Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. To Discern Suffering
     … That’s why we develop concentration and mindfulness. Actually, there are five strengths that the Buddha talks about. The first is conviction: The conviction that if we’re going to get past this suffering, we have to understand it, i.e., it’s our own duty, it’s something we have to do on our own. Now, we can get help from other people … 
  3. The End of Uncertainty
     … Even in the practice of Right Concentration, there are levels of stress. Just because the mind seems still doesn’t mean that the job is done. Even when there’s a great sense of luminosity or of all-encompassing awareness, the job may not be over. You’ve got to learn how to keep looking. I’ve known some people who’ve been through … 
  4. Dedicating Merit
     … Ajaan Fuang had another student whose powers of concentration were extremely strong. After practicing with him for a while, she complained to him, “I don’t see that concentration is having any impact on the rest of my life.” She tended to have a very strong temper, and her temper wasn’t going away. In fact, it was sometimes even more intense. As he … 
  5. Beyond Likes & Dislikes
     … Even after just the first stages, when the mind settles down into states of concentration, you find that whatever presents itself as an object of discussion or elaboration of the mind, you can just say, “No, no, no, not interested.” You can shoot it down, shoot it down, zap it out of your range of awareness. This yields a great sense of spaciousness. Even … 
  6. Driving Lessons
    The Buddha’s instructions for right concentration come in his description of right mindfulness: keeping track of the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That describes two activities, and three qualities of mind you bring to them. The two activities are, on the one hand, having a topic that you stay with … 
  7. A Rite of Passage
     … Try to hold that perception in mind and see if it helps you settle down and, at the very least, helps you get into the kind of concentration the Buddha taught, which is to have a full-body awareness. If you can see the breath as being simply air coming in and out through the nose, it’s hard to relate that to the … 
  8. Feeding your Attack Dogs
     … There will be a lot of vagrant intentions that don’t fall in line with the initial intention, which was to stay here with the breathing, to try to stay concentrated all through the hour. You’ve got to watch out for the present karma of when you decide to suddenly slip off to contemplate what you’re going to do next week—or … 
  9. Surveying the World
     … As they stick here, they pay careful attention to what’s going on, and you can create a state of concentration. If you can stay on this level, then when you see thoughts that would go out into the world again, you put them aside. Try to stay just on this level of events happening right here, right now. You’re doing this to … 
  10. Gladden, Steady, Release
     … They’re there if you ever really need them.” As the mind gets more quiet, you might ask yourself, “What’s keeping it from getting even quieter?” This is where you begin to peel away all the unnecessary layers in your concentration. Ajaan Fuang has an analogy of pouring concrete. You need the forms in order for the concrete to set properly. As long … 
  11. Shame Yes, Guilt No
     … This is why the precepts are a good preparation for concentration practice. You need to be mindful, alert, and really take your virtue seriously—but not in a grim sense. The more you’re grim about the precepts, the less you’ll be likely to stick with them. You want to be serious in the sense that this is something you want to master … 
  12. To Suffer Is an Active Verb
     … When are you going to watch it best? When you’re getting the mind into concentration. That’s when you’re least distracted. You get the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being so that you become more sensitive to slight instances of stress or suffering. Then you try to notice them go up and down. When they go up, ask … 
  13. Questioning & Conviction
     … That’s why we meditate, because part of the solution to suffering lies in developing certain qualities of mind, such as mindfulness, alertness, concentration. To develop these qualities, you need conviction. When mindfulness lapses, you don’t have to debate with yourself as to whether it’s worth wandering off after that distraction. Your conviction tells you No, it’s best to get back … 
  14. Straightening Out the World
     … All the good qualities in the mind—mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment: Without these qualities you get careless; you don’t really see what’s going on, even on the surface level. Something pops into your head and you say it, and then you realize afterwards what you said, but then it’s too late—to say nothing of the things going on deeper in … 
  15. The Dhamma Eye
     … That’s when he remembered an incident from his childhood, when he was sitting under a tree while his father was ploughing, and his mind naturally entered a state of solid and very pleasurable concentration. It felt good just to be sitting there, very quiet, very still. He thought to himself, “Could this be the way to true happiness?” And he realized it could … 
  16. Mindfulness Like a Dam
     … In this case, you’re trying to turn it toward concentration. Here again, it requires mindfulness to remember what works in getting the mind to stay with the breath. And when you finally get a sense of ease and well-being with the breath, what do you do with it? How do you let it soak through the body, seep through the body, and … 
  17. Heedful of What’s Precious
     … As he once said, “One day lived mindfully is better than a hundred years lived mindlessly.” One day lived with virtue, one day lived with concentration, one day lived discerning the arising and passing away of your mental states, is better than a whole hundred years of living without doing any of those things. So what’s really precious here, what’s really valuable … 
  18. The Primacy of the Mind (1)
     … If you already have practice in drawing lines for the mind in terms of your behavior outside, it’ll be a lot easier to stay with your one object of concentration. At the same time, you’ve been training the mind to be active in thinking about generosity, thinking about virtue—and as you’re watching the processes of the mind, those thoughts are … 
  19. Adbusting the Mind
     … And this, as the Buddha said, is one of the reasons we have to do concentration practice. With concentration, you get a sense of well-being here. If meditation doesn’t give you that sense of feeling viscerally really good sitting here, then it won’t be able to do all the things that meditation should. So work on getting a sense of real … 
  20. Normalcy
     … To do this, you develop a sense of the observer in concentration where you’re able to just watch things come and go. Like Ajaan Chah’s example of the monkey. If you don’t really understand monkeys, you become a monkey too. When the monkey jumps around, your mind jumps around with the monkey. But what we’re trying to do here is … 
  21. Awaken to Your Potentials
     … He saw that you can put the aggregates together as a state of concentration. You can use them to create right view, right resolve, all the other factors of the path, and those factors will deliver you to something that’s not fabricated. So, as I said, the four noble truths are about potentials. You’ve got these aggregates and you could hang on … 
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