How Can One Attain Preparatory Concentration (anāgamya-samādhi)?

If you want to attain preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi) and maintain it, in daily life your mind must be focused on what you are currently doing—and on the main matters at that; small and trivial matters do not require too much attention. When doing unimportant things, you should focus on your own mind, knowing external affairs only vaguely; there is no need to manage them or let them weigh on your mind. Only by letting something go can you gain something. If everything weighs on your mind, you will excel at nothing, and in the end accomplish nothing. You must train yourself to be able to free yourself from the fetters of trivial matters anytime and anywhere, and concentrate on the main matters; only when the mind has no sidelong glances can meditative concentration arise.

If a person wants to succeed in this life, they must learn to focus, choosing the main things to do and devoting less attention to useless things. Once meditative concentration has been cultivated, the wisdom for doing things will increase, and thereafter whatever you do can be done well. If you are interested in everything and put your mind into everything, although you may possibly know a bit of everything, you cannot master anything. Mastery is far more important and meaningful than mere familiarity; mastery represents wisdom, and with wisdom there is nothing that cannot be accomplished—including the matter of becoming a Buddha.

Modern people are rather greedy: interested in everything, wanting to know everything, wanting to participate in everything. They seek too much and pay attention to too much, and the result is often that they accomplish nothing and gain nothing. Such is the person who does not know how to choose what to take up and what to let go. If you want to gain, you must seek single-mindedly, and you must let go of many unnecessary people and things; only then can your wishes be fully fulfilled. A person has only two hands, yet wants to grab everything; the result is like a black bear snapping off ears of corn—snapping off one ear and dropping another under its arm—and in the end it is fortunate if it ends up with just one ear of corn.

Check for yourself how much content you follow in the various apps you have downloaded, and you can judge whether you can actually cultivate meditative concentration, whether your mind can have samādhi. Even if you followed those things your whole life, so what? What would it avail you to know all the novel, miscellaneous happenings in the world? What could you gain? What do you really want in this life?

There are also people who have studied Buddhism for ten or twenty years yet still have not found a Buddhadharma that suits them. They come into contact with every dharma and study every dharma, appearing very erudite, but in fact they have learned nothing and understood no dharma at all. They just bump about aimlessly, here and there, never finding a destination—how pitiable!

My habit since childhood has always been to focus on my own mind, always thinking about what was on my mind, uninterested in external people and affairs. Many things happening around me I sometimes did not even know about; I seemed a bit stiff and old-fashioned. But I was very steady, and rather mature in my thinking—even more mature than adults—having my own view on everything rather than drifting with the vulgar current. At home I did not worry about anything; no matter what the crowd around me talked about, I rarely joined in. During New Year and festivals I would hide in a corner hugging a book. I was not asked to do any chores at home, only to study. It was only after I left home as a monastic that I learned to cook and other such chores, and once I learned many things, because I did them with full concentration, I did them quite well.

Since childhood I have also had the habit of solitude. I never sat around giggling and chatting idly and boundlessly with others; I always kept to myself as much as possible, and whatever I did, I preferred to do alone. In those days I liked walking. After dinner in the evening, I would go out and walk for about an hour at a very fast pace—not a stroll; others could not keep up with me, because I did not like having anyone beside me disturbing my thoughts. My mind was always focused on thinking about certain things, paying no attention to the people and events around me, completely immersed in my own thoughts. If someone else wanted to follow along, I would, with a few twists and turns, shake them off. I never took walks with anyone, because there was nothing much to talk about. Only if I needed to discuss something with someone, or needed to do some persuasion work on a person, would I slow my pace and talk with them; otherwise I always walked alone, quickly, at a pace no one could match. In fact, this itself is cultivating samādhi: not wasting time and energy on meaningless people and affairs, excluding distracting thoughts, and focusing on one's own mind.