Stabilising attention: A practical guide to straightforward and worthwhile concentration meditation
Why stabilise attention? Resting your attention calmly on one object for a sustained period of time can be incredibly peaceful. In such peaceful moments, craving can sometimes cease completely. When craving is halted, a profound stillness is revealed. Deep insight about the nature of existence is inherent in that stillness. A part of that insight is the empirical knowledge that you are not separate from the stillness. It is a deeper aspect of your being, beyond the distracting element of the mind. You glimpse a primordial unity that can't be adequately described, although I attempt to point to it. There is a knowing that you don't exist in isolation from the entirety. Another way to describe it is that you recognise that there are no real boundaries between yourself and the whole. It is just the mind (thought) that creates the illusion of an independent entity that it refers to as 'me' or 'I'. Only the entirety is real. The real self is without demarcations and in actuality nothing is separate from it. Another part of the insight is that, at the deepest level, all of creation just is and nothing is needed. That knowledge is incredibly freeing. As such, stable attention is a key to knowing the profound peace that lies at the heart of existence.
Stabilising your attention through concentration meditation can also have a positive impact on addiction and compulsive urges. Routine concentration meditation helps you to clearly see the extent to which the monkey mind keeps sweeping you away from where you choose to be. Through these observations, you become less likely to succumb to its sway. Also, after you come to directly know pure being, without any mental grasping, addictions and compulsive urges might begin to fade away.Customer Reviews
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