concentration – Meditative Man

Second Noble Truth – What we should abandon

Last week we started to talk about the four noble truths. We discussed the first noble truth. We should know suffering. We discussed how by focusing on our inner peace, we can get rid of our suffering. Today, we will talk about the second noble truth. What we should abandon. We should abandon origins. What does that mean. It means we should abandon where suffering originates. If we want to abandon suffering, it is natural that we need to abandon its origin. All suffering origin from delusions.

Right now, we have a strong attachment to the fulfillment of our own wishes. We really like things to go our way. Attachment is a fundamentally selfish mind. It’s about what I can get, me, my wishes, my desires, my wants, my needs, me, me, me. Every delusion is about me and how important I am and my needs and wishes. Me is front and center of every delusion, pervades every delusion, the sense of self.

Root of all delusions is self-grasping ignorance. It pervades all other delusions. Our attachment, our hatred, our jealousy, our anger, and all other delusions arise from our self grasping ignorance.

Now within that attachment is that state of mind that wants to be happy, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy. We always want to be happy, even Buddhas want to be happy. We want happiness to come from outside of ourselves, that’s another element of, thinking that happiness comes from outside. Not understanding that happiness comes from peaceful minds, virtuous minds, positive minds, not understanding that happiness comes from love or compassion or wisdom, but thinking that happiness comes from donuts or relationships or mountains or whatever it is, thinking that happiness comes from outside and working hard to try and get it. And also think that happiness comes from the fulfillment of our wishes, everything going our way, everything we want to happen, happens. Whereas happiness, actual happiness is a pleasant feeling, a mental feeling, it’s part of our mind. And the causes are also within our mind, real causes of happiness, or within our mind, not outside our mind. So if our mind is peaceful, then we’re happy regardless of what’s going on outside us.

So self-grasping, and the reason we have all our delusions is because we have a strong sense of self at the moment. We think, me, me, me, I, I, I, self, and we think there’s kind of like a self within our body and mind controlling everything.

I’m making everything happen.
I’m the one who has all the desires.
I’m the one who gets annoyed.
I’m the one who gets happy.
I’m the one who does this.
I’m the one who goes there.
Me, me, me.

I want you to go back and look at your life. Do this experiment in your spare time when you have half an hour this week. Look at all of your suffering (most of us remember when we had mental suffering in our lives at least the major ones). And see the real cause of that suffering. Now, here we cannot be superficial. We have to dig really deep. Once you dig deep, you will realize that all of that suffering came from a strong sense of I. A desire to make ourselves happy often times above all cost and at anyone else’s expense. You will also notice that the stronger the sense of I, the stronger the suffering.

Our self grasping is like a monster that lives within us and we must eliminate it, we must destroy it because that is the source of all of our suffering.

Let me tell you an interesting story. A few years ago, when I was getting a massage, my massage therapist asked me how my day was going. I casually mentioned I was dealing with some not-so-competent insurance people. Out of nowhere she said, “Do you think you are smarter than everyone else?” I said, “Most days I have this Smartest Person in The Room Syndrome.” What she said next was very profound. She said, “The universe gives you what you want. You want to be the smartest person, so it sends you people who are not as up to speed!” I thought it was a unique way to look at the world. But in essence, it was supremacy that was bringing my frustration. In the book How to Transform Your Life, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (2017) put it wonderfully: “The moment we let go of our obsessive concern for our own welfare, our mind naturally relaxes and becomes lighter.” As you can see, it is the importance we put on ourselves that is the root of most mental disturbance.

Self-grasping ignorance also causes us to experience delusions. It is just a fancy way of saying we grasp at the self and its inherent existence. Self-grasping ignorance is also known as separation. We have created this boundary around us separating ourselves from other living beings. This is similar to thinking, my cold is worse than yours because it is happening to me! If we erase the boundaries around us, the world will be a much better place. How so? Let’s look at it. We strongly identify with the self and grasp it so tightly, believing that nothing is more important. If my boundary only includes myself then I focus on my own happiness over all else. If my boundary includes my family, then all of a sudden I am willing to make little sacrifices for the greater good of my family. Most people stop there, but if we all begin to erase boundaries between ourselves and our communities, we will all try our best to make sure everyone in our community is better off.

