Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

The Concentration Algorithm

With Toby Sola recorded on May 4, 2025.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

Discover a “concentration algorithm” that transforms your practice. Instead of fighting distractions, this approach teaches you to work with them skillfully.

When your concentration wavers, notice what captured your attention, then make that distraction your new meditation object. This process reveals two valuable insights: first, that any sensory experience can serve as a meditation anchor beyond just the breath; and second, it helps you identify which objects your mind naturally gravitates toward, making sustained concentration more accessible in future sessions.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Norman Blair

    Settling Into Your Body In Meditation

    Finding a comfortable body posture when meditating is a crucial element in our practice. We can use our bodies as a way of experiencing change and impermanence. In this session, we will be looking at ways to make our bodies comfortable for meditation – both standing (if appropriate for your body) and sitting. We will examine various postures and do various techniques that can be helpful for meditating.

    Read More

  • Wiebke Pausch

    Fierce & Tender: The Dance of Self-Compassion

    True Self-Compassion is more than just gentle comfort; it is a dynamic balance of nurturing care and protective, motivating strength. While the tender side soothes our pain, the fierce dimension provides the courage to stand up for our needs and take…

    Read More

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of Mar 11, 2024

    This week’s topic is “To Be on the Road Without Leaving Home”. Zen Master Hakuin reveals an apparent tension between movement and stillness in this statement. What may the road refer to? What is called home? Sophie Boyer will lead our Daily Meditations this week, inviting us to engage with this paradoxical dynamic. We’ll discover that stability and ground can become more spacious in every situation, every experience, and every condition. How it is possible to discover, or re-discover, home … endlessly.

    Read More

  • Dave Smith

    Liberation through the Heart (Citta Vimmuti)

    Most people associate Dharma practice with the concept of Wisdom. Here, the idea is that we need to “know” something that we don’t already know. For English thinking minds this can become very problematic and can turn our practice into a cognitive or intellectual endeavor. With the earliest teachings of the Dharma we see that…

    Read More

  • Can love reveal ultimate reality?

    We know the cost to the reality of life through deprivation of love.

    Science has eliminated love from its analysis of reality.

    We cannot know ultimate reality though highlighting the mind and dismissing the heart or vice-versa.

    The Buddha made frequent reference to metta with its three-fold application of deep love, kindness or friendship.

    This talk will explore the relationship of love to ultimate reality.

    Read More

  • Frank Ostaseski

    Tonight the Subject is Love

    Love is the essential quality needed for the journey through life. The heart’s desire for deep connection fuels the journey, inspires and deepens our practice. This is why at some point we stop practicing to get anywhere, or to achieve anything… we just practice because we love it. Link to the YouTube video that we were…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of October 18, 2021

    This week’s theme is: The Abundant Middle-Way.

    The Buddha in his last steps of awakening turned away from austerities and the practiced hardships he had endured. He did not turn back to the indulgences of his youth, but uncovered a kind and sensitive middle-way between a sense of self-importance and self-negation. The awakened one then invited others to a way of living between common extremes of views, states, and habitual actions.

    This week we will walk the path of peace supporting the deep well-being and boundless heart of the middle-way.

    Read More