Search results for: "Concentration"

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  2. Craving & Desire on the Path
     … Well, that’s the five aggregates right there—creating right concentration. Then there are four forms of clinging around the aggregates. One of them you don’t use on the path, which is clinging to sensuality. But then there’s clinging to habits and practices, clinging to views, clinging to doctrines of the self. And those you do use. To begin with, you hold … 
  3. A Sense of Yourself
     … But at the beginning, you use it to disidentify with things that are not useful to identify with as you’re trying to settle down in concentration. And we have a lot of them, even before we let go of everything. There are a lot of things we should let go strategically. There are other things you want to hold on to strategically. After … 
  4. Learning from the Precepts
     … This is one of the reasons why we practice meditation by developing mindfulness and concentration. That practice builds on the precepts but also turns around and helps us to be even stricter with ourselves in holding to the precepts. After all, the Dhamma eye has as one of its rewards the fact that your precepts now become pleasing to the noble ones. In other … 
  5. Your Higher Power
     … When the Buddha taught meditation, he didn’t teach just a concentration technique. He also taught right view, which involves understanding how your actions shape what you are: the identity you take on and the world that you assume, based on your identity. And you understand that these things come from your own desires. So he has you cultivate new, more skillful desires, and … 
  6. Safety All Around
     … Then there’s training in the heightened mind, which basically is training in concentration. You’re finding an escape from pain other than in sensuality. The problem with sensuality is that it sets you up for all kinds of dangers. Wherever you find your sensual pleasure, there’ll be other people who may want to find sensual pleasure in the same place, with the … 
  7. To Comprehend Pain
     … And here, we’re treating the pain with the breath, with the concentrated mind. To get the mind concentrated, you first have to focus on an area of the body that’s not in pain. That gives you a home base. Then you can work with the breath energy in that part of the body, to make it even more pleasant. It’s one … 
  8. Feeding on Ardency
     … right resolve, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. All these are based on intention. Basically the Buddha’s giving us something good to intend, something good to strive for. One of the big ironies about Buddhism, especially its history in Europe, is that very early on it was branded as passive nihilism, a belief there’s nothing worth exerting any effort for, so … 
  9. The Inner Monitor
     … He went into such deep concentration that he lost track of his body. When he finally came out of concentration, it was a long time afterward. He could tell because the moon had moved quite a way in the sky. But tiger was gone. The tiger felt no sense of threat from him as he was standing there watching his own mind. So he … 
  10. In the Context of the Path
     … You see that the path is made out of aggregates? Well, you’re supposed to let go of aggregates, right? That’s what discernment is supposed to do, right? Even before you’ve got the mind in concentration, you try to develop you’ve heard is discernment, and that can stop you from developing what you need to develop. Think of the image of … 
  11. Attention to Your Potentials
     … The remaining factors have to do with getting the mind into good concentration: rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. These are things you develop. You look for the potentials there in the mind for it to settle down—because the mind does have these potentials. The present moment as it comes is not just a finished product. It’s a work in progress. And there are … 
  12. Right Fear
     … It’s only when the practice makes demands in terms of virtue, the development of concentration, the development of discernment: That’s when you take risks. If you find yourself unwilling to take those risks, you have to ask yourself, “Where’s the attachment?” In this way, you get a really good take on where your defilements lie, where your attachments lie—issues you … 
  13. The Management of Suffering
     … When the Buddha described his path to the end of suffering, concentration lies at the heart. You may have noticed in the chant that describes the different factors of the path, the section on right concentration is the longest, because it’s the most complex and the hardest to master. But it’s also the most important, after right view. So try to have … 
  14. Stay Principled
    When we practice concentration or mindfulness, we tend spend a lot of time focusing on the technique: where to focus the mind, how to stay with the point of your focus or the theme of the meditation; how to work with it so that the mind can begin to settle down and stay settled down. There are even skills techniques how to leave meditation … 
  15. Feelings of Pain
    One of the definitions of concentration is a mind firmly established. We firmly establish it in the object of our meditation: in the breath, or in a meditation word, like Buddho. We try to make sure that it doesn’t fall down. If it falls down, we pick it back up; establish it again. It falls down again, pick it up; establish it again … 
  16. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … Then you train the mind to get into concentration so that it stays comfortably with one object. Those kinds of thoughts you want to develop. This is a reordering of our priorities. A lot of times it goes against the grain. But we have to realize that it’s for our own good. But you can tell yourself only so long that it’s … 
  17. Make the Most of Right Now
     … You start thinking, “Well, I’ll make a practice of relaxing my way to awakening, or taking the ease-full path.” I was listening to a Dhamma talk from another tradition last night in which the teacher was saying he didn’t like the idea of translating samādhi as concentration because simply the idea of concentrating the mind makes you tense: There’s something … 
  18. The Desire for Freedom
     … And finally he was able to find it, starting with right concentration. This is why he said at one point that right concentration is the heart of the path. The other factors are its requisites or its supports. So what we’re doing right now: We’re not just going through the custom of having an evening sit, being quiet for a little while … 
  19. Full Attention
     … All these things, the Buddha said, count as fabrication, and the skill of meditation is learning how to fabricate a good state of concentration. You’ve got the instructions in the Buddha’s description of right mindfulness. This is how you do concentration: You focus on the body in and of itself, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. And part … 
  20. Cherish Your Friends
     … It’s called directed thought and evaluation, which are two of the basic factors for Right Concentration. But otherwise, try to keep the mind as quiet as possible — because you want to notice what’s going on. And, of course, what you’re going to notice is that there are a lot of other ideas floating through the mind. Sometimes they don’t just … 
  21. Take the One Seat
     … Getting the mind into concentration is a very good way of learning how to watch it. You need mindfulness to stitch together your moments of awareness, moments of attention, so that they become continuous. Mindfulness is the ability to remember you’ve got to stay with the breath. Alertness is what watches the breath. As you settle down with the breath, you notice there … 
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