First, welcome to the DhO, Bill.
bill Ennis:
My question pertains to the relation of Concentration and Insight practices.
I am at ~pg. 45 in Daniel's book, where he is discussing using the breath as an aid in "understanding" impermanence. It seems that by focusing on the particularity/granularity of the breath, or speeding your mind up to do that, that concentration can be facilitated.
Is that a common occurrence?, having both practices work symbiotically?
Don't know if you've had the opportunity to discover it yet, but the Pali terms for what you are referring to are
samatha and
vipassana, which refer to calm (as in calming the mind) and insight. And, yes, they do go together like salt and pepper.
Because of the presence of the one (calm), the other (insight) becomes more possible.
It takes a calm mind (and a still mind) to be able "hear" the depths of what the mind can see (or recognize) in terms of insight.
It's a matter of becoming less and less distracted from what
is. And being able to recognize what is. Like the characteristic of the impermanence of existence.
In peace,
Ian