Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 92
  2. After the Fire
     … There’s calm, concentration, and equanimity. These are the states you have to hold on to when there’s nothing else to hold on to. Learn to be still, quiet. That stillness and quietude is an important refuge. But you need to get it balanced, because stillness without mindfulness can just become dull, sleepy, deluded, drifting off. There has to be an element of … 
  3. Your Territory
     … This connects with the fact that we’re trying to get the mind into concentration, and that’s one of the first things you’ve got to put aside to get rightly concentrated: thoughts of sensuality. You want to be secluded from them. The same applies to right mindfulness. When teaching right mindfulness, the Buddha gave the example monkeys. They live in the Himalayas … 
  4. Protection
     … So you have to work on the skillful qualities that take you to a place where you can rest for a while in concentration. That starts with mindfulness. Mindfulness doesn’t mean non-judging awareness, as we sometimes hear. It means keeping in mind what you need to do. Right now, you need to get focused on the breath, or as the Buddha calls … 
  5. The Search for Happiness
     … Some people think that when start practicing concentration, they have to do something brand new call directed thought and evaluation. Actually it’s what the mind’s been doing all the time as it talks to itself: You direct your thoughts to a topic and then you pass an evaluation on it. When we practice concentration, we’re taking this habit of the mind … 
  6. Your Inner Ally
     … In the chant we had just now, the Buddha talks about getting the mind into concentration. In the beginning it requires directed thought and evaluation. You keep directing your thought and your attention to the breath, and then you evaluate it. You’re evaluating both the breath and the quality of your attention, trying to figure out what kind of breathing and what kind … 
  7. Three Weapons
     … We may know the drawbacks of sensual pleasures and the drawbacks of sensual thinking, but without an alternative source of pleasure, where we are going to go? We practice concentration to find a non-sensual pleasure there. That gives us that alternative. Instead of directing your thoughts to sensuality and evaluating different sensual plans, you direct your thoughts to your breath, you evaluate the … 
  8. Grace & Dignity
     … You strengthen your mindfulness, strengthen your alertness, and strengthen your concentration. These are all good things because it’s from the mind that your actions spring. And if the mind is srengthened and in good shape, you’re more likely to do the right thing—to see what the right thing is and have the strength and willingness to do it. So all the … 
  9. Specifics
     … Or if it feels like the breath is something you have to pull into the body or push out of the body, what happens to the meditation, what happens to your state of concentration, when you allow yourself to think that the breath is already there no matter what you do? It’s simply a matter of rearranging the furniture, playing with different aspects … 
  10. You Can’t Relax Your Way to Awakening
     … In fact, he says one of the advantages of getting the mind into concentration with a sense of well-being is that it helps get you past some of the pain and hardships involved in developing skillful qualities. Unskillful qualities aren’t the only ones that involve pain. Sometimes skillful qualities do—or the act of trying to develop them is going to be … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
  22. Load next page...