Right Effort lies in developing the will power to change our habits of thought. The Buddha stressed the need for strenuous effort. Our difficulties derive from ignorance, he said, not sin, and can be confronted and overcome through techniques that can be taught if one makes the right effort to learn. It is not easy to develop virtues, to curb passions, to overcome deluded states of mind. Effective mind cultivation takes effort, commitment and persistent meditation.

    Right Mindfulness requires unremitting awareness applied to every thought, every word, every deed in order to keep one's mind in control of one's senses. There is a form of Buddhist meditation, vipssana, that specifically nurtures mindfulness.

    Right Concentration is, in short, right meditation for calming the mind.

MEDITATION

There are many different forms of meditation, among which are those practiced by the Christian monks of the Egyptian desert, by the Jains, the Sufis, the Hindu Yogins, Catholic monastics, Transcendental meditators, and, of course, Buddhist Meditation........

"Man sets out in single-hearted pursuit of satisfaction as if it actually represented a constant. Yet, in the Buddha's view, it was this very belief in the attainment of lasting happiness, in conventional human terms, that was the true source of suffering (dukkha). Man, by his unwillingness to accept what he interprets as life's failures to give him without stint whatever he desires, finds himself caught in an emotional trap of his own making. This trap is the product of his (belief in his) ego. It takes form from the self's insatiable appetites and delusions, its enormous blind unattainable desires, its never-satisfied craving or thirst (tanha). It is tanha which leads the individual to place a tacit demand on life which life by its very nature cannot fulfill.

    "How then can a man find peace in the midst of continuous blind striving and impermanence? There is only one way, and that way must teach the development of compassionate detachment and discernment: an ever-deepening awareness of the interdependence and relationship of the individual with the cosmos. As for a definite path to the development of such awareness, with its resultant dynamic tranquility, there is only one hope: directed meditation or constant mindfulness."     (*)

The type of meditation which most Buddhist laypersons practice is Samatha, the development of calm and concentration to focus and quieten the mind. The Buddha perceived this stilling of mind as a means to balanced behavior.

Stilling the mind is not easy. No greater evidence of the impermanence of things may be found than in the workings of the mind. Ordinarily, as Buddhists say, the mind jumps unceasingly and restlessly like a monkey in a cage. The mind flits around like a butterfly. As unrestrained and untamed as our dreams are, no less so is our mental stream of consciousness when we are awake.
The goal of Samatha meditation is to slow down the mental activities, to control the mental wanderings, to ignore sensory reactions of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

There are several forms of Samatha meditation. The Buddha recommended specific forms for specific types of personality - the greedy person, the angry person, the intelligent person, and so on - he even taught how the different types of personality can be identified. But the one form of Samatha he recommended to all persons was the breathing-in, breathing-out meditation.

This form of meditation is simple to do and simple to describe and is  covered in the Buddhism in Practice section of sukhi.com

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