Depth & Breadth of Concentration - Part 3 of 3

Another common misconception about concentration is that?

It will always require a lot of effort.

Now it is true that initially.

When you attempt to develop concentration for attention, wanders you bring it back your attention wanders you bring it back. This does require a certain amount of effort.

Initial.

But it is not the case that it's always going to require that effort. A time comes when it's.

Automatic.

And no longer effortful. Yes, you have to be willing to invest a certain amount of effort and even after it becomes effortless. There may be times when you're facing sensory challenges when you have to effort again.

But it's not the case that forever and ever and ever. It's this huge herculean orsus ipheion task that you're undertaking.

You train yourself to be able to maintain profound concentration states while doing in very complex or chaotic environment and that's the dimension of growth of concentration that I referred to as it broadens it encompases more and more of life.

So when I went into that 100 day training.

I had.

Could sometimes get a little bit of flavor of concentration through formal sitting counting the breath and I? Could I could get a little bit of concentration what I would do simple tasks.

I came out to 100 days later and.

I was not the same person I had been fundamentally re engineered. It was a very small price to pay you. I think 100 days. A big price is like a long time. That's a big deal. It's a very small price to pay to.

For a new life essentially after that.

That taste of concentration was always present for me 24/7.

Now of course, as fun as it is to tell these horror stories or war stories about intense training in Asia. It's also sort of not a good thing to tell People why, why is this not a good thing to tell you?

Because if that's what you have to go through to get this. I don't think I'm going to sign up in this lifetime. Natural reactions like what I'm going to torture myself with cold water for 100 days if I wanted to have perennial somebody.

No, not necessary in Buddhism, they have this concept called Upaya or skillful means.

You don't you don't have to rely on brute force methods. You can work smart and get the same results.

And my attempt to formulate the techniques and the concepts of this path in a very precise way is my attempt to allow ordinary North American let's say modern People.

To allow you to get the same results that monastics get without the brute force methods.

So now you don't have to go through this kind of thing in order to get comparable results. You can work smart. And, yes, you may have to amortize it over a longer period of time.