Concentration With meditation, an equivalent for certain parts of yoga, as found in samadhi, dharana; the removal or surmounting of distractions originating in the mind and centering the latter on the spiritual and intellectual objective to be attained, which in the best sense is union with the inner god, the divine monad -- a conscious identification of oneself with the universal through the individual's innate divinity.

The method of meditative concentration prescribed in the Bhagavad-Gita is to perform all the duties of life without either attachment or avoidance. The hindrances to concentration which are to be removed are those arising from anger, lust, vanity, fear, sloth, etc. Such obstacles are removed by lifting the mind above them or by deliberately ignoring them, since directly fighting with them serves to concentrate the mind on them, thus defeating the object aimed at; and by cultivating the spirit of impersonal love and the light of wisdom which it evokes. Thus the blending of the personal self with the impersonal self is achieved by an orderly process of self-directed evolution, first by unselfish work in the cause of humanity, continued in the various degrees of chelaship, culminating in initiation.

Concentration has often been perverted to mean a kind of personal self-culture, having for its aim the attainment of personal power or self-satisfaction. If unsuccessful, the attempt upsets the balance of the constitution, and if successful, it sows a bitter harvest of aroused personality for future reaping; for when yearning for sympathetic fellowship with our fellowmen we shall find our faculties counterworking us. True meditative concentration actually applies more to the heart than to the mind, and is not a forcible mental practice but a general although very positive and impersonal attitude towards life. It means the centering of our wishes, thoughts, and acts on the ideal of self-identification with the spiritual and universal.

See also DHYANA.

(See also: Concentration , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

concentration: Uninterrupted and sustained attention.

See: raja yoga.

(See also: Concentration , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Yoga Dictionary from Abhyasa to Yukti.

From "Kundalini Yoga" by Sri Swami Sivananda

Meditation

According to Swami Vishnu Devananda, meditation is "….a continuous flow of perception or thought, just like the flow of water in a river." A practice wherein there is constant observation of the mind, meditation brings awareness, harmony and natural order into life. It helps you dig deep into your inner self to discover the wisdom and tranquility that lie within.

Principles of Meditation

The basic points to be kept in mind in practicing meditation are:

·      Have a special place and specific time for meditation. Try doing it daily.

·      Choose a time when your mind is not clouded with worries.

·      Sit up straight with your back, neck and head in one line. Facing north or east.

·      Condition your mind such so as to remain quiet for the duration of your meditation session.

·      Regulate your breathing. Start with 5 minutes of deep breathing. Then gradually slow it down.

·      Follow a rhythmic breathing pattern - inhale and exhale.

·      Initially let your mind wander. It grows more restless if you force to concentrate.

·      Then slowly bring it to rest on the focal point of your choice.

·      Hold your object of concentration at this focal point throughout your session.

·      Meditation happens when you reach a state of pure thought. Even while retaining an awareness of duel self.

Followed diligently you will soon be able to attain a super-conscious state.

Tips on Concentration

·      At the outset, it is hard to keep your attention to keep focussed on one object.

·      So it is better to start off by limiting your field of concentration to a category of objects.

·      Choose your objects with care e.g. any four flowers, fruits, trees...etc. You must feel at ease with what you choose.

·      After concentrating on one, you can move on to the next, if & when your mind starts wandering.

This style of meditative exercise will help you control your mind down to a finer focus, teaching you the principle of single point concentration.

Meditative Postures

Yoni Mudra

·  Close your ears with thumbs.

·  Cover your eyes with your index finger.

·  Close your nostrils with your middle fingers.

·  Press your lips together with your remaining fingers.

·  Release the middle fingers gently to inhale and exhale while you meditate.

Frontal & Nasal Gazing

·  Gaze at a point between your eyebrows, seat of the 'Third Eye' or at the tip or your nose.

·  This would improve your level of concentration. At the same time, strengthening your eye muscles. Nasal gazing has a positive effect on the central nervous system.

·  Remember not to strain your eyes. Start with one minute of gazing and then slowly build it up to ten minutes.

Candle Gazing

• Place a candle at eye-level in a darkened, draught-free room.
• Close your eyes and hold an after-image of the bright flame.
• The practice steadies the wandering mind, leading you to focus with pin-point accuracy.

(See also: Meditation , Ayurveda, Ayurvedic Dictionary, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

MEDITATION

Meditation is at least a three-step process that leads to a state of consciousness that brings serenity, clarity, and bliss. Our "normal" state of mind is actually quite abnormal. We receive sensory stimuli and react in a completely uncontrolled way (although we tell ourselves we have great control). We bounce from one thought to another and follow with our emotional and physical reactions.

Concentration is the first step in meditation and is the beginning of gaining control over the mind and thereby life. The procedure is deceptively simple and seems like it would be very easy to do, but there are few tasks more difficult to master. The idea is to pick an object/subject/music to place your attention on and then to focus exclusively on it without diversion.

