Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Friends with the Breath
     … virtue, concentration, discernment. At the moment we’re focusing on the concentration. But all three are involved. Virtue is a quality of normalcy in our intentions, harmlessness in our intentions. As we’re sitting here meditating, we’re not harming anybody at all. Not only that, we’re not planning to harm anybody. We’re here focusing on getting our mind straightened out. And … 
  3. Always Observe Your Mind
     … It’s the ability that allows you to improve your concentration and then to begin to learn how to analyze concentration when it’s gotten really good. So the practice is seamless. Everything the Buddha teaches us, as he says, is contained in the four noble truths. The message of the four noble truths is again and again and again: The causes for suffering … 
  4. Give of Yourself
     … There’s the potential for calm, concentration, within your body and mind. But where those potentials are and how you develop them through appropriate attention, again, he doesn’t say. You have to explore. Then there’s the question of how to interpret his teachings. There’s a place where he says that some of his teachings are meant to have their inferences drawn … 
  5. Responsibilities
     … No one else can make you virtuous, no one else can make you concentrated, no one else can get you to see everything with discernment, so that when death comes, you’re ready for it. This is a perspective you should always have in mind: Which responsibilities are the ones that, as death approaches, you’ll look back on and be happy you took … 
  6. To Sustain Your Practice
    Ajaan Fuang used to comment that there were three stages to concentration. First is learning how to do it. Second is learning how to maintain it, and third is learning how to put it to use. You can hear the instructions and focus on the breath—and anybody can focus on the breath. What makes the difference is the maintaining. How do you stick … 
  7. An Admirable Friend — In Memory of Luang Loong
     … developing mindfulness, concentration, discernment, persistence. Underlying all this is the conviction that this is really useful, this is really a worthwhile project: training the mind, realizing that the mind is the major factor in life, shaping your happiness and sorrow, your pleasure and pain. It needs to be trained so that its actions yield the happiness you want, a happiness that doesn’t harm … 
  8. In Touch with Your Fabrications
     … Once you see how they’re used to fashion a state of concentration, then you begin to notice that, as you go through the day, you use them to fabricate other mental states—some of which are skillful, some of which are not. And you learn, if you see that you’re doing it in an unskillful way, that you have the choice to … 
  9. Farming Your Body & Mind
     … This is one of the reasons why we try to create a pleasant state of concentration, so that when the mind is hungry for pleasure, you can say, “Well, here it is. Why go looking for it someplace else?” Especially, “Why get engaged in thoughts that are going to have bad consequences?” Here you’ve got pleasure that’s free. All it requires is … 
  10. Ideals
     … He practiced with conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment as best he could. But after having given his all, he realized that the paths these teachers were teaching were deficient. So he tried the path of austerities. He put his life on the line and almost died. After six years he finally realized that this was not going to be the path, either. But … 
  11. Scramble the Image
     … red, yellow, orange, white, green, blue.” And if the thought was indifferent, well, fine, you just make sure that that hasn’t kidnapped your concentration. If it’s not so indifferent, if there’s more of an emotional pull to that particular image, then it’s even more important that you learn how to scramble it. After all, that’s how you dig out … 
  12. How the Tree Leans
     … One of the reasons why we develop concentration is to train the mind to hold on to one direction. Some people think that when you sit in the present moment, you’re outside of time. That’s not the case. The present moment is moving. It is time. And as the mind moves through time, what direction is it going in? It’s going … 
  13. The Economy of Goodness
     … Finally, there’s discernment, where you see clearly how suffering is caused from inside the mind and you also see what you’ll have to do to put an end to that cause by developing the path—the path of virtue, concentration, discernment. Like what we’re doing right now: trying to get the mind still so it can see itself clearly—still with … 
  14. Worldly Narratives
     … When you get more and more firmly established in the state of concentration, then you can use your perceptions and thought-constructs to start taking even that apart, to see what attachment there is to this state of quiet, this state of calm, this open, spacious state that comes with the concentration. Start taking that apart as well. Then you finally get to a … 
  15. Potentials for Rapture
     … And you don’t have to wait until your concentration is really good in order to gain some sense of this. In fact, you have to shape your experience here in order to get the mind into concentration. Notice where the potentials are. And keep coming back, coming back, coming back. If you haven’t figured things out tonight, well, try again tomorrow, try … 
  16. Step Back
     … Learn how to step out of your concentration sometimes to see what’s going on and exactly what you’re doing. This is how wisdom and discernment arise in the practice: through your ability to step back. And along with this, you want to develop the ability to laugh at yourself, because that’s what stepping back often leads to. You suddenly see how … 
  17. Life Well Lived
     … virtue, concentration, discernment. Qualities we can develop in ourselves. One of the hardest ones is concentration, because it’s so easy for the mind to wander off. Catching the mind is like trying to catch a bead of mercury: You put a little pressure on it, it scoots off; put a little pressure on this side, it scoots someplace else, scatters all over the … 
  18. A Load Off the Mind
     … So even though we have the path laid out to some extent—we know that virtue, concentration, and discernment are important and we know the breath is a good place to stay—still, there’s a lot that we’ve got to learn about how we breathe and how we approach the meditation. Sometimes you find that as soon as you sit down to … 
  19. Strength of Discernment
     … Of course, the path to the cessation requires all of the elements of the path, everything from right view down to right concentration. So the discernment of acting, knowing what to do, requires a lot more than simply watching. You have to evaluate. You have to make value judgments. Especially in a time like this, where a lot of choices are presenting them to … 
  20. Giving Weight
    One of the terms for concentration is adhicitta, which means a heightened mind—not heightened in the sense that you’re physically above something else, heightened in the sense of heightened importance. You try to be very clear about where your awareness is focused. You make that focal point the really important issue. Normally, you focus on one thing but then something pulls you … 
  21. Fence Me In
    One of the Thai ajahans has spoken of virtue as a fence for your actions and concentration practice as a fence for the mind, something that keeps you within bounds. And of course, here in America, we don’t like fences. The old song, “Don’t Fence Me In,” seems to typify most of our attitudes. But the purpose of having that fence is … 
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