concentration – Meditative Man

Atisha’s Advise Part I

Atisha, an Indian yogi, went to Tibet to teach Buddhism at the invitation of the Tibetan king. After spending several years there, he decided to return to India. At the request of the Tibetan people, he gave one final teaching before leaving. This teaching became one of the most important spiritual instructions ever given, offering profound insights on how to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.

Over the next few weeks, let’s explore what Atisha taught and see how we can apply some of his wisdom in our daily lives.

He began by advising that until we achieve enlightenment, reliance on our spiritual guide is extremely important. A spiritual guide is your Guru. Following the advice and instructions of your Guru is one of the most important things we can do on the path to liberation and enlightenment.

I remember growing up, my grandma used to tell us, “Do what the Guru says, not what he does.” For the longest time, I never fully understood what she meant. Over time, however, I realized that it is important to follow the Guru’s advice because a genuine Guru has your best interests at heart. They guide you based on what you need, not necessarily what you want to hear. Because of this, a Guru may give different advice to different disciples depending on their level of spiritual development.

Next, Atisha taught that we cannot become enlightened through understanding alone; we must practice. Although most of us know the right thing to do much of the time, knowledge by itself is not enough. We must put that knowledge into action. Only through consistent practice can we progress toward enlightenment.

He then advised that we should avoid places that disturb our minds and remain where our virtue increases. I believe this is one of the most important teachings, but also one of the most difficult to implement because of our habits, friendships, relationships, and other attachments.

Growing up, we often heard the saying, “Sangh evo Rangh,” which means, “You become like the company you keep.” It is therefore very important to spend time with people who support and advance our spiritual growth rather than those who pull us away from it.

There is a famous Tibetan story about two men from a small village. One was scholarly and practiced spirituality every day. The other was simply drifting through life. One day, both decided to leave their village. The scholarly man went to Lhasa, a large city, while the other went to a monastery.

Fast forward twelve months. The scholarly man had become a drunkard, while the man who had been drifting through life had become a monk. What happened?

The man who went to Lhasa found work at a hotel. To earn extra tips, he would fetch alcohol for the guests. Over time, he began tasting it with them and eventually lost his way. The man who went to the monastery spent his days observing the monks and gradually followed in their footsteps.

The power of our surroundings is undeniable. We must choose carefully who we spend our time with. We should avoid friends who increase our delusions and cultivate friendships with those who help us grow spiritually.

The next piece of advice Atisha gave was that since worldly activities never come to an end, we should limit the amount of time we spend on them.

We have all heard people say things like, “I’ll focus on my spiritual practice after I retire,” or “once the kids are out of the house,” or after some other future milestone. But we all know there is no end to worldly responsibilities. The reasons change, and the goalposts keep moving.

There is no better time than now. If we are considering deepening our spiritual practice, we should begin today rather than waiting for some future event that merely serves as a delay rather than a genuine plan.

Next, Atisha said that friends, possessions, and objects of desire provide no more satisfaction than drinking seawater; therefore, we should practice contentment.

This is one of the most important teachings he gave and one that we discuss often. As we know, drinking salty water does not satisfy thirst. In fact, it makes us even thirstier. Similarly, the pursuit of more material wealth only creates the desire for even more. There is never a final destination.

Think about how many people we know who once said they would be satisfied if they earned or acquired a certain amount. They eventually achieved many times that amount, yet still found no lasting satisfaction. They simply wanted more.

As I have said before, unless you are Elon Musk, there is always someone with more money than you. Unless you are the President of the United States, there is always someone with more power than you.

We must therefore learn to recognize what is enough and devote more of our time and energy to what is truly meaningful: pursuing liberation and enlightenment.

We will stop here for today, as there is a lot to reflect upon. I encourage you to think about Atisha’s advice and identify one or two insights that you can begin implementing immediately. Real progress comes not from understanding alone, but from putting wisdom into practice.

Fourth Noble Truth

We have been discussing the four noble truths for the last couple of weeks. The four noble truths are:

You should know suffering
You should abandon origins
You should attain cessation
You should practice the path

The first noble truth—we should know suffering, we discussed where the suffering comes from and we realized that all of our suffering comes from within us. We let outside problem disturb out inner peace. In the second noble truth, we realized that all suffering origin from our delusions—our anger, attachment, hatred and so forth. And that root of all of our delusions is self grasping ignorance. This strong sense of “me”, this excessive self concern about our own well being. In the third noble truth, we talked about we should strive to attain cessation from our suffering. In the longer term it means cessation from this cycle of samsara—liberation. In our day to day life, it means cessation from cravings and practicing contentment.