In other words, if we begin to identify a little less with the self and start erasing boundaries around us to include more living beings, we will begin to notice that our delusions decrease. Similarly, if we reduce our self-cherishing, then we will reduce our delusions.

During a live meditation session someone asked, “If we don’t focus on our self-cherishing, will there be any fun left in life?” The answer is that you can enjoy what life has to offer without chasing things. For example, there is joy in helping others. There are people suffering from hunger, illness, and poverty. If you choose your cause and begin to make a difference, you will not only enjoy it, but also make your life more meaningful.

Impediment to Meditation Practice

Every week we meet and meditate. Some days are better than others. Some of us are able to concentrate more than others but we all need to improve our meditative concentration. Today, I thought we discuss what gets in the way of our concentration.

There are five things that usually get in the way of perfect concentration. The first impediment is laziness. This doesn’t mean we don’t want to meditate but more like we are not fully committed. Often because we are not sure we are any good at it or we will be able to do it. Sometimes we are able to concentrate but only for a short period of time. After a while, we just give up or call it good if you will. When this happens, two things are important, faith and effort. We have to have faith in our practice and confidence that we will be able to concentrate. Without faith if we are not sure if it will work, we tend not to put all of our effort into it. So they kind of go hand in hand. And during meditation, if we lose concentration, we need to apply effort to bring our concentration back.

The second impediment is Mental Excitement. This is a fancy word for distraction. We often get distracted during our meditation. We start thinking about something benign, it starts out small in a corner of our mind. But then we give it a fuel and dwell on it and next thing we know we are in a totally different world. If a thought arises, we simply acknowledge it and don’t chase it, don’t give it any time of day, and it dies down just like waves die down in the ocean. Usually distracting thoughts arise because we are holding the object of meditation too tight so we need to ask ourselves am I holding the object of meditation too tight? What does it mean to say we are holding it too tight? It means we are focused such that our head hurts😊 I want to concentrate, I must concentrate, and pretty soon we are concentrating about a football game! The way to avoid this is by mindfulness. We need to be mindful during our meditation of any distracting thoughts and then come back to our object of meditation.

Mental sinking is the third impediment to our meditation. It is when we are not holding the object of concentration tight enough. We are meditating but not with concentration. That brings dullness to our mind. Dullness brings sleepiness or grogginess. Essentially, it is diminished mental energy. When we don’t have mental energy, we will not be able to focus on the object of meditation. Way to counter this is by alertness. If we stay alert, we will not become dull. This way, we can make sure that we have energy to stay focused on our object of meditation.

The next impediment to our meditation is too much application. What does that mean? Well, say we are trying to meditate on the clear sky nature of our mind. But if we keep applying the logic all the time that mind is clear and the thoughts are clouds in the mind. If we keep repeating this, we will never be able to concentrate on the empty sky nature of the mind. If this happens, we need to stop applying the logic and concentrate on the object of our meditation.

And the final impediment is not enough application. This is when we skip the analytical meditation and jump right into the placement meditation. For a novice meditator, this could be difficult because they have not brought themselves to the logical place where the object of placement makes sense. So when they try to concentrate it will not last more than a few seconds. In this case, we need to make sure that we complete the analytical meditation before going into the placement meditation.

Also real quick, I am not sure we covered this before or not. But an analytical meditation is when we logically get to conclusion of object of placement. For example, my very subtle mind is like the deep ocean away from waviness. My thoughts are like waves on the ocean. Just like waves die down, thoughts come and they go away. My very subtle mind is still like deep ocean. We contemplate this for a few cycles until we have a generic image of stillness of our root mind. We then hold that stillness single pointedly. That is our placement meditation.

Retreat 2026 Experience

I attended a month-long silent retreat in New York state in January 2026. This was an incredible experience, where I came back rejuvenated, and more determined than ever to enhance my spiritual practice . Now, to be sure, I have been to retreats before but this was the longest retreat I attended. I think what made me this retreat special was the fact that the environment was really conducive to serenity. Let me explain.

