When meditating how would you concentrate so that your mind doesnt wander?
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well first, make sure there is absolutely NO sound in the background. no kids, no tv, no music(unless its like ocean sounds or something). then just keep thinking "calm blue ocean" and visualize a calm blue ocean.
The Next step after you learn to focus on breathing and posture and stuff is to practice allot! then you can begin your journey towards enlightenment. Meditate on how none of the "answers" we are given to in life mean anything. Meditate on death and how its really the end to nothing. Meditate on how futile our human wants and needs are. Meditate on the human condition, we ALL need food water family love success etc.Meditate on how we are all the exact same THING. If you accept these truths you will accept reality. If you master your perception of these truths you will be enlightened. Before you know it you will be able to close your eyes and the world will cease to exist. You will meditate and and feel nothing but peace. Until you open your eyes... or die.
if you think about how you must concentrate while meditating, you will end up concentrating on concentrating and not end up meditating at all. you will develop the skill of letting your thoughts pass by, being detached and taking the role of someone who is witnessing but not participating. view your thoughts as though they are floating in a stream, past you and away into the distance. you will eventually become aware that you are not your thoughts, you have an independent self that can detach from the constant chatter of the mind.
in beginning meditation, you must continue to focus on breathing, if that is what helps you most. after this, the mind will naturally and spontaneously move to a spot of "non-thinking". as in.. dont force it. at the beginning its difficult but it takes practice and patience (most definitely).
good luck !
There are two things you can do. One is call up a mental image of something, like an image of the Buddha, and repeatedly work to bring it into clearer focus. Then once you can recall this image at will (even if not in clear focus,) you can imagine it being small (about the size of your thumb) and very heavy (like 1,000 pounds.) In fact, the Buddha prescribed different meditations to act as opponents to different problems. For example, to counteract mental busy-ness, one concentrates on the breath; but only until the mind settles, not on and on and on. To counteract hate, one meditates on lovingkindness. To counteract pride, one meditates on the temporariness of everything, including this life! And to counteract lust, one thinks over and over about the problems of sickness, aging and death - or the ugliness of the body and what it produces. These are just a couple of coarse examples and are analytical "meditations." Traditionally, meditation would be best translated as "familiarization," because you are seeking to create new habits of thought and actions and so forth, and intially, it has less to do with postures, candles, incense and cessation of discursive thought and more to do with actually thinking, over and over again about a selected topic. Slowly, you can begin to assert control over what you are thinking about all the time and gradually, with patience and perseverance begin to stop wasting your time on really petty stuff. You can do it and the last thing I would suggest is, right from the beginning, don't try and do these marathon sessions that hurt your legs, back, and make you overtired and confused. Too many of those and you will get sick to your stomach when you see your meditation cushion and will stop altogether! Better to start out with something good to think about, like a book by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, nothing too heavy. Read for five or ten minutes and then think about what you have read for five or ten minutes. If you can do this three times a day (or twice or once) and do it every day for a week (or two or three) or a month (or two or three) - then you will definitely see some progress and will be well on your way to being a master of meditation. Key thing is working on your knowledge (wisdom) and your meditation practice (method) at the same time. Just like a bird needs two wings to fly, you need to study and meditate. When all else fails, meditate on great compassion!
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