Meditation is unbroken attention. The classic description of the difference between concentration and meditation is given in the example of pouring oil from a bottle into a bowl. At first the oil drips out a drop at a time. This is concentration. Then the oil comes out in a steady stream. This unbroken pouring out is meditation. If you really examine the process closer, you would notice that when the oil was coming out drop by drop, each drop caused a splash and the droplets of the splashing can be considered analogous to the distractions that interrupt our concentration. Once the stream starts becoming steady it flows effortlessly. Similarly, when concentration flows into meditation, the attention paid to the object of meditation becomes deeper and deeper effortlessly and spontaneously, true knowledge about the object presents itself.

As Albert Einstein tells us, everything in the universe is relative to everything else, ultimately your meditation will connect you to everything. At this point, the unity of the object of your meditation and your mind occurs. This is the state of contemplation and is the ultimate state of consciousness. Where we usually are only conscious of our body and ego and consider ourselves apart from the rest of the universe, with the experience of contemplation we become conscious of the cosmos and know ourselves to be a part of it and realize our unity with all of it.

The above definition of meditation was obtained from The Meditation Society of America.

(See also: MEDITATION , Alternative Health, Holistic Health, Body Mind and Soul)

bodhi-pakkhiya-dhamma (bodhi-pakkhiya-dhammaa): "Wings to Awakening" - seven sets of principles that are conducive to Awakening and that, according to the Buddha, form the heart of his teaching:

(1)         the four frames of reference (see satipatthana);

(2)         four right exertions (sammappadhana) - the effort to prevent unskillful states from arising in the mind, to abandon whatever unskillful states have already arisen, to give rise to the good, and to maintain the good that has arisen;

(3)         four bases of success (iddhipada) - desire, persistence, intentness, circumspection;

(4)         five dominant factors (indriya) - conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment;

(5)         five strengths (bala) - identical with

(6)         seven factors for Awakening (bojjhanga) - mindfulness, investigation of phenomena, persistence, rapture (see piti), serenity, concentration, equanimity; and

(7)         the eightfold path (magga) - Right View, Right Attitude, Right Speech, Right Activity, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.

 (See also: Bodhi-pakkhiya-dhamma , Buddhism, Body Mind and Soul)

MIND

Mind very much resembles matter, both in its degrees of density and in its peculiarity of design. That's not surprising since the one derives from the other. We might also say that they are mirror images of one another. Just as matter varies in the size of its conglomerations, from the circumferences of giant stars and galaxies to the infinitely small subatomic world of its constituents, so mind ranges through the levels of experience infinitely above and below consciousness. There is no Not-Mind - not ever - except within the Ultimate Void itself.

Hypnosis sheds a faint light on certain levels of consciousness beneath the ordinary. By means of the intense concentration and focusing of attention that hypnosis evokes, we are able to accomplish feats of mind and body that otherwise only yogis know. Hypnosis works by forcing a thread of memory awareness deep into the mind labyrinth, which, however deeply it may penetrate the darkness, is always tied tightly to the ordinary consciousness at the top. Without that Ariadne's thread, the more deeply we were to concentrate on something, the more we would be lost to the world. The more attention we bring to bear on anything, the deeper into a simulacrum of sleep we proceed, as our surroundings and the outside world disappear into this darkness and outer sensations are walled off - presumably to prevent distraction. Since this state of concentration so much resembles sleep, in fact, the slightest lapse of the will sends us drifting towards unconsciousness. Ordinary sleep is a mirror-like repetition of the fragmentation of superconsciousness that we shall see results in abandonment of the self. However, as concentration proceeds ever more inward, the more the inner landscape is illuminated and narrowed. This "inner light" of laser-like consciousness is shared by the vegetable kingdom. (Its character can be recognized in psychedelic intoxication of various kinds). Finally, as we proceed into the unconscious itself we enter a quantum universe of our own. Here we find ourselves in the very "consciousness" of matter itself, with its links to everything in the universe. Presumably, death is but a deeper descent still, a proceeding into the actual heart of Mind, leading into the Void, which is the womb of all manifestations. Ordinary consciousness is obviously the link between higher and lower planes. It is a delicate balance between retreat into self-absorption and abandonment of the self to the sensory experience. It is maintained with great difficulty, for we have a tendency to drift out of it into one or the other of the two diametrically opposed realms of experience that it separates. These realms, of course, are infinitely more attractive than boring, old, routine mind. Within this narrow water-hole of ordinary consciousness, however, lie all the accomplishments and discoveries of human history. Indeed, it is this narrow and unreliable bridge that human society has learned to exploit as "civilization". Unfortunately, it has been examined but superficially and little has been done to stretch its dimensions or protect it from disintegration. Consequently we know almost nothing either of its limitations or its potential powers.

