Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. The Uses of Concentration
     … So at the very least try to develop the alternative of that well-being in concentration. As you develop discernment based on concentration, one, you get the ability to pull out of the defilement. This is an ability that you learn from mastering the concentration itself. You sit here with the breath and suddenly find yourself with another thought; you remind yourself, “This is … 
  2. Respect for Concentration
    Respect for concentration goes two ways: respect for your own concentration and respect for the concentration of the people around you. Respect for your own concentration means that you really give value to the little quiet moments in the mind. They’re the spaces we tend not to look at. We’re more interested in the thoughts in the mind—what we can think … 
  3. Bases for Success
     … in other words, concentration without any real understanding of the four noble truths, without any real desire to know the difference between what’s skillful and what’s not. You just want the concentration, so you work at the concentration. This is why there is such a thing as wrong concentration: the concentration used in voodoo, for example—that kind of stuff. Or the … 
  4. Look after Your Baby
    Look after Your Baby October 1, 2016 All too often it happens that when you sit down to concentrate on the breath, you stay with the breath for a little bit and then you’re off someplace else. You come back, you stay with it a little bit longer, but then you’re off again. This happens so many times that you begin to … 
  5. Mindfulness Aims at Concentration
     … This is how you get the mind into concentration—keeping track of one thing, putting aside thoughts of everything else, and being ardent, alert, and mindful in the practice. You’re trying to get into strong concentration, because the strong concentration gives rise to a sense of intense well-being. Some people don’t like the word “concentration” as a translation for samādhi. They … 
  6. A Safe Place
    Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about how he was stuck on concentration for many years. He had the wrong view that if he tended to his concentration steadily enough, the quiet of the concentration would turn into the quiet of nibbāna. The interesting thing is that he was with Ajaan Mun all that time, and Ajaan Mun let him stay stuck on concentration for quite … 
  7. Reflect
     … Rest in concentration—that’s sharpening the knife. Then, when it’s ready, you come out again. Other people find that the concentration and discernment work together. In fact, that was the theme of one of Ajaan Maha Boowa’s books, that there are some people who find that they can settle down only when they’ve done some analysis, and that their concentration … 
  8. The Uses of Right Concentration
    The Uses of Right Concentration December 2, 2014 It takes a fair amount of effort to get the mind into right concentration—so much so, that many of us don’t want to hear that there’s still more to be done. We’d rather stop right here and rest. But while it may be true that right concentration is the last factor of … 
  9. Concentration
     … In so many books on concentration, on page one they define it, on page two they tell you that it’s dangerous, before they even explain anything else about it. Which, of course, was not the Buddha’s approach. He was always encouraging people to get the mind concentrated. Jhana, right concentration, he said, was the heart of the path. When he told the … 
  10. Concentration that Bears Great Fruit
    In the four bases of success, the Buddha talks about four kinds of concentration: concentration based on desire, concentration based on persistence, concentration based on intentness, and concentration based on your powers of what he calls discrimination, your ability to see distinctions, to analyze things. These are probably not four separate types of concentration, because every state of concentration requires desire and persistence and … 
  11. Immersed in the Body
    In the verses on respect that we chant often, the Buddha mentions respect for the triple training, which is training and heightened virtue, heightened mind or concentration, and heightened discernment. But he also mentions respect for concentration. It’s as if he wanted to make sure you know, that you’re doubly sure, that concentration is important. Maybe he foresaw that, in later centuries … 
  12. Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana
     … So all these are good reasons why strong concentration, right concentration, is an important part of the path. In fact, there’s one part where the Buddha actually calls all the other elements of the path supports and requisites *for *right concentration – right concentration being the heart of the path. There’s another place where he compares concentration to food. In a fortress, you … 
  13. Sophisticated Dhamma
     … The other part of the problem is that we tend to overlook concentration. We all have concentration to some extent in our minds. Our ability to follow a Dhamma talk is kind of concentration. To comprehend a whole sentence, to comprehend a whole paragraph, takes a certain level of concentration. It’s called momentary concentration in the commentaries. It’s the kind of concentration … 
  14. A Concentration Diet
    A Concentration Diet October 9, 2019 There’s a series of questions and answers that the Buddha used to teach the Dhamma to young novices. It starts with: “What is one?” “What is two?” “What is three?” and it goes all the way up to, “What is ten?” For example, “What is four?” The four noble truths. “What is five?” The five aggregates. “Eight … 
  15. Don’t Practice in a Row
     … One is the triple training of virtue, concentration, and discernment. The other is the noble eightfold path. In terms of the triple training, we have virtue, then concentration, then discernment. In terms of the path, we start out with discernment factors, then virtue factors, and then concentration factors. The training lines things up in terms of the order in which they’re mastered. The … 
  16. The Triple Training
     … Then the third is the concentration section: right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. There are other parts of the Canon where the Buddha lists these factors in a different order. He calls them the Triple Training—which is training in heightened virtue, heightened concentration, heightened discernment—saying that when concentration is fostered by virtue, it has great fruit, great benefit. When discernment is fostered … 
  17. Three Levels of Concentration
    Three Levels of Concentration April 14, 2005 Ajaan Suwat used to say that settling into concentration is like falling asleep — except that you don’t go to sleep. And that’s where it gets tricky. In other words, how do you bring the mind to stillness and yet stay awake? It basically happens in three stages. You start with your ordinary, everyday level of … 
  18. The Right Medicine
     … That’s an important part of concentration. But there is a point where you begin to see that there’s still disturbance within that concentration, and so you track down the disturbance to let go of it. As it turns out, the disturbance is not extraneous to the concentration, it’s built into that level of concentration, it’s built into the perception that … 
  19. Concentration: A Balancing Act
     … The people who complain about translating samadhi as “concentration” tend to favor the relaxed approach: You just relax yourself into concentration, develop a sense of ease, but don’t try too hard. That approach is relaxing, it is easeful, but it’s not strong. The strength of concentration is meant to give rise to discernment. And the type of concentration that’s strong, leading … 
  20. Turtle Meditation
    One of the reasons concentration is so central to the path is that the mind can see things more clearly when it’s still. Not only that, it can feel things more clearly as well. As you get more sensitive to the breath, you become more sensitive to the whole range of energy in your body. You can see where you’re holding things … 
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