Search results for: "Concentration"
- Page 97
- A Mind Without Inertia… He compares these things to food—and particularly the sense of wellbeing, rapture, and refreshment that come from getting the mind into a good strong concentration. That’s your food and nourishment on the path. It gives you energy. At the same time, his various teachings on the things that can be attained as we practice provide the motivation that gives you the passion …
- Great Expectations… As the Buddha once said, if you don’t have this higher level of pleasure—the pleasure that comes from concentration, getting the mind secluded from sensuality and unskillful thoughts—then no matter how much you may know about the drawbacks of sensuality, you’re going to go back to it. That’s precisely the problem of modern psychology: They don’t know this …
- The Skillful Heart… You train the heart, you train the mind, not only to be virtuous, but also to develop powers of concentration, because you realize, if you’re really going to be discerning, you have to get the mind really still, really centered, so that it can really see what’s happening inside it. Otherwise, the mind’s running around all the time. Everything it sees …
- Delight… Let’s cultivate the seeds for concentration, cultivate the seeds for peace of mind, cultivate the seeds for insight, the seeds that will help lead us to freedom. This is a possibility that’s available to all of us. It depends on the choices we’re making right now. So it’s a good thing that we’ve got this opportunity. Let’s make …
- Broad, Tall, & Deep… Ordinarily, he’d have you wait until your concentration was strong so you could stay with these perceptions, and the mind would have the precision, stability, and strength needed to stay with them for a long period of time. But they’re useful perceptions to keep in mind even before you reach that level of strength in your concentration. When the body feels weak …
- What Are You Taking into the Future?… We talk about getting the mind into right concentration, into right mindfulness as a refuge: It’s not a place where we’re hiding away. On the contrary, it’s a place where we’re actually seeing what’s going on in the mind, and see how the mind can take anything and create suffering out of it. But if it has skill, it …
- A Stranger to Your Thoughts… Look for the things that are arising and nibbling away at your concentration, or actually blocking your concentration. Because those are the important things to analyze. You can read about how everything in the world is inconstant. The trees are inconstant. The mountains are inconstant. But if you’re not attached to the trees or the mountains, then their inconstancy doesn’t really mean …
- Strength of Body, Strength of Mind… Each of the factors requires right effort, which requires an element of will, starting from right view and all the way through right concentration. So the strength of your will, the strength of your determination, is what really makes all the difference. In Ajaan Mun’s final sermon, he talked about how every meditator is a warrior who requires discernment, mindfulness, and concentration as …
- Stay Tuned… In other words, the practice of concentration has to be something you like to do. This is why it’s important when you meditate, when you’re trying to develop a state of concentration, that you choose an object you like. Or you can take the most common object, which is the breath, and you make it into something you like. In that way …
- A Sense of Well-being… So in the process of practicing concentration and getting the mind more and more subtle, more and more refined, you’re also learning interesting lessons about the role of perception, the role of intention, in how you experience things. You see how much your intentions really are an energy that creates all kinds of experiences. And that’s a lot of what Buddhist insight …
- Instruct, Urge, Rouse, & Encourage Yourself… Some of the levels of heaven, for example, are related to different stages of concentration, skills you can master. His design of the universe is not like what anybody else had designed at that time. Of course, he didn’t design it, he didn’t think it up, he just discovered that, through action, this is what you can experience. He’s often been …
- Learning from Determination… The goal is subduing desire and passion.” “What’s the path to that goal?” Ananda says that one of the ways of expressing the path is through the four bases of success, starting with concentration based on desire. The brahman says, “Well, in that case, it’s an impossible path. How can you use desire to put an end to desire?” So Ananda cross …
- Strength of Conviction: 2… Whatever sense of self remains is required for the practice of concentration, for the practice of discernment. Here again, there will be that element of conceit that Ananda talks about: “If the noble ones can do this practice, if the awakened ones can do it, I can do it, too.” So you recognize that conceit for the sake of concentration and discernment, but you …
- Feeling & Intention… You can practice with this in your concentration. You learn how to perceive the breath, to picture it to yourself, in different ways. This is something that’s very intimate. Just the way you picture the breathing to yourself can have a huge impact on how you actually feel the breath. And this will have an impact on the mind. If you can put …
- Caring Without Clinging… Equanimity based on singleness, however, comes from getting the mind into a good solid state of concentration. As we chanted just now, getting to the point where the breath gets more and more refined, the mind settles in, your sense of awareness fills the body, the sense of breath energy throughout the body feels connected and open, so there’s a less and less …
- Goodness… Let go of the hindrances, develop the factors for awakening, and you gain the strength of concentration. This is really what provides food for the mind, because it gives you a source of pleasure, a source of well-being, an inner stability that pushes against a lot of the limits you had on your mind before. And then there’s the strength of discernment …
- Exploring Possibilities… So when a particular state of mindful alertness or concentration arises in the mind, it’s important that you try to maintain it in all sorts of different situations, for this helps you gain just that sort of insight: realizing that the habits you’ve found useful in one area of your life can be used in other areas as well. After all, you …
- Harmony… That sense of joy then is more and more conducive to getting the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being, to get into good strong concentration—the kind of concentration where you can stay there in a stable way. We have to remember that harmony doesn’t just happen. Think about an orchestra practicing: They have to work, work, work to …
- Change… The path requires not only discernment but also virtue and concentration, because any happiness that’s not based on these qualities is sure to fall apart. Even some of the happiness that comes with the path is going to fall apart if you let yourself just stop where you are and say, “Well, this is good enough for me.” You get a little bit …
- Emptiness… For the time being, as you’re practicing concentration, just carry the present moment. Be responsible for the present moment, and look to see what you’ve really got going on right here—because when you focus too much on the past and the future, you miss the present. That’s the other side of the emptiness mode: missing out on things that are …
- Load next page...
