Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thubten Chodron introduces the fifth far-reaching attitude of Buddhism: concentration or single-pointedness of mind. Unlike the analytical meditations covered so far, this guided meditation uses stabilizing meditation to develop a calm, unwavering focus that will eventually combine with analytical insight. Using a visualized image of Śākyamūni Buddha as the meditation object, Chodron walks through the visualization in careful detail: Buddha’s golden luminous form seated on a lotus, sun and moon discs, his posture, expressions, and symbolic hand positions. She then guides practitioners through the meditation technique itself, emphasizing the mental factors of mindfulness and introspective alertness—holding the image while gently checking whether the mind remains focused or has drifted into distraction or drowsiness. She concludes with practical advice: start with very short daily sessions of one or two minutes, increase gradually, and cultivate faith in the method to build the motivation needed for sustained practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 44 GM.mp3
UUID: 8c02581f-b0bb-4674-b37f-94b004545ad1
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~706
The fifth far-reaching attitude is the far-reaching attitude of concentration. Until now, all of the meditations that we’ve been doing have been analytic meditations designed to help us develop understanding. With the far-reaching attitude of concentration, we don’t do analytic meditation, but instead we do stabilizing meditation in order to develop single pointedness of mind. So this is a different type of meditation that is eventually combined together with the analytical meditation. And then we get the union of calm abiding and special insight.
But for right now, let’s just do a little bit of the stabilizing meditation to develop our concentration. There’s many objects upon which we can meditate to develop concentration. One is the breath. But here, we’re going to use the visualized image of the Buddha as our object of concentration. So in the space in front of you, a few feet away, imagine Śākyamūni Buddha with his body made of golden radiating light.
He’s seated upon an open lotus flower and flat discs of the sun and the moon. So the whole visualization is made of light. Very brilliant, very beautiful. And so we first go over the details of the visualization, and then we’ll place our concentration on it. So the Buddha is sitting in a cross legged position, and his right hand is on his right knee in the earth touching position.
And his left hand is in his lap holding an alms bowl filled with nectar. He’s wearing the robes of a monk, and he has long earlobes and a very, very beautiful expression on his face. Long narrow eyes that are open and looking at you with complete acceptance. Hundred percent acceptance. No judgment.
And so whatever image you get of the Buddha after remembering the details of what he looks like, then focus your attention single pointedly on that. So that means you have to invigorate the mental factor of mindfulness that’s able to hold the object to meditation in such a way that you don’t get distracted. And every so often have another factor of mindfulness called introspective alertness arise. And this is one corner of your mind that just checks to see if you’re still focused on the image of the Buddha or if you’ve gotten distracted or dull minded. So if the introspective alertness finds that you’re still focused on the Buddha, then continue because your mindfulness is still active.
If you find that you’ve gotten distracted to another object, then bring your attention back to the image of the Buddha. Sometimes you have to bring it back repeatedly. If your introspective alertness finds that your mind is a little bit dull, then make the visualization very bright. And also check your posture and see if your eyes are just a little bit open so some light comes into them. That also helps to eliminate the drowsiness.
Okay. So first, review the details of the visualization and then place your mindfulness on that. And then hold that single pointedly. Really let your mind merge with the image of the Buddha as much as you can. And once in a while, check with introspective alertness to see if you’re still concentrating or not.
Whatever image of the Buddha you have, be satisfied with that. So just get the details as clearly as you can and be satisfied with that and focus your mind on whatever degree of clarity of the visualization that you have. It’s very helpful to do this meditation even for one or two minutes every day. Short sessions are better so that you stay focused. Sometimes we have a little bit of difficulty getting ourselves to the meditation seat.
Our mind is a bit lazy. And so in that case, then it’s helpful to develop faith and confidence in the meditation method by knowing the benefits and results that come from developing concentration. And then that helps us to have an aspiration to do the meditation, to practice, which leads to enthusiastic perseverance. And that in turn makes our mind very flexible and serviceable so that we’re able to concentrate for increasingly longer periods of time. So you just start with very short periods of time, and then can slowly increase them.