"I crossed over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place."

"But how, dear sir, did you cross over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place?"

"When I pushed forward, I was whirled about. When I stayed in place, I sank. And so I crossed over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place."

Push forward= paying attention to this and that?

Stay in place = cement the paying attention into a particular "pose".

So if seemingly the only two means of operating do not lead to release, wtf to do? 

I'd be interested in hearing what happens in experience when you ponder this.

Sutta reference:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn01/sn01.001.than.html

i think that the basic framework of eightofold path is the right way to go, with morality and cultivation of the positive(metta, compassion etc)  and starvation of the negatives(anger, hatred), and not going threw in a "vippasinised" way dry of  psycho-emotional training of the mind. I also think that the search for an objectively seen reality make kind of wrong connotations and obstructs practice  and i prefer instead  the view that focuses on the reality of suffering. The difference between the two is that in the second view you use perceptions freely according to their use and with the guide of the resulting suffering you continue or you let them go accordingly., and the second reason is that there is the big possibility of someone confusing his "taste" of experience with "directly seeing"  the opposite usually being the case (think of the emotionally deprived, depersonalized way that lots of people see experience assured by their teachers that they are on the right way...)

The above being said, and knowing that words make connotations that are expressed in practice, i would sugest to train NOT in an one-pointness concentrated way of attention, BUT in a diffused and rest on unity and stilness kind of awarness.



The body and the feelings and their associated tensions are crucial here because when the tensions are properly resolved, the flow of lightness that follows is conducive to stillness of mind and to samatha.  Metta and letting go is such a good ground and it can be connected with psycho-emotional training i mentioned above. Anatta and non duality will arise naturally on this ground without the tensions other ways create (dry etc).

I agree with you that the re-training of mind to project good instead of bad states into consciousness is crucial to insight and lasting happiness alike. 

Thank you.

Developing concentration is a good thing. My experience is if you work on it, you do get the thing you want.  Maybe not exactly textbook concentration that impresses everyone and you can put on your resume, but the quality of mind that made you want to try concentration in the first place.

My own two cents is you are screwed from the beginning if you think about this as grit and fixing the attention in one place. It might work, but you will be abusing your attention/mind if you go that route. 

However you will totally get it if you recognize it is about lots of repetition. And the repetition part is the hard work part of this. 

If I had once piece of advice, I would say: do one breath meditations for 30 minutes for a month. Just focus on developing many short units of attention. Inhale and see how the breath feels at the point of focus. Exhale and feel the breath at the point of focus. When you done exhaling, reboot the mind. The next breath is like the first breath you ever payed attention to. Do the one breath meditation. Get used to the sense of starting again (repeating) each breath. I can almost guarantee you will be so far down the road by the end of the month that you will be surprised. You might think oh, this is too easy --- well, try it. It will be hard work, so it's not an easy way out. 

The attention "rests" on an object. If distraction moves it, return to resting it on the object.

If you "focus" attention and "fix" it on the object, you should hate it. It's too much effort. Place it on the object and have it rest there. If it moves, no big deal, return it to the object. You are training your mind to return to the object, to start again.

The number one thing that support concentration is learning to start again. Really good concentration is just responding to more and more subtle forms of distraction moving the mind, in the same way that people who "balance" well aren't completely still, they are simply responding to more and more subtle forms of being off balance. 

And when you get comfortable in doing this, then every so often the mind natrually "locks into" concentration, which is very cool. This natural concentration then becomes the perfect guide that shows you the other concentrated states. 

Hope this helps! 

If the way you do anapanasati disturbs you, try another. If you think anapanasati still disturbs you, you can leave it all together and try metta. But i  i think the gentle guiding to "wet" unity and stilness, supported by the flow of tense free properly "massaged" and resolved negative emotions, is the ground that will be connducive to every object of samatha, and maybe later anapanasati too. Hapiness of metta and letting go is attractive to mind and is an object that will provide the necessery lasting continuity of mindfulness for samatha to grow and the previous patterns to be deconditioned. 

Noah, before I say anything here can you please describe what you mean by "fully concentrate?" I'm asking for the reason that I ran into many years ago - a misunderstanding of what people in the Buddhist and meditation community mean when they use the word "concentration."

Also, are you aiming to successfully experience the jhanas, or just to achieve the ability to focus on one thing for  a longer period of time?

EDIT: One last question that I think is appropriate - why is this new objective important to you?

1.  In my experience, effort is always necessary to make progress on the path, even at an advanced level.  So 'do nothing' is fine as long as we recognise we are going to have to actively strive to do nothing.  I think it makes a lot more sense to just frame this type of practice as maintaining present moment awareness - once you find it rest in it, but then when you're distracted come back to it (i.e. meditation).  And the idea that we need not strive but just literatlly do nothing seems to preclude the idea that discrete progress both achievable and the goal which is both untrue and self-defeating.  So I think I agree with you.

2.  Certainly the develop of shamatha alone, i.e. sole focus on the jhanas, would seem to be opposed to insight development, but this is based on the idea of strict shamatha practice as differntiated from vippassana.  The more Tibetan Buddhist approach of Shamata-Vippassana meditation seeks to develop both in tandem, IME this is a much more integrated type of meditation than strict shamatha vs vippassana.  Some people take this meditation to be based in a solid object such as the breath, which is basically just shamatha, but as it evolves the object becomes present moment awareness with only a slight grounding in physical body as an antidonte to getting lost in thought.  This type of present moment awareness meditation and mindfulness is simple, intuitive, and extremly useful - it was my primary practice on the majority of the path.

Now whether shamatha and vipassana lead to one another could be its own debate - I would say it does.  Increasing insight - attainment - leads to greatly boosted concentration in my experience.  Concentration - the stability of mind unhindered by thoughts - could be said to be perfected at the end of the path when we overcome all delusion.  This occurs via insight, but results in concentration - enlightenment - the union of concentration and insight.  Of course if you feel the need to develop increased shamata, go right ahead, it's wise to trust our intuition - and by no means am I suggesting only focusing on insight.  The shamatha-vipassana approach would seem to develop them in tandem as a focus (shamatha) on present moment awareness (vipassana).  Attainment in its own right results in the achivement (insight) and stabalization (concentration) of a higher level of awareness, not to mention the effect of attainment of decreased neurotic thought (insight) and consequentially boosted mental power (concentration).

As a follow up to OP.

I did 6 hours of concentration practice yesterday with some friends.  I did already start to get what I want from it. *Ignoring* distractions (not including them as part of the practice) causes this type of release of memories & emotions that are called "Stage 4 purifications" in TMI.  I already felt a knot untie in my torso in relation to a certain emotional issue & will wait to see if it returns.  I had a set of realizations about my "big issue" (narcissistic wound) that are getting me much closer to freedom from it.  

Will post more data on this samatha experiment.  

Took me about nine thousand hours of cushion time to feel i had sufficiently plumbed the depths of Calm Abibing.  first path, a full kundalini awakening and second path, were the outcome.