The Property

Kadampa Meditation Center in Glen Spey, NY (this is western part of New York State about 50 miles or so from Scranton, PA) is a vast property. I happened to be there during the winter season but I bet this place looks amazing during the summer times. It is in what is known as the upper Delaware river region. The property has walking trails (although most of those were not walkable due to snow on the ground) that go miles at a time. It is in a mountainous area (it’s funny because the closest major town Port Jervis is at a significantly lower elevation).

The main attraction if you will, is the World Peace Temple at the center of the property. It is peaceful and has a calming effect on you as soon as you enter. Right next to the temple is a café that is just next to the main building. The main building has a dining hall on the ground floor with an industrial kitchen. Upper floor of the main building hosts rooms for accommodation. There is also a Top House that is about a 10-minute walk up the hill. My room was on the Top House. This worked out well because it allowed me to walk about an hour a day back and forth between the Top House and the Temple / Dining area.

Accommodation is comfortable and place is very well kept in terms of cleanliness.

Getting here is not easy for sure. You can take an Uber from NY City airport or you need to change a couple of trains to Port Jervis and then take a taxi from Port Jervis to the Temple. Because of time constraints, I ended taking and Uber coming in and used the train going back.

Volunteering

Part of attending retreat is to volunteer daily. Before I arrived, I volunteered to serve dinner. This was an easy task. They have a chef and a helper in the kitchen. They serve buffet style meals every day. My job was to bring the serving trays and set up the buffet and refill as necessary. Since there are approximately 40 or 50 people, you only needed to refill these trays twice in 45 minutes.

Daily Routine

The retreat starts on a Friday evening and the first session is from 7:30 pm to 9 pm. After that there are four sessions every day: 8 am to 9 am; 11 am to 12:30 pm, 4:30 pm to 6 pm, and 7:30 pm to 9 pm. On Thursday the last session is from 11 pm to 12:30 pm. So essentially you have a break from Thursday at noon to Friday evening. This allows people who are attending only one week at a time to come and go.

Based on the retreat schedule, I set up a daily routine where I would wake up around 7:30 am, attend the first session, go for breakfast and then come back to the room. After freshening up I would practice my regular meditation and then go for the 11 am session. Although they had prayers every afternoon between lunch time and the 4:30 pm session, I had decided to skip lunch and the prayers so I would come back to the room around 1 pm and then spend a few hours studying. We are learning from a specific book in my teacher training program in Denver and the exams were coming up so this was the perfect time to catch up on my studies. After the 4:30 pm session, I would go directly to the dining hall for dinner and volunteer duty. From there, it was back to the room before the last session of the night.

I would call it a night by 10 pm.

The Silence

The first two weeks of the retreats were what is known as partial silence. We were supposed to keep silent until 12:30 pm every day. The last two weeks were supposed to be in complete silence. I had decided to observe complete silence all four weeks. I was also off my phone (no emails, no news, no texts, no phone calls). For a news junkie like me, not knowing what was happening in the world was tough for the first couple of days. After that, your mind adjusts itself to the new normal.

The silent part was supposed to end every Thursday at noon and would start again Friday evening. Even then, I stayed away from my phone except for a call home every Thursday.

Teachings

The main objective of the retreat was the teachings. Let’s get right into that. The topic for the first week was developing renunciation. Gen Samten, who is the resident teacher at KMC Glen Spey is an amazing teacher. He has a calm demeanor and gives practical tips to develop your spiritual practice. On the introduction night, he started off with some homework for us to develop a distraction list. He asked us to come up with physical, verbal, mental, and technology distractions that are a hinderance to our meditation practice. He then asked to make sure we pick one or two from each category and either reduce or eliminate those distractions for the duration of the retreat. That was such an important start to the retreat because often we get into spiritual teachings and are still distracted by other things. A determination to remove distraction right from the start, set an excellent tone for the retreat.

Our first meditation was about developing a determination to practice Dharma of Buddha’s teachings of renunciation, universal compassion, and profound view of emptiness now while we have the opportunity. This is one of the first meditations in what is known as Lamrim meditations. This meditation focuses on our precious human life. It talks about how rare and precious this human life is and now that we have it, we must use this opportunity to attain enlightenment. Gen Samten then said enlightenment should not be a distant theoretical goal, we should try to make progress on the path every day. We should check to see if our compassion is a little better than what it was the day before and that our wisdom is a little better than what it was the day before. I thought this was very important because often we get bogged down on the result such that we forget how far we have come. It is about progress, not perfection! He also talked about being mindful throughout the day and checking to see if we are compassionate, kind, have an understanding of emptiness and so forth. On the last session of the second day, Gen Samten talked about something interesting. He said that we are observing verbal silence but we should also enjoy the beauty in silence of our mind. He said to appreciate the quietness within. Essentially, he was asking us to be in meditative state thought the day!

