Wisdom Wide and Deep
Page 21
Each meditation subject has a certain range and effect on consciousness. A meditator who is skilled in the range has developed a proficiency to take an array of subjects to their highest level of absorption. All meditation subjects are not equal; the different characteristics of the objects permit distinct levels of concentration. For example, mindfulness with breathing may effectively be used to attain the first, second, third, and fourth jhānas. The thirty-two body parts, skeleton, and repulsive perceptions, on the other hand, cannot surmount the first jhāna, because sustaining the concept of the unattractiveness of the specific object depends upon the directing (vitakka) and sustaining (vicāra) functions. The kasiṇas are expansive and each one (with the exception of limited space) can effectively attune consciousness to the first four jhānas, and through their removal they provide an entrance into the four immaterial abidings. Consciousness absorbed in loving-kindness is immeasurable, yet it cannot surmount the third jhāna since happiness (sukha) is intrinsic to loving-kindness. When emanating equanimity (upekkhā) toward all beings as the meditation practice, the mind can only enter the fourth jhāna, since the dominance of equanimity prevents the intensification of rapture (pīti) and happiness (sukha) that characterize the lower three states.
8. Skill in resolution (abhinīhāra kusala). Our intentions move our minds. Skillful resolution employs clear and conscious decisions to raise the mind from the first jhāna to the second jhāna, from second to third, from third to fourth, and then to remove the realm of material perceptions and abide absorbed by immaterial perceptions. Resolving to remove or enhance mental factors, you develop the skill to make controlled and tidy shifts between various objects and levels of jhāna. When you have developed skill in resolve, your intentions manifest quickly, easily, and without fuss. Some meditators must generate strong determination to lift a sluggish or clumsy mind toward subtler states. Other meditators will need determination to slow the pace of their progression to prevent uncontrolled sliding between jhānas, inhibit an instinctive rush through the attainments, and resist the seductive lure of higher attainments. Through resolve you stabilize each attainment, train the mind to move according to the determination, and gain mastery at each level of jhāna before aspiring for more sublime abidings.
TABLE 10.1
Jhāna Potential of Meditation Subjects
MEDITATION SUBJECT JHĀNA POTENTIAL
Breath First, second, third, fourth jhānas
Four elements Neighborhood or momentary concentration
Thirty-two parts of the body Access to jhāna
Ten kasiṇas
White, dark-colored (nīla), yellow, red, earth, water, fire, wind, light, limited space
First, second, third, fourth jhānas
Immaterial jhānas:
Infinite space
Infinite consciousness
Nothingness
Neither-perception-nor-
nonperception
Base of infinite space
Base of infinite consciousness
Base of nothingness
Base of neither-perception-
nor-nonperception
Brahmaviharas:
Loving-kindness
Compassion
Appreciative joy
Equanimity
First, second, third jhānas
First, second, third jhānas
First, second, third jhānas
Fourth jhāna
Six reflections Access to jhāna
Repulsive corpses First jhāna
Death reflection Access to jhāna
9. Skill in thoroughness (sakkaccakāri kusala). How full and thorough is your endeavor? Are you careful and attentive to your concentration throughout the day? Have you created a lifestyle that supports concentration and reduces needless distractions? Are you willing to simplify your life—from time to time reduce worldly activities, minimize writing and reading, avoid trivial chatter and excessive conversation, and practice celibacy? You make many choices in daily life and on retreat—notice how these choices affect your practice. Whatever you must do to fulfill your social duties, care for your health, and meet economic obligations, do them while keeping your meditation practice in the forefront of your concern. At all times, and in all places, know where you are placing your attention and consider the effects of that object on the quality of your mind. If you notice that you dwell in anxious worry when driving to work each day, make a point of focusing on the mirrors, road, steering wheel, sensations of sitting, and present experience of driving. If you notice that you are unmindful in the latrine, take extra care to be attentive and composed. When you are taking time for intensive practice, observe where your mind dwells between the sitting meditations. Notice the effect that perceptions have on your mind and trust you can make wise choices about what to notice and what to think about.
10. Skill in persistence (sātacca kusala). It takes time to learn these methods. Continuity and persistence is needed. If you want to boil water but take the pot off the stove every few minutes, the water will never get hot enough to boil. Similarly, to build a momentum of concentration and mindfulness, you must persist in your practice, tenaciously nurturing your connection with the meditation object. Frequent breaks—to relax in the sun, communicate your great insights to others, or write that novel you’ve been wanting to start—will not support jhāna. Nor will waking up late, skipping morning meditation, or going to bed at the first sign of boredom and weariness. Continuity of effort and enduring persistence are needed to support a lifetime of practice.
11. Skill in suitability (sappāya kusala). A skilled builder will have many kinds of drill bits designed for making large or small holes in concrete, metal, or wood. A professional chef does not use the same knife to open a pumpkin, slice a strawberry, carve a radish, and debone a chicken. Although all drills make holes and all knives cut, the builder and the chef will choose the most effective tool for the selected task.
