Doing, Maintaining, Using
October 04, 2006
Ajaan Fuang once said that there are three stages to concentration practice. The first is learning how to do it. The second is learning how to maintain it. And the third is learning how to put it to use. The doing is not all that hard—focus the mind on the breath. The breath is right there. You don’t have to go scrounging around. You don’t have to go to the ends of the earth to find your breath. It’s right next to the mind. It’s simply a question of learning to be more sensitive to it. That’s the hard part of doing it: having a clear sense of when the breath is coming in, when it’s going out, having a clear sense of when you are making it unnecessarily uncomfortable.