Today, we will get into the last part of this—the fourth noble truth. It says we should practice the path. By practicing spirituality, living ethically, and developing wisdom, we can attain enlightenment. Buddha taught the eight fold path so that we can liberate ourselves from suffering and achieve enlightenment. The eight fold path contains:

Right Understanding
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration

Let’s get into it.

Right Understanding: This means that we understand the four noble truths. Understanding that as long as we are in Samsara, we are suffering. We may be temporarily detached from suffering every now and then but due to our karmic activity, eventually we end up suffering. And that all of our suffering originates due to our delusions. We all have seeds of delusions. And when they ripen, it leads to suffering. Root of all of our delusions is self grasping ignorance. And we must work towards eliminating our self grasping ignorance. We should understand that we need to strive to attain liberation that is the only way we can be permanently free from suffering. And lastly, that there is a way forward. If we follow the spiritual path, we will be able to attain liberation and even enlightenment.

Right Intention: Once we contemplate that we have this enormous opportunity with our human life and that death can be upon us at any time, and that nothing lasts forever, and that our suffering is a result of our own karma; we can make resolve to renounce harmful actions, to develop goodwill and compassion toward all beings, and to cultivate non-attachment or non-harming.

Right Speech: We discussed this during our karma class. Lying, Harmful speech, divisive speech, and idle chatter are the four types of speech negative karma. Lying includes omission of truth as well. You all know the famous story of Ashwathama the elephant vs the guru that we hear in the epic Mahabharat. Harmful speech is any speech action that hurts someone else. That is why before we say anything, we should ask, is it true, is it kind, is it necessary; and not speak if answer to any of these questions is no. Divisive speech is when our action create divisions and quarrels amongst a group of people. There is a lot of that going around in our society nowadays. Idle chatter is when we talk non sense all day instead of practicing spirituality.

Right Action: This is similar to the Right Speech but for our physical actions. Meaning we avoid the three bodily negative karma. Killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct. Most people think I have not killed a human being so I am fine but that is not exactly true. If we kill a mosquito with a vengeance that has as much or higher negative karma attached as killing a human being. So we should be mindful of our actions. Stealing means anything that is not freely given to us. So if we stole intellectual property from our workplace, that is stealing. Fudging our taxes is also stealing. Sexual misconduct is having a sexual relationship with anyone other than our partner if we are attached. If we are not attached, having a relationship with someone who is attached is sexual misconduct. In general, any sexual conduct without consent is also sexual misconduct.

Right Livelihood: If you are monk, the right livelihood means living from donations from others and never taking more than one needs. For the rest of us, it means to have ethical livelihood. According to Laxmi Tantra, we should avoid livelihood by the means of:

Living off other people (begging, for example)
Loan sharking
Bribery
Living by a profession or industry that directly or indirectly causes suffering to other beings, such as the meat and leather industries, munitions industries, or brewing and selling alcohol or drugs.
Superintending mines and factories is also forbidden because it can lead to corruption, harshness, and exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. It also leads to the depredation of the environment through deforestation and pollution, which the Shastras consider sinful activities.

Right Effort: Right Effort means we consistently try to develop good qualities, practice virtuous karma, avoid negative krama, maintain positive states of mind and avoid negative states of mind. Because all the suffering comes from our negative actions and all happiness comes from our positive karma. So it is very important to make an effort to practice virtuous karma.

Right Mindfulness: As you all know, mindfulness is the practice of being fully present in the moment. We observe our body, our feelings, our thoughts, our emotions, with non judgmental awareness. We abandon attachment and aversion. All it means is that we are aware of what we are doing. No auto pilot. No instinctive reaction. We respond instead of reacting. To practice this, we ask ourselves, may be every hour, what am I doing at this moment? What is the world around me look like at this moment?

Right Concentration: We try to develop this every week. We try and single pointedly focus on the object of our meditation. With enough practice we can develop a stable mind by avoiding harmful thoughts and actions. When our mind is focused, we can develop tranquil abiding that can lead to liberation.

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.