Heightened awareness is the opposed of focused attention or concentration. Attention becomes more and more generalized and cognizant of every petal on every flower in the garden, then every vein in every leaf. . . But now, as attention fans out, mind loses its coherency and begins to fragment. Under the influence of psychedelic drugs the attention is so fragmented that it merges altogether with the outer world and the inner self is abandoned to the chaos of the interface. The loss of the inner self, however, is usually accompanied by extreme panic as it attempts to jump from scintilla to scintilla.

For a time, the fragmentation of expanding mind can be kept under control by the use of amphetamines or cocaine in ever-increasing dosages. By means of these substances, alertness and intelligence are increased because attention is spread infinitely thin across a wider and wider spectrum of sensory experience coming in from the outer world. The "outer world" includes, of course, the consciousness of one's own body, as well as reflexive self-observation. At the same time, the inner self is being supplied with increased energy and speed too, so that it can maintain consciousness of itself and stave off chaos by racing back and forth around the ever-enlarging periphery of experience. As we are all very well aware, however, this path quickly comes to an end.

Fortunately, the heightening of externalized consciousness can be achieved without drugs, through mysticism. The sensory awareness can either be bypassed or used as the vehicle of its own transcendence. If the inner self is voluntarily released to heightened consciousness, which we sometimes refer to as leaving the ego behind in order to enter Nirvana, peace descends at once and chaos is transformed into the so-called "mystical experience." This process, once begun, can continue into such total absorption that the individual consciousness ceases to exist at any point and we could refer to that as a more or less permanent trance.

(See also: MIND , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Sanskrit dictionary. From Advaita to Yoga.

Please note that all words in grey, like "enlightenment" or "kundalini" are hyperlinked to archives further explaining the term. At the corresponding archive you will also find articles related to the term.

A dictionary Of Commonly Used Sanskrit terms. From Dadhicha to Kutichaka.

Please note that all words in grey, like "yoga", "enlightenment" or "kundalini" are hyperlinked to archives further explaining the term. At the corresponding archive you will also find articles related to the term.

PYRAMID POWER

(Also cone headgear). In mimetic magic the pyramid serves as a parallel funnel or horn to draw down the powers of the heavens onto all that which lies inside or under it. Its base is a perfect square, representing the earth and its four corners - or a circle, deriving from infinity, the point.

The cone is nearly as effective as the pyramid, so a hat in the shape of a cone also has beneficial effects on the wearer, curing headaches, stress and even slow-healing head-wounds. The effects of a cone device, as far as I know, have not been compared to those produced by Reich's Orgone box.

In contemporary "pyramid power" theory, the convection of the cosmic energy derives from its inversion and the subsequent compression (like laser) of the lines of force - as images are similarly inverted by a lens. Think of an hourglass or how the sun's rays stream out like a cone through a small opening in the clouds. It has been observed that concentration is increased and a sense of well-being occurs amongst subjects placed under a tent pyramid or cone device for the head. Even 10 or 15 minutes under the pyramid can increase energy, intelligence, concentration, self-confidence, optimism, sense of well-being, etc.

The tent pyramid is an attempt to realign imbalanced centers, just as in olden days the dunce or "thinking cap" was administered by impatient teachers in an effort to quieten children and heighten their attentionality. It was intended to help the child regain control of his center. For the same reason the conical hat or hood was forced upon criminals and heretics in a final stab at restoring them before their punishment or sacrifice. We think of wizards, warlocks and alchemists wearing these conical devices chiefly as physical enhancers (to make them appear taller than normal people), but obviously, their actual purpose was to increase not their stature but their powers of concentration. Witches' hats are defective, because they have brims that deflect the celestial currents. In very ancient times priests and kings wore head dresses bearing legends and symbols of their rank. These legends could serve as mantras as well, to further enhance the restorative powers of such devices.

The materials (metal, stone, glass, wood) seem much less important than the shape itself, although reason would suggest that the desired effects would also be assisted by the proper material: metal for sealing, stone for durability, glass for transparency, wood for organic purposes. But it seems that the power lines move in the desired directions regardless of the material. The results of experiments involving keeping meat fresh or razor blades sharp under pyramids seem rather suspect, but it must be borne in mind that experimental data need not invariably lead us to random or impractical conclusions in order to honor their authenticity. Indeed, anyone can say anything about reality, including that it is random or meaningless.

(See also: PYRAMID POWER , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

meditation: Dhyana. Sustained concentration.

Meditation describes a quiet, alert, powerfully concentrated state wherein new knowledge and insights are awakened from within as awareness focuses one-pointedly on an object or specific line of thought.

See: internalized worship, raja yoga, Satchidananda, mantra, mantra yoga.

(See also: Meditation , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Buddhism: Basic Buddhist Dictionary

A basic dictionary of Buddhism terms. Please note that all words in grey like " Buddhism " are links to an archive with related articles.