Skill in the suitability of objects is the ability to choose the appropriate object, at the right time, for the specific purpose at hand. Starting with the physical reference point of the breath offers a convenient entrance to this system that quickly dispels distraction in a daily meditation. Repulsive meditations can be especially helpful for abandoning lustful fantasies, while the recollection of the Buddha can be used to inspire faith. Loving-kindness might be the ideal meditation subject if ill will, harsh judgments, or irritation torment the mind. The white, fire, and light kasiṇas produce the brightest light to effectively illuminate refined matter. The base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception is too subtle to support every kind of insight contemplation, but might free you from subtle attachments. Sometimes the coarseness of repulsive objects brings quick and strong absorption, sparked by dispassion and sustained by urgency. Yet, at other times, the agitation of the lower jhānas disrupts the process and you may prefer to dwell mostly in the higher states.
Each jhāna can be used as the basis for insight meditation. Each object, however, has unique attributes that produce different degrees of brightness, seclusion, and limberness of mind. As you progress systematically through this system and learn the qualities related to each object and attainment, you will be able to apply the most suitable tool for your purpose.
The Buddha aptly described the well-concentrated mind as “fit for work.”171 With proficiency in these eleven essential skills, your concentration will be strong and stable; your mind will be supple and quick. Concentrated and balanced, you will be capable of directing your attention to penetrate the subtle nature of things.
SECTION III
Discerning Ultimate Realities
CHAPTER 11
Concepts and Reality: Penetrating the Illusion of Compactness
Perceiving what can be expressed through concepts,
Beings take their stand on what is expressed.
Not fully understanding the expressed,
They come under the bondage of Death.
Understanding
what is expressed,
The peaceful one delights in the peaceful state.
Standing on Dharma, clearly knowing,
One freely makes use of concepts
But no more enters into the range of concepts.
—THE ITIVUTTAKA172
AN ABILITY TO CONCEPTUALIZE experience and to compare a current experience to a past one is a normal capacity of a healthy, dynamic, well-functioning mind. We apply concepts to our perceptions to make sense of the daily barrage of sensory data. We compare a current predicament to previous encounters in order to make decisions. We remember things via concepts and we learn by making comparisons; it is a regular part of how we interact with sensory input. Indeed, it is necessary for our survival as higher organisms on this earth. However, this conceptualizing process can also be reductive; our concepts often suppress insight and distort a truer perception of reality. Meditation examines a subtle proposition—that things exist in a mode radically different than the way we usually conceive them to be. For instance, the body is often considered to be an independent, enduring form, when it is actually a network of ever-changing interrelated processes. As the Buddha succinctly stated, “In whatever way we conceive, the fact is other than that.”173 Concepts are merely mental constructions—they are useful, but limited and inaccurate.
Comparisons are always relative—something is “long” only as conceived in relation to something shorter. Similarly, measurements such as big and small, high and low, and success and failure are relative concepts. Since we cannot compare things of different classes—like the sight of a rabbit with the sound of rain on a roof, or the color green with an aspiration of compassion—we habitually reduce an immediate sensory encounter to a concept and then relate that concept to other concepts. For example, when we see a black color and hear a certain cawing sound, we might identify the visual and auditory encounter as a perception of a crow. Understanding that there is a crow in the field, we might compare the bird to another kind of bird that is twittering in a nearby tree, or relate the presence of the crow to a memory of previous visits of crows to that field. This ability to conceptualize serves as a survival strategy, helping us negotiate the rapidly changing field of sensory impressions that might otherwise degenerate into overwhelming and chaotic encounters with the world. By transforming perceptions into conceptual comparisons, the mind can quickly distinguish a dangerous threat from a welcome refuge. The formation of mental concepts, however, also has the effect of constructing a world of ideas that people tend to wrongly identify as their personal reality.
When beginning meditators experience physical twinges or discomfort during their sittings, they usually squirm because a habitual fear of pain follows on the heels of the sensation. In such a circumstance it can be useful to ask yourself if you are agitated by the present feelings of pressure, tingling, burning, and prickling sensations, or by an imagined future of agony and disability. When you can open to the basic fact of unpleasant sensations in the present moment, you may discover that they are not as dreadful as those imagined scenarios. When concepts proliferate, you forget they are merely mental constructions and take them to be the thing itself. This limits and distorts your perception of reality.
The Comparing Mind
Sit quietly and observe your mind; reflect on the thoughts that arose today. Make a list of all your thoughts that are essentially comparisons; include ranking, judging, and assessing thoughts. Do you compare yourself with others or rate your performance against memories of how you functioned in youth? Do you compare the weather that you hope will occur on the day that you scheduled a picnic with the wind and sun as it is actually appearing? Do you assess your present mood against ideal standards? Note how frequently comparison occurs as a feature of your mental life. Are those assessments verifiable? Do you know them to be true?
