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Nourishing Seeds: Right Concentration through Emptiness and Signlessness
Today we begin with Right Concentration, the final factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, building on our practice of mindful breathing and the first three tetrads—form, feeling, and mental formation. In the realm of mental formations (51 categories in Thay’s tradition), the four exercises are:
- Recognize each mental formation by name—“Bonjour, tristesse,” “Good morning, jealousy.”
- Gladden positive formations by practicing Right Effort, inviting joy, love, compassion, and keeping them present.
- Concentrate on these wholesome seeds, nourishing them like guests in your living-room mind.
- Liberate formations—using mindfulness and concentration as lens and sunshine to transform afflictions.
Right Concentration deepens insight. Mindfulness helps you recognize and invite positive seeds; concentration holds and magnifies them until they transform suffering. Through mindfulness and concentration, we cultivate the insight (Right View) that burns away ignorance and brings true healing.
Thay then introduces three “doors of liberation” or concentrations:
• Emptiness (śūnyatā): seeing no separate self, touching the cosmos within each cell—empty of a separate entity yet full of inter-being.
• Signlessness: perceiving beyond appearances—recognizing the cloud in the rain, the ultimate in the historical, freeing us from clinging to form.
