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The Path of
Concentration & Mindfulness
by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Copyright © 1997 Thanissaro Bhikkhu
For free distribution only.
You may print copies of this work for your personal use.
You may re-format and redistribute this work for use on computers and computer
networks,
provided that you charge no fees for its distribution or use.
Otherwise, all rights reserved.
Adapted from a talk given at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center and
as part of the course, The Role of the Four Noble Truths, at the Barre
Center for Buddhist Studies, February, 1996.
Many people tell us that the Buddha taught two different types of meditation
-- mindfulness meditation and concentration meditation. Mindfulness meditation,
they say, is the direct path, while concentration practice is the scenic route
that you take at your own risk because it's very easy to get caught there and
you may never get out. But when you actually look at what the Buddha taught, he
never separates these two practices. They are both parts of a single whole.
Every time he explains mindfulness and its place in the path, he makes it clear
that the purpose of mindfulness practice is to lead the mind into a state of
Right Concentration -- to get the mind to settle down and to find a place where
it can really feel stable, at home, where it can look at things steadily and see
them for what they are.
Part of the "two practices" issue centers on how we understand the word
jhana, which is a synonym for Right Concentration. Many of us have heard
that jhana is a very intense trance-like state that requires intense staring and
shutting out the rest of the world. It sounds nothing like mindfulness at all.
But if you look in the Canon where the Buddha describes jhana, that's not the
kind of state he's talking about. To be in jhana is to be absorbed, very
pleasurably, in the sense of the whole body altogether. A very broad sense of
awareness fills the entire body. One of the images the Buddha used to describe
this state is that of a person kneading water into dough so that the water
permeates throughout the flour. Another is a lake in which a cool spring comes
welling up and suffuses the entire lake.
Now, when you're with the body as a whole, you're very much in the present
moment. You're right there all the time. As the Buddha says, the fourth jhana --
in which the body is filled with bright awareness -- is the point where
mindfulness and equanimity become pure. So there should be no problem in
combining mindfulness practice with the whole-body awareness that gets very
settled and still. In fact, the Buddha himself combines them in his description
of the first four steps of breath meditation: (1) being aware of long breathing,
(2) being aware of short breathing, (3) being aware of the whole body as you
breathe in and breathe out, and then (4) calming the sensation of the breath
within the body. This, as the texts tell us, is basic mindfulness practice. It's
also a basic concentration practice. You're getting into the first jhana --
Right Concentration -- right there, at the same time that you're practicing
Right Mindfulness.
To see how Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration help each other in the
practice, we can look at the three stages of mindfulness practice given in the
Foundations of Mindfulness Sutta. Take the body as an example. The first stage
is to keep focused on the body in and of itself, putting aside greed and
distress with reference to the world. What this means is taking the body as a
body without thinking about it in terms of what it means or what it can do in
the world. It could be either good or bad looking. It could be strong or weak.
It could be agile or clumsy -- all the issues we tend to worry about when we
think about ourselves. The Buddha says to put those issues aside.
Just be with the body in and of itself, sitting right here. You close your
eyes -- what do you have? There's the sensation of "bodiness" that you're
sitting with. That's your frame of reference. Try to stay with it. Keep bringing
the mind back to this sense of the body until it gets the message and begins to
settle down. In the beginning of the practice you find the mind going out to
grasp this or that, so you note it enough to tell it to let go, return to the
body, and hold on there. Then it goes out to grasp something else, so you tell
it to let go, come back, and latch onto the body again. Eventually, though, you
reach a point where you can actually grasp hold of the breath and you don't let
go, okay? You keep holding onto it. From that point on, whatever else that
happens to come into your awareness is like something coming up and brushing the
back of your hand. You don't have to note it. You stay with the body as your
basic frame of reference. Other things come and go, you're aware of them, but
you don't drop the breath and go grasping after them. This is when you really
have established the body as a solid frame of reference.
As you do this, you develop three qualities of mind. One is mindfulness
(sati). The term mindfulness means being able to remember, to keep something
in mind. In the case of establishing the body as a frame of reference, it means
being able to remember where you're supposed to be -- with the body -- and you
don't let yourself forget. The second quality, alertness (sampajañña),
means being aware of what is actually going on in the present. Are you with the
body? Are you with the breath? Is the breath comfortable? Simply notice what's
actually happening in the present moment. We tend to confuse mindfulness with
alertness, but actually they are two separate things: mindfulness means being
able to remember where you want to keep your awareness; alertness means being
aware of what's actually happening. The third quality, ardency (atappa),
means two things. One, if you realize that the mind has wandered off, you bring
it right back. Immediately. You don't let it wander around, sniffing the
flowers. Two, when the mind is with its proper frame of reference, ardency means
trying to be as sensitive as possible to what's going on -- not just drifting in
the present moment, but really trying to penetrate more and more into the subtle
details of what's actually happening with the breath or the mind.
