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"

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