Phillip Moffitt is co-guiding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and the founder of the Life Balance Institute. He teaches vipassana meditation and is the author of Dancing with Life, a book exploring the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. More information can be found at: www.dharmawisdom.org. He is currently writing a book on skillful living.
The practice of samadhi requires commitment to wise effort towards concentration. it requires overcoming resistance to concentration, to be willing to feel intimacy with teh object. The fruit of commitment to concentration is one-pointed equanimity. Concentration can be considered om five different qualities from dedication to steadiness.
Concentration can be explored as a function of mind, as an essential and distinct part of the path of liberation and as a "felt experience" in this very moment. Each exploration deepens understanding and empowers concentration.
The 3rd foundation can be utilized to gain insight into how to work with strong emotions. So often there is confusion between emotions and our relationship to them.
Patience and Persistence (Determination)
are the paramis that can bring change to our practices and to our lives. They are the perfect twins-they support and empower one another.
Each is to be developed separately but needs the other for fruition. Together they create possibility unto-fore unimagined.
Jhana means non-distraction achieved by the removal of distractions from the mind. As the distraction of mind are removed, the mind state moves from coarseness to more fine states into stillness and equanimity.
