I'm currently working on developing concentration. As an experiment, I tried the following three approaches:

• Eyes open,focusing on an electrical switch in the wall in front of me. I guess this is a kasina-like practice. I focused specifically on one of the screws holding the switch to the wall, and just tried to keep my attention on it and only it. I counted (roughly every second), and even allowed myself to mouth each word of the count. I also didn't try to stop myself from shifting position, or scratching my nose from time to time. All I cared about was keeping my attention on that screw in the switch. I managed to keep the count going until over 400 (i.e. at least 7 minutes), without my attention drifting. (That said, I had to catch myself a few times from wandering off.) And I could have gone on longer had I wanted to.
• Eyes open,focusing on my breath, my eyes half closed, staring towards the wall. This was much harder, but the main probem wasn't so much losing focus but instead was my tendency to go cross-eyed, or even have my eyes close because of fatigue (which wasn't being countered by staring at the screw). 
• Eyes closed, focusing on my breath. This was hardest of all. I'd get lost in thought within a few seconds.

So I'm wondering what, if anything, I can learn from the huge difference in my ability to stay focused between 1 and 3? Suppose I see this practice like going to the gym. Then the electrical switch could be seen as something like a machine or technique that makes weights easier. But there are two types of "making it easier"; a good type and a bad type.

The good type is like one of those dips machines that provides a counter to one's own bodyweight, so one can do even one or two reps of dips. That lets you get moving on an exercise you may not otherwise be able to do at all. And the aim is, over time, to reduce the counterweight so that you are eventually dipping your full bodyweight.

But the bad type is like poor lifting form, for example where someone at the start of doing an arm curl leans their torso slightly forward and then swings it back so as to give the weight some initial momentum. The proper way to do those curls is to keep the body steady, thereby isolating the relevant arm muscles; it means you can't curl as much, but you are then building correct form and avoiding injury. Bad form exposes you to injury risk, but more to the point it means you think you're training a muscle group when in fact you're not (or you're doing it way less than you think you are).

Is this weight training analogy even useful, and if so is using the electrical switch as a meditation object an example of "good" assistance or "bad" assistance?

thx!

I think concentration practice can be looked at as isolating your attention from distractions, rather than focusing on something specifically.  Maybe with your eyes open, the fact that you have something to look at makes it easier to ignore the other things that present in your mind.

Maybe watching a moving image on a screen would be a helpful warmup.  Find an abstract movie generator thing, like they used to have on windows media player, and let it run for 10 minutes, then look at something stationary for 10 minutes, then close your eyes and simply look at the blackness for 10 minutes.

Something that might be helpful: you don't need vision to be one-pointed.  If you're using a kasina object, like your light switch, you don't have to focus on the light switch so much as focus on seeing.  The light switch is just a prop to hold your attention.  If your eyes move away from the light switch this isn't a distraction as long as you're still seeing.  The reason you may be going cross eyed could be that you aren't focusing on seeing anymore when you look at just the wall.  The wall doesn't capture your attention in any way, so you stop seeing and start imagining things in your mind's eye instead.  You said you were losing count more easily while looking at the wall, so that seems to back that up.

If you close your eyes, do you notice you can still see?  This is how you can transition between the different styles.

In any case, the main point of concentration practice is to isolate yourself from the hinderances, so even if you can't hold your attention on something very well or it doesn't feel stable, as long as you are no longer experiencing the hinderances, the jhana factors will arise.  Often times people end up increasing the hinderances by trying to force themselves to focus or trying to keep their minds perfectly steady.  So, the best advice I can offer you is, relax first, concentrate second.  It's about creating a mind-state where the mind feels comfortable enough to rest and let go of control.  You might not even need to focus hardly at all if you simply feel good about things already.

If I manage to not just get lost in thought, then yes. I can "see" the swirling colours associated with "looking" at the inside of my eyelids, and often that swirling seems to coalesce into a single large bright object, kinda like an amoeba or protozoa. And then occasionally, once that has happened, there's a sudden and marked diminishing of distractions. I become more aware of white noise in my ears (tinnitus I guess), but from that point the meditation seems to proceed much more easily.

But as I say, that's only when I manage to not get lost in thought which, when my eyes are closed, is not too often. I'm fairly new to meditation though, and from what I read that level of distraction is fairly common.

Hi Tommy,

What you just described is very similar to what I experience, too. Does that "amoeba" thing pulse? If you keep watching it, it might. It becomes very easy to concentrate on when it does that, as it kind of pulses in "phase" with my concentration.

Anyway, what you are describing is what I'm now calling "soft jhana", as my recent thread has had me delineate between types.

"Hard jhana" on the other hand, in my experience -- well, you will know what the difference is, once you get it. It's like being stuck to the object like superglue. You are quite prone to distractions, and have background verbal thoughts, in soft jhana, but hard jhana is way more absorbed. It's also an intensely freaky and fascinating experience.

I don't think your weight training analogy is very applicable to your three types of meditation for one main reason. This is from my own experience of course. I've found that there are different preferences for concentration between the different sensory systems. So, for me, visual concentration is extremely strong. My "stuck like glue" hard jhanas have all occurred while looking at things (mind-made objects) so far. My auditory concentration is quite a bit poorer. Focusing on sensations like the breath is even poorer. In fact, my preference for visual concentration is so strong that, if I'm not careful, I will find I am no longer listening to the high-pitched tones in my ears, or feeling my breath, but instead am watching the dark stuff behind my eyelids.

Regards,

Edd