The next day, we began with meditation on death and impermanence. When you go into a meeting or have a conversation with someone, think about what if this was the last meeting or the last conversation you will ever have? Moment you think about that, I am sure you will change at least a part of your conversation to make sure that you end on a positive note.

In the afternoon session, we talked about why we are attached. And one major reason is the eight worldly concerns. If we reduce our worldly concerns, we will be able to reduce our attachment. The last session on the second day focused on mediation on the dangers of lower rebirth.

The next day, we started with meditation on going to refuge. Here, he put emphasis on effort. He asked us to investigate why we do not put effort into our spiritual practice. Often it is because of distractions. We need to identify and eliminate those distractions that are in the way of our Dharma practice. One way to eliminate these distractions is to imagine a deity at our heart and ask for help. If we feel tired during our meditation, it is good to go back to breathing meditation for a few minutes. The last session was focusing on abandoning no virtuous actions and practicing virtuous actions. If we cannot abandon non virtuous actions we should at least try and weaken those. We should also watch for non-virtuous actions throughout the day. This is essentially practicing moral discipline.

The next day, we started talking about future sufferings and how we should make a determination for attaining liberation to be free from future sufferings. If we look at the incidents in life, we should think about whether it was a separation from things we like, or encountering things we don’t like, or not being able to satisfy our desires. The last session talked about recognizing, reducing, and abandoning self-grasping. As all suffering originates from self-grasping.

We continued next day with what we should practice. Specifically, we should practice moral discipline, concentration and wisdom. During the day, we should be mindful and practice moral discipline; during meditation, we should practice concentration and wisdom. We should eliminate our distractions. We ended the day with fourth noble truth of attainment of cessation of our self-grasping ignorance.

The second week started with meditation of taking and giving. We focused on that the entire day. The following day we spent all day on equalizing self with others. An important point he made was to think of how interdependent our lives are. We do not live in Silo. We are interdependent on beings even when they do not know of our existence. We focused on meditation on how all people are equal since we all want to be happy. We can also think of how we are just one person and others are many. In this context, our happiness is insignificant and what he calls Joy of Insignificance.

Next we started talking about destroying our self-cherishing as that is the root cause of all of our problems. Digging deeper to see how self cherishing is the cause of our problems helps make a strong determination to eliminate it. Then we went on to meditate on cherishing others and exchanging self with others.

The next day focused on developing bodhicitta motivation. And the last day for the week was about bodhicitta mixed with emptiness.

The next week was entirely on tranquil abiding focusing on the clarity of mind meditation.

The last week was of superior seeing where our focus was completely on emptiness. Starting with emptiness of body, to emptiness of mind, and then emptiness of I. and at last, emptiness of all phenomena.

Virtuous States of Mind

We have been talking how our mind works and we are going to continue that discussion. As we discussed, there are eleven virtuous states of mind. The eleven virtuous states of mind are: 1) Faith; 2) Sense of Shame; 3) Consideration for Others; 4) Non-attachment; 5) Non-hatred; 6) Non-ignorance; 7) Effort; 8) Mental Suppleness; 9) Conscientiousness; 10) Equanimity; 11) Non-harmfulness.

Let’s continue with the next virtuous state of mind that is non-ignorance. It is a mental factor that is a direct opponent of ignorance. It is a type of wisdom that acts as an antidote to ignorance. For example, wisdom realizing selflessness is non-ignorance. The function of non-ignorance is to enable us to understand the profound concept of emptiness. As our non-ignorance grows, we are closer to understanding emptiness. This wisdom realizing emptiness is our true wealth. Because once we realize emptiness, there is no suffering. Non-ignorance can arise from listening or reading, contemplating, meditating and from imprints. The first three are very similar to wisdom. If we read or listen to dharma teachings, contemplate about them and then meditate on it, we will develop non-ignorance. Non-ignorance arising from imprints is based on our karma. If we had strong karmic imprints, we would naturally develop non-ignorance.

