Good Dish of Concentration
     … With concentration, it sometimes takes a while to get good at fixing your concentration, but it’s worth the effort because your concentration is a kind of food for the mind. When the Buddha gives analogies for the functions of the different aspects of the path, concentration usually comes in under food. So for the time being, learn how to feed on this food … 
  7. Secluded from Sensuality
     … As you’re getting the mind into concentration, it’s based on a desire for becoming: You’re trying to give rise to a state in the mind and trying to annihilate any other mental states that come up. So craving for becoming and craving for non-becoming do play a role—as you’re trying to master the skills of concentration. The same … 
  8. Evaluation
    Ajaan Lee had some good insights into concentration practice, one of which was that the first level of right concentration, the first jhana, has two types of factors. On the one hand, you have the causes, which are directed thought, evaluation, and singleness of preoccupation. On the other hand, there are the results: pleasure and rapture—and the word “rapture” can be translated in … 
  9. Instructions for a New Monk
     … They start out first with virtue, concentration, and discernment, saying that when your concentration is nurtured through virtue or fostered through virtue it bears great fruit; discernment nurtured through concentration bears great fruit. Some people misinterpret this, thinking that if you don’t have any virtue, or if your virtue isn’t yet pure, you can’t do concentration; or if your concentration isn … 
  10. Working at Home
    Working at Home August 13, 2008 A traditional Pali term for concentration is vihara-dhamma, a home for the mind. It’s a place where the mind can stay. But it’s also more than that. As with any home, there’s more to the home than just the bedroom. And there’s more to the home than just living in it. First you … 
  11. Antidotes
     … He had one student in particular, I remember, who had extremely strong powers of concentration. She would come to him and complain that she still had anger and other emotional problems. Why wasn’t the concentration taking care of them? It was because concentration on its own is not enough to dig these things out. It just gets the mind calm enough so that … 
  12. Respect for the Triple Training
     … So, have respect for your own concentration; have respect for the concentration of other people. If you have issues with them, try to speak in a way that doesn’t shake their concentration more than it has to be shaken. There are ways that you can talk with one another, even when you’re critical, and still show respect. And that’s the big … 
  13. Craving & Clinging
     … And the best place for the mind to see the mind is when it’s in concentration. Remember, when the ajaans are talking about the mind shooting out to something or flowing out to something, they’re talking from the point of view of the mind in concentration, because it’s when you’re in concentration that you can see that flow. Sometimes you … 
  14. Five Steps to Insight
     … It’s not that you do concentration practice and then drop the concentration and then do insight practice as something separate. You do the two of them together as you gain your insight in the practice of putting away distractions, understanding them, taking them apart. Then as the mind settles down more and more, you start taking apart the concentration, understanding what its allure … 
  15. Observe Your Concentration
     … From the sense of joy, the mind becomes serene; and when the mind is serene, it becomes concentrated. So, while you’re listening to the talk on the aggregates, you can look at your mind in concentration and see that the concentration is made up of those same five aggregates. That other passage in the suttas then goes on to explain that when you … 
  16. The Four Jhanas
     … The stronger this concentration, the more refined the discernment you can develop. So don’t worry about when to stop doing concentration and to start doing discernment work. As the Buddha said, it requires a certain amount of tranquility and insight in order to get the mind to settle down into strong concentration; then once it’s in strong concentration, your tranquility and insight … 
  17. The Dhamma Eye
     … Flowers stand for concentration, when the mind blossoms in concentration. And of course, the light of the candles is symbolic of the light of discernment. That’s all on the symbolic level. Now we’re going to do the actual practice, sitting here meditating, because concentration is one of the factors of the path, right concentration, which involves right effort, trying to abandon unskillful … 
  18. Contentment in the Practice
     … That’s the kind of concentration you can really live with. In other words, it’s the kind of concentration you can pick up and take with you wherever you go, not where you prefashion things too much and preconceive things too much and have to do this and have to do that and adjust this and adjust that and it all becomes very … 
  19. The Lotus in the Mud
    One of the traditional images of the mind in concentration or of the awakened mind is of a lotus growing out of the mud. In the tropics the mud is pretty rank. And yet out of the mud you get this lovely flower with a very gentle smell and leaves that repel the water, flowers that repel the water, so that they can grow … 
  20. Purity Comes Through Discernment
     … This is why the Buddha never made a sharp distinction between developing concentration and gaining insight. He says concentration requires two qualities of mind, tranquility and insight, just to get the mind to settle down. It’s not that you can simply force the mind or lullaby the mind into concentration. You need to understand it at least to some extent, so that it … 
  21. Calm & at Ease
    In the factors for awakening, calm and concentration are two separate factors. Calm is said to be a precondition for concentration. It grows out of refreshment. It’s basically the mind at its ease. You’ve been refreshed by the breath, refreshed by comfortable feelings, and now you let them calm down with a sense of well-being. This is a necessary factor for … 
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