One can concentrate; on doing nothing--that is, on sitting quietly
in a chair or lying quietly on the bed or the floor. Be quiet, keep
quiet, be quiet, keep quiet. That is the form of concentration, that
is the way of learning to do nothing to advantage. Then we
concentrate on the quiet breathing, to have it gentle, steady, and
without strain. In the beginning we must take care to concentrate
without strain, and without emotion, use our minds quietly, as one
might watch a bird who was very near, to see what it will do next,
and with care not to frighten it away.
These are the great secrets of true strengthening concentration. The
first is dropping everything that interferes. The second is working
to concentrate easily without emotion. They are really one and the
same. If we work to drop everything that interferes, we are so
constantly relaxing in order to concentrate that the very process
drops strain bit by bit, little by little.
An unquiet mind, however, full of worries, anxieties, resistances,
resentments, and full of all varieties of agitation, going over and
over things to try to work out problems that are not in human hands,
or complaining and fretting and puzzling because help seems to be
out of human power, such a mind which is befogged and begrimed by
the agitation of its own dust is not a cause in itself--it is an
effect. The cause is the reaching and grasping, the unreasonable
insistence on its own way of kicking, dust-raising self-will at the
back of the mind.
Pages:
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202