Sunday, October 27, 2019

Elements of Good Meditation: Concentration

Concentration is focus with precision–one careful step at a time, one moment at a time. The only way to retain your concentration is by retaining it in this moment, the present moment, and then the next moment, and the next, and the next and so on. If you maintain the sharpness of your concentration from one moment to the next, you stand to gain extraordinary rewards from meditation.

Becoming a good meditator requires great concentration and to become a great meditator requires supreme concentration. Concentration, especially one pointed concentration, comes with practice. Quality of practice leads to abundance of results. Please note the term ‘one pointed concentration’. This is the primary form of concentration we are concerned with.

One-pointed Concentration

One-pointed or single-minded concentration is the most important ingredient in attaining the tranquillity of mind through meditation. In fact, it is your road to the pinnacle of meditation.

Merely staring at an object is not pointed concentration. When it comes to meditation, meditation, it is how focused your mind is on the object of your meditation that determines how good your concentration is.

Absorptive Concentration

Absorptive concentration, as the name says, is when you are deeply absorbed in doing something. You are in a kind of flow. It’s a beautiful form of concentration. It happens due to your interest in the matter at hand and not because you are trying very hard to concentrate.

One of the unique rewards of this concentration is the sense of independence that you attain. The more absorbed you are, the less you need the world around you. It brings a certain calmness in you. 

If you build one-pointed concentration, the quality of your absorptive concentration improves automatically and significantly. Meditation can unlock your creativity in unimaginable ways.

Analytical Concentration

You can also think of it as an investigative or contemplative concentration. Your brain is constantly calculating and analysing in this form of concentration.

Elementary Concentration

This is not even real concentration, it is more like pseudo concentration but it’s what most of us utilise for the most part of our lives, especially in this day and age.

Passive Concentration 

Everyone’s mind is always maintaining this form of concentration – the passive concentration.


In all forms of concentration, a degree of alertness and focus is required because that’s what concentration is about – forging ahead with focus and alertness. One pointed concentration for meditation requires both alertness and focus in equal degrees. Lose alertness and you will experience laziness. Lose focus and you experience restlessness. The two greatest demons in meditation – restlessness and laziness. The former robs you off your patience and the other costs you your lucidity.

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