SAMYAMA: concentration, meditation and Samadhi

(See also: SAMYAMA , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Samadhi: A state of higher concentration in meditation. There are three stages in Buddhism (preparation, beginning, and attainment of concentration). Samadhi is the eighth element in the classical path of Yoga, meaning absorption, becoming one with, harmonizing. There are two forms of samadhi in Yoga (with and without support). The greater form of samadhi in Yoga is without support.

 (See also: Samadhi , Buddhism, Body Mind and Soul)

vikshepa:

vikshepa. Waywardness; distracted or diffused mind that obstructs concentration; projecting.

(See also: vikshepa , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

 Dharana:

concentration

(See also:  Dharana , Body Mind and Soul)

 Bhavana:

concentration

(See also:  Bhavana , Body Mind and Soul)

raja yoga: (Sanskrit) "King of yogas."

Also known as ashtanga yoga, "eight-limbed yoga." The classical yoga system of eight progressive stages to Illumination as described in various yoga Upanishads, the Tirumantiram and, most notably, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

The eight limbs are as follows.

1)    yama: "Restraint." Virtuous and moral living, which brings purity of mind, freedom from anger, jealousy and subconscious confusion which would inhibit the process of meditation.

2)    niyama: (Sanskrit) "Observance." Religious practices which cultivate the qualities of the higher nature, such as devotion, cognition, humility and contentment- giving the refinement of nature and control of mind needed to concentrate and ultimately plunge into samadhi.

3)    asana: "Seat or posture." A sound body is needed for success in meditation. This is attained through hatha yoga, the postures of which balance the energies of mind and body, promoting health and serenity, e.g., padmasana, the "lotus pose," for meditation. The Yoga Sutras indicate that asanas make the yogi impervious to the impact of the pairs of opposites (dvandva), heat-cold, etc.

4)    pranayama: "Mastering life force." Breath control, which quiets the chitta and balances ida and pingala. Science of controlling prana through breathing techniques in which lengths of inhalation, retention and exhalation are modulated. Pranayama prepares the mind for deep meditation.

5)    pratyahara: "Withdrawal." The practice of withdrawing consciousness from the physical senses first, such as not hearing noise while meditating, then progressively receding from emotions, intellect and eventually from individual consciousness itself in order to merge into the Universal.

6)    dharana: "Concentration." Focusing the mind on a single object or line of thought, not allowing it to wander. The guiding of the flow of consciousness. When concentration is sustained long and deeply enough, meditation naturally follows.

7)    dhyana: "Meditation." A quiet, alert, powerfully concentrated state wherein new knowledge and insight pour into the field of consciousness. This state is possible once the subconscious mind has been cleared or quieted.

8)    samadhi: "Enstasy," which means "standing within one's self." "Sameness, contemplation." The state of true yoga, in which the meditator and the object of meditation are one.

See: yoga, asana, samadhi, raja yoga.

(See also: Raja Yoga , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Manas-samyama (Sanskrit) [from manas mind + sanyama concentration]

Concentration of the mind; the perfect control and concentration of the mind during yoga practices.

See also SANNYASA

(See also: Manas-samyama , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Zen.

A major school of Mahayana Buddhism, with several branches.

One of its most popular techniques is meditation on koans, which leads to the generation of the Great Doubt. According to this method: The master gives the student a koan to think about, resolve, and then report back on to the master. Concentration intensifies as the student first tries to solve the koan intellectually. This initial effort proves impossible, however, for a koan cannot be solved rationally. Indeed, it is a kind of spoof on the human intellect.

Concentration and irrationality -- these two elements constitute the characteristic psychic situation that engulfs the student wrestling with a koan. As this persistent effort to concentrate intellectually becomes unbearable, anxiety sets in. The entirety of one's consciousness and psychic life is now filled with one thought. The exertion of the search is like wrestling with a deadly enemy or trying to make one's way through a ring of flames. Such assaults on the fortress of human reason inevitably give rise to a distrust of all rational perception.

This gnawing doubt (Great Doubt), combined with a futile search for a way out, creates a state of extreme and intense yearning for deliverance. The state may persist for days, weeks or even years; eventually the tension has to break. (Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, Vol. I, p.253.)

An interesting koan is the koan of Buddha Recitation. Unlike other koans, it works in two ways. First of all, if a cultivator succeeds in his meditation through this koan, he can achieve awakening as with other koans. However, if he does not succeed, and experience shows that many cultivators do not, then the meditation on the Buddha's narne helps him to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land.

This is so provided he believes (as most practitioners in Asia do) in Amitabha and the expedient Pure Land. Thus, the Buddha Recitation koan provides a safety net, and demonstrates the underlying unity of Zen and Pure Land.

 (See also: Zen , Buddhism, Body Mind and Soul)