An exploration of the challenges of skillful or wise effort in the context of concentration practice, covering (1) the process of purification, (2) a series of suggestions for skillful effort, and (3) how skillful effort deepens into effortless effort.

This talk presenst a map establishing the tools and methods utilized in moving from ordinary mind states to samadhi. The first part of the journey involves attaining a collected and unified mind. The second part of the journey moves us into deep absorption.

We first look at the nature and limits of concentration, in part through the story of the Buddha. We then see how stillness developed in concentration, in relationship to the (relatively) still object, is brought to changing objects for the purpose of clear seeing of impermanence, suffering, and not self, leading to freedom.

Freedom is described as the absence of greed, aversion and delusion. With wise concentration as a support, we can see into the ways our minds get caught by greed, aversion and delusion and that very seeing allows the mind to let them go.