In our community today, we continued exploring the fifth of the six “perfections” leading to a happy, engaged life of love, compassion, and presence. Presence, I think, is a great word for concentration—this fifth, difficult skill to master in meditation.
One result of concentration is that you are able to completely attend to the person you’re with. Sometimes I’ve heard the best way of listening described as doing so without thinking about what you’re going to say next. Do you have a friend who does this? I can think of a couple, and they are the most delightful people to spend time with.
Our path to concentration got derailed by another war starting this weekend (though the war is having far more dire consequences for those fighting in it and caught up in its crossfire).
We talked for twenty minutes about the conflicting feelings of hope, despair, and grief that are coming up for me and others right now. And I led a short two-minute meditation on ways to process those feelings and steer our minds and the worlds’ toward greater peace, well-being, and freedom; allowing us to be our best selves and take care of our loved ones and the world around us.
The rest of the session, we continued with a second approach to concentration that uses a visualization of a beautiful mountain lake as a metaphor for the mind, in which the ripples on its surface are its thoughts, while its depths the deeper, truer nature of our awareness.
I hope you enjoy the session. Feel free to post a comment in the community with your reactions or comments.
Next week, I plan to take on concentration in an intuitive way, sharing the techniques that work for me in my daily practice, or when my mind starts freaking out.
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