This week, what if you try sky-gazing? Many forms of meditation invite us to concentrate on nature. We must know somewhere deep within that nature calms us. Especially right now when we feel frazzled and at our wits ends, many have turned to sitting outside, going…
When you meditate, let your thoughts be background noise. Here’s one of the main questions I get when people are learning to meditate: How do I stop thinking? Listen, you don’t. Take this from a girl whose mind will always, always, forever run at a hundred…
Marion Gilbert said that one of her meditation teachers taught her that “if you can stay present with one thing in an undivided way for two minutes, you are bursting out of the conditioned realm where you’re captured inside of it- you actually burst out of…
Right Concentration is not escapism. That sounds obvious, but it’s actually pretty easy for us to mistake absorption into a task or experience as concentration. If we do that often enough, we get into a pattern of avoiding the stuff that actually helps us stay present.…
Lama Surya Das offers the five Ts of Concentration as a way for us to deepen our understanding of this practice. The first T is taming. We’ve often heard our minds described as wild monkeys, and that feels true, doesn’t it? For a moment, though, picture…
When you learn to concentrate, your thoughts and feelings dissolve like bath salts dissolve in water. That’s the first level of concentration. Right Concentration has eight levels of awareness. But for most of us, understanding the first level is probably all we need. This first level…
Right Concentration begins with our breath. These breath concentration exercises offer simple ways to help us focus. We can practice concentration with a number of objects and items. We can use a mantra, or focus our gaze on a particular icon or statue. Candles work, too.…
Well, we’ve made it to the last step on the Eightfold Path: Right Concentration. The simplest way to define Right Concentration is “one-pointedness of mind.” It’s when we are totally laser-like focused on one point, one thing. We know what it means to concentrate. We’ve all…
To practice Right Mindfulness, simply take note. Bhikkhu Bodhi says: Mindfulness brings to light experience in its pure immediacy. It reveals the object as it is before it has been plastered over with conceptual paint, overlaid with interpretations… All these ‘doings’ are modes of interference, ways…
What do pumpkins and stones have to do with Right Mindfulness? Bhikkhu Bodhi says the mind without mindfulness is like a pumpkin, while the mindful mind is like a stone. If you place a pumpkin on the water’s surface, it will bob at the top and…