Next, virtuous state of mind is effort. Effort makes our mind happy to engage in virtuous tasks such as giving, helping others, meditation, spiritual practice, etc. The opposite of effort is laziness. Effort is supreme because all virtuous qualities arise from power of effort. We may have heard about benefits for meditation but without applying effort, those benefits never materialize. Buddha said that if you only have effort, you have all Dharma. If you only have laziness, you have nothing. There are four types of efforts. Armour-like effort, effort of non-discouragement, effort of application, and effort of non-satisfaction. Armour-like effort is a courageous mind that makes us keep up our spiritual practice no matter what kind of external hardship we face. Effort of non-discouragement prevents us from getting discouraged if we don’t see immediate results. So, if our meditation practice is not making progress, we do not give up on our practice. Effort of application is a mind that engages in spiritual practice with delight. We are happy to practice and it is not a “chore” for us. The effort of non-satisfaction is the kind of effort we put in to continually improve our practice. We are not satisfied with the little progress we have made and we want to continue making more progress.

The next virtuous mind is mental suppleness. It is flexibility of mind induced by virtuous concentration. You will notice that when we are absorbed in your meditation, you will naturally feel lighter. That is mental suppleness. When our mind is heavy and rigid, it engages in delusions. A supple mind is naturally virtuous and engages in virtuous karma.

The next virtuous state of mind is conscientiousness. It is a mental factor that cherishes what is virtuous and guards the mind against non-virtuous karma and delusions. It prevents our mind from being influenced by delusion. For example, it prevents us from being angry at someone who we disagree with by not thinking about them or avoiding them. It can also prevent delusions by exaggerating good qualities of an object. For example, if we disagree with our loved one, rather getting angry, if we think of all their good qualities, we will not get angry at them. Shantideva said that there is no practice greater than preventing our mind from being negative. Conscientiousness is generally practiced in conjunction with mindfulness and alertness. That is what we practice in our M A C meditation. We are mindful of our thoughts and stay alert for any negative thought that may pop up and are practicing conscientiousness to prevent our mind from chasing any delusions. The main function of conscientiousness is to enable us to keep our moral discipline and to improve our concentration. By practicing conscientiousness, we reduce our delusions and stop committing negative karma. This naturally improves our moral discipline. If our delusions are diminished, our life becomes disciplined and in turn we can improve our concentration.

The next virtuous state of mind is equanimity. Equanimity prevents our mind from mental sinking and mental excitement. An equanimous mind is a balanced mind. There are two types of equanimity. Equanimity towards living beings and equanimity towards phenomena. Equanimity towards living beings means we have compassion towards all living beings without favoritism. Right now, we show compassion towards those we are attached to and are indifferent towards those we do not know. Regarding equanimity of phenomena, if things go our way, we are fine; if things go against us, we are fine. It is an even-keeled state of mind.

The last virtuous state of mind is non-harmfulness. Definition of non-harmfulness is a state of mind that wished all living beings not to suffer. So it is not simply not harming others but compassion towards all sentient beings. We need to be careful and make sure we are not confusing compassion with desirous attachment. Compassion is virtuous while attachment is non-virtuous. For example, our wish for our helper to get better is out of attachment. Our wish for our friends to get better is usually a mix of attachment and compassion. Our wish for some total stranger to get better is out of pure compassion. A person whose mind is filled with compassion could never wish to harm others. Refraining from harming others is one of the most important spiritual practices. There are two types of compassion we can practice. Mere compassion and superior compassion. Wishing someone to be free from suffering is mere compassion. Thinking I myself will act to free them from suffering is superior compassion.

Hopefully, over the last two weeks you have absorbed types of virtuous mind and have developed a wish to maintain these virtuous states of mind at all times.

Guiding Mental Factors

We have been talking about our mind for the last few sessions. We looked at three types of minds and then we dived into mental factors that identify the object. Today, let’s continue down this rabbit hole if you will and discuss mental factors that guide us to an object.

There are five mental factors in this category, aspiration, firm apprehension, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. Let’s look at each one.