When you have these three qualities focused on the body in and of itself, you
can't help but settle down and get really comfortable with the body in the
present moment. That's when you're ready for the second stage in the practice,
which is described as being aware of the phenomenon of origination and the
phenomenon of passing away. This is a stage where you're trying to understand
cause and effect as they happen in the present. In terms of concentration
practice, once you've got the mind to settle down, you want to understand the
interaction of cause and effect in the process of concentration so that you can
get it to settle down more solidly for longer periods of time in all sorts of
situations, on the cushion and off. To do this, you have to learn about how
things arise and pass away in the mind, not by simply watching them, but by
actually getting involved in their arising and passing away.
You can see this in the Buddha's instructions for dealing with the
hindrances. In the first stage, he says to be aware of the hindrances as they
come and go. Some people think that this is an exercise in "choiceless
awareness," where you don't try to will the mind in any direction, where you
simply sit and watch willy-nilly whatever comes into the mind. In actual
practice, though, the mind isn't yet ready for that. What you need at this stage
is a fixed point of reference for evaluating the events in the mind, just as
when you're trying to gauge the motion of clouds through the sky: You need to
choose a fixed point -- like a roof gable or a light pole -- at which to stare
so that you can get a sense of which direction and how fast the clouds are
moving. The same with the coming and going of sensual desire, ill will, etc., in
the mind: You have to try to maintain a fixed reference point for the mind --
like the breath -- if you want to be really sensitive to when there are
hindrances in the mind -- getting in the way of your reference point -- and when
there are not.
Suppose that anger is interfering with your concentration. Instead of getting
involved in the anger, you try simply to be aware of when it's there and when
it's not. You look at the anger as an event in and of itself -- as it comes, as
it goes. But you don't stop there. The next step -- as you're still working at
focusing on the breath -- is recognizing how anger can be made to go away.
Sometimes simply watching it is enough to make it go away; sometimes it's not,
and you have to deal with it in other ways, such as arguing with the reasoning
behind the anger or reminding yourself of the drawbacks of anger. In the course
of dealing with it, you have to get your hands dirty. You've got to try and
figure out why the anger is coming, why it's going, how you can get it out of
there, because you realize that it's an unskillful state. And this requires that
you improvise. Experiment. You've got to chase your ego and impatience out of
the way so that you can have the space to make mistakes and learn from them, so
that you can develop a skill in dealing with the anger. It's not just a question
of hating the anger and trying to push it away, or of loving the anger and
welcoming it. These approaches may give results in the short run, but in the
long run they're not especially skillful. What's called for here is the ability
to see what the anger is composed of; how can you take it apart.
One technique I like to use -- when anger is present and you're in a
situation where you don't immediately have to react to people -- is simply to
ask yourself in a good-natured way, "Okay, why are you angry?" Listen to what
the mind has to say. Then pursue the matter: "But why are you angry at that?
" "Of course, I'm angry. After all..." "Well, why are you angry at that?" If
you keep this up, the mind will eventually admit to something stupid, like the
assumption that people shouldn't be that way -- even though they blatantly
are that way -- or that people should act in line with your standards, or
whatever the mind is so embarrassed about that it tries to hide from you. But
finally, if you keep probing, it'll fess up. You gain a lot of understanding of
the anger that way, and this can really weaken its power over you.
In terms of the positive qualities like mindfulness, serenity, and
concentration, it's a similar sort of thing. First, you're aware of when they're
there and when they're not, and then you realize that when they're there it's
much nicer than when they're not. So you try to figure out how they come,
how they go. You do this by consciously trying to maintain that state of
mindfulness and concentration. If you're really observant -- and this is what
it's all about, being observant -- you begin to see that there are skillful ways
of maintaining the state without getting all tied up in failure or success in
doing it, without letting the desire for a settled state of mind actually get in
the way of the mind's settling down. You do want to succeed, but you need a
balanced attitude toward failure and success so that you can learn from them.
Nobody's keeping score or taking grades. You're here to understand for your own
sake. So this process of developing your foundation of mindfulness or developing
your frame of reference is not "just watching." It's more a participation in the
process of arising and passing away -- actually playing with the process -- so
that you can learn from experience how cause and effect work in the mind.
Once, when I was in college, I wrote home complaining about the food, and my
mother sent me a Julia Child cookbook. In the book was a section on dealing with
eggs in which she said that the sign of a really good cook is knowing eggs. And
so I took an egg out. You can watch an egg -- you can learn certain things just
by watching it, but you don't learn very much. To learn about eggs you have to
put them in a pan and try to make something out of them. If you do this long
enough you begin to understand that there are variations in eggs, and there are
certain ways that they react to heat and ways that they react to oil or butter
or whatever. And so by actually working with the egg and trying to make
something out of it, you really come to understand eggs. It's similar with clay:
you really don't know clay until you become a potter and actually try to make
something out of the clay.
