Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. The Karma of Pleasure
     … But if you can appease that hunger for pleasure with the pleasure of a well- concentrated mind, then you can look at these other pleasures and willingly admit that they do have their drawbacks. They involve intoxication. You have to blot out large areas of your awareness if you’re going to enjoy them. It’s like listening to a concert of music. The … 
  3. A Legacy of Strengths
     … As it gets more established, it turns into concentration, which is the fourth strength. This is when you gain a real sense of nourishment, a sense of ease, of well-being. Again, you don’t create the ease and well-being directly. You work on their causes. In fact, the causes are your work right now. There’s directed thought, where you keep reminding … 
  4. The Water in Your Cup
     … Don’t get tied down by the perception that when you’re meditating, the breath has to be gentle or shallow or whatever for there to be concentration. You can concentrate on all kinds of breathing. But you want to listen to what your body needs right now. Pay close attention. This way you get to see things you didn’t see before inside … 
  5. The Hall of Mirrors
     … Ajaan Fuang, when he gave meditations instruction, in almost the second or third sentence would say, “Don’t try to put yourself into a trance or to hypnotize yourself.” In other words, don’t force the mind into some preconceived notion of what good solid concentration should be. Simply allow it to stay with the breath and try to use as gentle a touch … 
  6. Into Position
     … There’s a poem by the Buddha about the various objects that a good practitioner should have respect for, and concentration is one of them. The poem goes on to talk about the triple training, and yet concentration is part of the triple training; the other parts are heightened virtue and heightened discernment. You may wonder why the Buddha has to mention concentration twice … 
  7. Values
     … If the mind is scattered, you learn to breathe in ways, think in ways, that get it to settle down, be more concentrated. If it’s feeling low, you try to find ways of making it glad. You don’t just sit there with whatever. If the mind is low, you try to gladden it. If it’s scattered, you try to concentrate it … 
  8. Equanimity & Endurance
     … This is why we practice concentration and try to get the mind to the levels of concentration where the mind is just there, not getting worked up about anything, not getting excited, not getting down, just right on an even keel. We don’t tend to think of that as a gift to others, but it is. It’s the basis for all our … 
  9. Virtue & Right View
     … You may wonder why the Buddha didn’t include concentration in here, too. It follows on right view; once there’s right view, there should be right resolve, and from right resolve comes right concentration. But for people who don’t have strong powers of concentration, it’s still possible to hold on to right view and to your virtue. These things actually come … 
  10. The Allure of the Hindrances
    The texts say that there are five hindrances to concentration: sensual desire, ill will, sloth & torpor, restlessness & anxiety, and doubt. Each of them has its allure. That’s why we fall for them. Each has its advocate—or advocates—in the committee of your mind. As soon as it comes, they’ll tell you that this particular hindrance is not a hindrance. It’s … 
  11. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … One of the reasons we work on concentration is, as the Buddha said, that the levels of concentration all the way up through the dimension of nothingness are perception attainments. You have to learn how to hold on to a perception that you find congenial, that helps you to settle down. Then these perceptions get more and more refined. When you’ve learned how … 
  12. Gratitude, Goodwill & Generosity
     … I mention this because we often think of meditation as a process of just stilling our thought-processes and getting down to a state of concentration, trying not to think at all. And yet an important part of getting the mind to concentration is learning how to think skillfully first before you can stop thinking. Because some thoughts are very sticky: They actually prevent … 
  13. Anchored by Skillful Roots
     … When you’ve got a taproot that goes way down into the mind—in terms of concentration, in terms of discernment—you find a source inside that’s nourishing. That’s the source that can feed your need for happiness so that it doesn’t have to depend on anything else. In other words, your goodness doesn’t have to depend on outside conditions … 
  14. Balanced Breathing
     … Often, when we think about concentration, we think about tensing up around the object. That kind of concentration can get the mind focused, but it’s hard to keep it going. It doesn’t last. When you can stay focused with a sense of ease, though, that can last for a long time. It can become your basic default mode. So be careful. That … 
  15. The Quality of Your Awareness
     … This is why we practice concentration. This is why we pose questions in the mind to learn about the mind as it’s entering concentration. Because what else are you going to observe? You observe the mind in action right here. And that’s where everything becomes plain.
  16. The Wisdom of Ardency
     … After he had gone for many years dealing with dead ends, he was able to get the mind in right concentration. From right concentration, he started applying his purified mind to questions. Like the question, “Is death the end?” Or: “Have there been births before, and is there the possibility of births afterwards?” He saw that there had been many births. His memory went … 
  17. Strength Training
     … You’re strengthening your mind so that it develops strengths of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and even discernment. Discernment is not a matter of coming up with clever insights, or taking concepts you’ve learned from the books and slapping them on your mind. I got a phone call the other night from someone who was talking about how he was trying to apply … 
  18. Breath Energy
     … After all, when the Buddha describes right concentration, he’s talking about a full-body awareness. Where there’s a sense of ease, he says to allow it to work through the body. A sense of fullness or refreshment? Let that permeate through the body. Again, you don’t push it through. Just allow it. You’ll find that the sense of the body … 
  19. A Good-natured Attitude
     … And the other is that it’s just right—not only right but “just right.” Your concentration is just right, the amount of effort you put into it is just right. And how are you going to know what’s just right? You have to experiment. And you have to learn how to listen both to your body and to your mind, to see … 
  20. Perceptions for Training the Mind
     … As the Buddha said, the various levels of right concentration, all the way up through the dimension of nothingness, are perception-attainments. We use perceptions to stay with our object. But remember that when the Buddha’s describing how you get into right concentration, in his description of right mindfulness, there are basically two activities. One is staying focused on one topic. That’s … 
  21. Doubt vs. Discernment
     … You’re going to need virtue, concentration, and discernment, and he divides these things up into factors that are easy to remember. There’s a lot that’s not explained, but at least he heads you in the right direction. When we chant the analysis of the path, notice that the first five factors have very short definitions. The factors having to do with … 
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