If you believe your concepts are real, you will dwell confused. I usually consider myself short, for instance. But recently I was walking with an elderly friend whose head barely approached my shoulders. I experienced an oddly unfamiliar feeling—I had the rare impression of being tall. So, am I tall or am I short? Comparisons, always relative, change with the situation. To the extent that you base an identity on characteristics defined through comparison, you will be disconnected from the truth of things.
TIDES OF CONCEIVING
The Buddha referred to “tides of conceiving”174 that may wash over us when we don’t perceive the reality of things. How might you be swept away by concepts, stories, assumptions, and imaginings moment after moment, hour after hour, day after day? When mindfulness is weak we stay at a surface recognition of things and don’t really know the things themselves. Once concept-forming is activated, the conceptual mode of recognition dominates, overshadowing the possibility of a fresh perspective and reinforcing the rut of habit, prejudice, and assumption. You may have a superficial perception of an object—something impinges on the senses and you name it as rock, person, shoe, or glass. If you examined the encounter more closely, however, you would find an infinite number of more fundamental perceptions: opacity, shape, attention, odor, growth, disintegration, one-pointedness, energy, and so on. Similarly, when you treat a relationship as permanent, consider a mental state as an enduring source of personal gratification, or view a material object as possessable, you might hold to the concept and miss the reality. This is unwise attention.
Disciplines such as science and art look beyond presumptive concepts. A physicist will examine patterns in the motion of objects to understand the function of unseen gravitational forces and magnetic fields. An impressionist painter may try to dislodge habitual object-oriented perspectives by illustrating the effects of light rather than the contours of objects. Meditation practice also invites us to look deeper than conventional reality, to see beyond mental constructs, to discern the subtle properties of what you perceive, and to investigate the conceptualizing functions of mind.
BREAKING DOWN COMPACTNESS OF CONCEPTS
The meditative discernment of extremely subtle elements of matter and mind, which will be introduced in the chapters that follow, is designed to deconstruct limiting assumptions. A false sense of solidity or compactness is often attributed to things, concepts, and groups. The careful meditative discernment of the ultimate constituents of matter and mind, as the hallmark of this approach, deconstructs the compactness of concepts in four specific areas: (1) the compactness of continuity (santatighana), (2) the compactness of mass (samūhaghana), (3) the compactness of function (kiccaghana), and (4) the compactness of object (ārammaṇaghana). These misperceptions only arise when you do not see phenomena carefully.175
A Profound Presence
Narrative thought has its foundation in the idea of time—past, present, and future. When a memory arises of last night’s baseball game, it is only a concept arising in the present—there is no yesterday and no baseball game. You might feel excitement as you remember the home run or disappointment when you remember that your favorite batter struck out. But the past exists only as a concept that occurs in the present. It has no reality beyond a momentary mental impression. Similarly, you can become ensnared in anticipation, planning, fantasy, anxiety, and worry regarding future possibilities. Once you create a concept of past or future, you then respond to the narrative—living within the story and missing your present and immediate life. Notice when you anticipate future results or seek sanctuary in ruminations over past events. When you become aware of the wandering mind, you have an opportunity to disentangle your attention from the web of concept and reconnect with your meditation object or a simple perception in the present moment.
1. The compactness of continuity (santatighana). Often, we do not look closely at experience. A cursory glance is frequently enough for us to identify the object, trigger a conceptual comprehension of an experi-ence, bring forth a socially appropriate response from the storehouse of conditioned patterns, and get on with the day. Easily deceived by the rapidity of change, the mind tends to stop at
a superficial recognition and cease investigating. When a performer twirls a lit torch, the viewer sees a ring of fire even though there is no substantial ring. The moment that the viewer applies the concept “circle” to the sight of the whirling torch, that concept can overshadow the momentary and constantly changing positions of the light. In this way, the concept obscures the potential for insight into the impermanent and insubstantial nature of things.
When a film is pulled frame by frame across a path of light, movie viewers see a series of rapidly appearing and disappearing images on the screen that produce the illusion of a motion picture. Viewers interpret the characters as moving, but is this really the case? What is actually moving? A similar process of illusion occurs for us outside the theater when the mind blurs the ending of each incremental bit of sensory data with the beginning of the next bit and, thereby, weaves a coherent experience out of what are actually many momentary parcels of cognitive data. Conceptual interpretations offer efficient means for summarizing a barrage of sensory data, but in meditation you will carry out a more careful inquiry in order to understand the true nature of experience.
Look into your sensory experience. Is there anything that is not changing? Try a little experiment. Stand up and take a few steps. Now ask yourself, what moved? On a conventional level you might say that you moved your body from one past position in the room to a different present position in the room—you were sitting over there before and now you are standing over here. But can you take a step in the past or in the future? Is the material body that was previously sitting the same material body that is now standing and walking? When we do not perceive the distinctly momentary nature of phenomena, we use concepts to construct a sense of continuity through experiences and then we fabricate an enduring self who experiences them. All the tiny parcels of mental and material phenomena blur together when we don’t look carefully and so we assume that experiences continue and persist. In the extreme, we might assume that they are permanent.