And it's the same with the mind: unless you actually try to make something
out of the mind, try to get a mental state going and keep it going, you don't
really know your own mind. You don't know the processes of cause and effect
within the mind. There has to be a factor of actual participation in the
process. That way you can understand it. This all comes down to being observant
and developing a skill. The essence of developing a skill means two things. One,
you're aware of a situation as it is given and, two, you're aware of what you
put into it. When the Buddha talks about causation, he says that every situation
is shaped from two directions -- the causes coming in from the past and the
causes you're putting into the present. You need to be sensitive to both. If you
aren't sensitive to what you're putting into a situation, you'll never develop
any kind of skill. As you're aware of what you're doing, you also look at the
results. If something isn't right, you go back and change what you've done --
keeping at this until you get the results you want. And in the process, you
learn a great deal from the clay, the eggs, or whatever you're trying to deal
with skillfully.
The same holds true with the mind. Of course, you could learn something about
the mind by trying to get it into any sort of a state, but for the purpose of
developing really penetrating insight, a state of stable, balanced, mindful
concentration is the best kind of soufflé or pot you want to make with the mind.
The factors of pleasure, ease, and sometimes even rapture that arise when the
mind really settles down help you stay comfortably in the present moment, with a
low center of gravity. Once the mind is firmly settled there, you have something
to look at for a long period of time so that you can see what it's made up of.
In the typical unbalanced state of the mind, things are appearing and
disappearing too fast for you to notice them clearly. But as the Buddha notes,
when you get really skilled at jhana, you can step back a bit and really see
what you've got. You can see, say, where there's an element of attachment, where
there's an element of stress, or even where there's inconstancy within your
balanced state. This is where you begin to gain insight, as you see the natural
cleavage lines among the different factors of the mind, and in particular, the
cleavage line between awareness and the objects of awareness.
Another advantage to this mindful, concentrated state is that as you feel
more and more at home in it, you begin to realize that it's possible to have
happiness and pleasure in life without depending on things outside of yourself
-- people, relationships, approval from others, or any of the issues that come
from being part of the world. This realization helps pry loose your attachments
to things outside. Some people are afraid of getting attached to a state of
calm, but actually, it's very important that you get attached here, so that you
begin to settle down and begin to undo your other attachments. Only when this
attachment to calm is the only one left do you begin work on loosening it up as
well.
Still another reason why solid concentration is necessary for insight is that
when discernment comes to the mind, the basic lesson it will teach you is that
you've been stupid. You've held onto things even though deep down inside you
should have known better. Now, try telling that to people when they're hungry
and tired. They'll come right back with, "You're stupid, too," and that's the
end of the discussion. Nothing gets accomplished. But if you talk to someone who
has had a full meal and feels rested, you can broach all kinds of topics without
risking a fight. It's the same with the mind. When it has been well fed with the
rapture and ease coming from concentration, it's ready to learn. It can accept
your criticisms without feeling threatened or abused.
So. This is the role that concentration practice plays in this second stage
of mindfulness practice: It gives you something to play with, a skill to develop
so you can begin to understand the factors of cause and effect within the mind.
You begin to see the mind as just a flux of causes with their effects coming
back at you. Your ideas are part of this flux of cause and effect, your
emotions, your sense of who you are. This insight begins to loosen your
attachments to the whole process.
What finally happens is that the mind reaches a third level of mindfulness
practice where the mind comes to a state of perfect equilibrium -- where you've
developed this state of concentration, this state of equilibrium to the point
where you don't have to put anything more into it. In the Foundations of
Mindfulness Sutta this is described as simply being aware -- if you are using
the body as your frame of reference, being aware that "There is a body," just
enough for knowledge and mindfulness, without being attached to anything in the
world. Other texts call this the state of "non-fashioning." The mind reaches the
point where you begin to realize that all causal processes in the mind --
including the processes of concentration and insight -- are like tar babies. If
you like them, you get stuck; if you don't like them, you get stuck. So what are
you going to do? You have to get to the point where you're not really
contributing anything more to the present moment. You unravel your participation
in it. That's when things open up in the mind.
Many people want to jump right in and begin at this level of not adding
anything to the present moment, but it doesn't work that way. You can't be
sensitive to the subtle things the mind is habitually adding to the present
until you've consciously tried to alter what you're adding. As you get more and
more skilled, you get more sensitive to the subtle things you didn't realize you
were doing. You reach a point of disenchantment, where you realize that the most
skillful way of dealing with the present is to strip away all levels of
participation that cause even the slightest bit of stress in the mind. You start
dismantling the levels of participation that you learned in the second stage of
the practice, to the point where things reach equilibrium on their own, where
there's letting go and release.
So it's important to realize that there are these three stages to mindfulness
practice, and to understand the role that deliberate concentration practice
plays in taking you through the first two. Without aiming at Right
Concentration, you can't develop the skills needed for understanding the mind --
for it's in the process of mastering the skill of mindful concentration that
true insight arises. Just as you don't really understand a herd of cattle until
you've successfully herded them -- learning from all your failures along the way
-- you can't get a sense of all the cause-and-effect currents running through
the mind until you've learned from your failures and successes in getting them
to gather in a state of concentrated mindfulness and mindful concentration. And
only when you've really understood and mastered these currents -- the currents
of craving that cause suffering and stress, and the currents of mindfulness and
concentration that form the Path -- can you let them go and find freedom from
them.
Revised:
Sun 19-Oct-2003
With thanks to
Thanissaro Bhikkhu and Access to Insight
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