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Question: Rinpoche, you mentioned tightening up our minds and toughening the edge of our awareness. Could you please say more to us about how we can do that?

Thrangu Rinpoche: Essentially the tough edge or sharp edge of awareness is the same thing as what is meant by effort in meditation. Sometimes when we meditate, we practice it and experience it as conscious relaxation of the mind into the meditative state. At other times meditation invloves a conscious and hard-headed refusal not to become distracted, as in the attitude, "I must not become distracted." At different times one should emphasize one or the other of these. In the situation where one needs to emphasize more effort, the one emphasizes a kind of sharpness of one's awareness, which is produced by this hard-headed intention, which is the refusal to space out.