Having this sense of well-being has you less tied up in questions of whether you should indulge a particular desire or whether you should beat it down.

"When you practice concentration, you develop sense of pleasure that’s not dependent on sensual things. Even though you start out with what seems to be a sensory pleasure in the breath, the centeredness of the mind, the continuity of attention that you’re allowed to build up here creates a different kind of pleasure, a different kind of well-being which is a lot more nourishing. You begin to realize you have this other alternative as well, so that you don’t have to go running after sensual pleasures, finding gratification here, finding gratification there and running back and forth between indulgence in the pleasure and then when you begin to see that that’s unskillful, running back to self-affliction.

The mind tends to alternate between these two as long as it doesn’t have a really good alternative. Which is what we’re trying to create as we’re practicing concentration, giving the mind a different place to go. That way, instead of fighting back-and-forth between indulgence in pleasure and then self-affliction, you’ve got this other place to go which is much better than either one. This is the Middle Way.

Having this sense of well-being that can come simply from being centered changes the equation, changes the balance of power in the mind. You get less tied up in questions of whether you should indulge a particular desire or whether you should beat it down. You’ve got this alternative. You can go into this sense of concentration."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Alternative of Concentration"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Any part of the body that seems tired or tense, in need of a little refreshment, a little bit of soothing: Let the breath do that.

 "When you focus on the breath, try to breathe in a way that feels really refreshing. Think of the breath energizing your entire torso all the way down, and then even beyond the torso down through the legs, down the back. Any part of the body that seems tired or tense, in need of a little refreshment, a little bit of soothing: Let the breath do that." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill, Gratitude, No Guilt"
Read more

You can float and be buoyant, but stay in place. There’s a sense of lightness and buoyancy, so keep that sense of lightness, but stay where you are.

"Breathe in such a way that there’s no holding on, so that things are allowed to flow smoothly. The breath flows smoothly, the blood flows smoothly, and there’s a sense of ease all the way through the breathing process. Some people at this point begin to get a sense of floating, but try not to drift out. You can float and be buoyant, but stay in place. There’s a sense of lightness and buoyancy, so keep that sense of lightness, but stay where you are. You’ve learned to breathe in such a way that the whole body feels at ease throughout the in-breath and out-breath. Try to maintain that sense of awareness of the whole body, and let the pleasure radiate out through the body. Just learn how to maintain that, to stick with it. If you find yourself losing focus when you open up your range of awareness to the whole body, go back to surveying the body spot by spot, section by section, and then try settling down with the whole body again. You may find yourself going back and forth like this
Read more

Keep the sense of relaxation in your feet and hands as steady as possible by comparing one side to the other

"No matter how the breath is cycling through the rest of the body, keep the sense of relaxation in your feet and your hands as steady as possible. It doesn’t have to be an enormous relaxation, just enough for you to know that it’s more relaxed than before. One way of checking it is to compare one hand to the other, one foot to the other. See which one is more tense and then allow it to relax as much as the other one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Grass at the Gate" (Meditations3)
Read more