Aspiration is a mental factor that takes an interest in an object. We are all here for meditation tonight. If you did not have an aspiration to calm your mind or make progress on your spiritual journey, you would not be here. The main function of aspiration is to induce effort. Think about it. If we don’t have a wish to meditate, we would not put an effort to be here. You could have a million excuses, its Diwali time, or it’s dinner time, or whatever. But you have a wish to meditate and that is why you made an effort to be here.

There are four types of aspirations. Wishing to meet an object, wishing not to be separated from an object, wishing to obtain an object and wishing to be released from an object. Let’s take an example. Your kids are coming home for holidays. You wish to meet them. That is wishing to meet an object. You don’t want them to leave. That is wishing not to be separated from an object. You want to get a promotion, or make a lot of money, that is wishing to obtain an object. You want to remove your self-cherishing mind that is wishing to be released from an object. Depending upon our motivation each one of them could be virtuous, non-virtuous, or neutral. Wishing to steal would be an example of non-virtuous aspiration as opposed to wishing to meditate would be a virtuous aspiration.

Next let’s look at firm apprehension. It is a mental factor that allows our primary mind to apprehend the object firmly. It is also a foundation for mindfulness and concentration. You see, unless we understand an object clearly, we will not be able to keep our mind on it for long. Take this topic for example. These teachings come from a book called “How To Understand The Mind.” When I first read this book, I would put it down after a couple of pages. It was too complex. Then, I started to break it down in relatable examples and that helped me continue to read the book in a way that I could explain it to someone else. Without firm apprehension, our mind is like a leaf floating in the air. It has no direction and it cannot stay at one place for long.

Next mental factor is mindfulness. It is a mental factor that allows us not to forget an object that is realized by our primary mind. Mindfulness can only focus on an object once it is realized. If an object is not present, you cannot have mindfulness about that object. Mindfulness maintains continuum of the object by not forgetting. What does that mean? When we do our empty sky meditation for example. Once we realize that our mind has this empty sky like nature and we keep our focus on the clarity of our mind, mindfulness helps us keep it there. We will continue to observe the clarity of our mind without distractions. If our primary mind lacks mindfulness, it will forget the object. The function of mindfulness is to prevent distractions. The more stable our mindfulness, fewer distracting thoughts we will have. We need to make continuous efforts to improve our mindfulness.

The next mental factor is concentration. Concentration helps us keep our primary mind on the object single-pointedly. It can develop only when an object is held firmly by mindfulness. There are three types of concentration. When we are meditating, we have virtuous concentration. When we are driving, we have neutral concentration. And when we are thinking about our enemies, we have non-virtuous concentration. Concentration is very important for our spiritual progress. Listening to teachings, reciting mantras, contemplating teachings, meditating, all are only effective when we have a mind that is concentrating. Buddha said that prayers, mantras, spiritual readings are of no use if the mind is distracted elsewhere. The main function of virtuous concentration is to make our mind peaceful. When our mind is free from distractions, it becomes calm and peaceful. When our mind is peaceful and happy, craving for external pleasure declines and we become content. Pure concentration also helps our body and mind become comfortable.

The next mental factor is wisdom. It is a virtuous, intelligent mind that makes primary mind realize meaningful object. What are these meaningful objects you may ask? They are also known as universal truths. Some of the meaningful objects are cycle of life and birth, existence of past and future lives, laws of karma, and emptiness. There is a monumental difference between intelligence and wisdom that I want to bring out here. An intelligent person is not necessarily a wise person. Let’s take an example. Scientists who develop weapons of war are intelligent but I am sure we can question their wisdom in doing so. Or wolves on wall street who pray on investors are certainly intelligent but you would not call them wise. Function of wisdom is to eliminate doubts and misunderstandings and to dispel ignorance. If we understand the benefits of wisdom, we will strive to achieve it. Opponent of wisdom is ignorance. Nothing harms us more than ignorance. Ignorance makes us create negative karma. Wisdom can arise from listening or reading spiritual teachings; it can arise from contemplating on those teachings; and it can arise from meditating on those teachings.

As you can see our mind is a fascinating subject and hopefully, we are peeling the layers to understand how it functions.