by Bill Morgan
The first tranquility game has this invitation to the heart as its aim. Below is a version I often use myself.
TRANQUILITY GAME: INVITING THE HEART
The first quality to invite is calm, which is a challenge for many of us. I was often quite restless; the wild energies of my mind felt like feral horses. Many years ago I would try to overcome initial agitation with willpower. Having seen the futility of that approach, today I proceed to play a game in the service of evoking relaxation. Sometimes I include horses in my visualization:
OK, a little speedy and stressed this morning, distracted. How to settle these ponies down? I bring imagery to mind in support of this and evoke the following scene.
Maybe the horses are hungry or thirsty; let’s find some water and tall grass over here in the shade of this big tree. Slow down—that’s right. Drink some cool water in the shade. Easy does it.
My breath begins to slow down and become smooth in response to these words and imagery. I allow my attention to notice details of the horses, the tree, and the brook. Settling is a gradual process, and I know that trying to narrow the attention too much or limiting it to just a small patch of the scene will likely create more agitation. I stay with this until my energy level is settled significantly.
How do we quantify “significantly”? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being extremely lethargic and 10 being the most agitated and restless you have ever been, what number represents your energy level at this moment? Rensis Likert, a twentieth-century psychologist, discovered that we can make this self-assessment without thinking about it and that the numbers reported correlate, more or less, with the experience of others. My 4 is relatively close to your 4 because we all know the ends of the scale, extreme lethargy and extreme restlessness.
My recommendation is that you stay with the game of settling until you are energetically in the proximity of 4. That’s calm enough that you can feel relaxation in the body and relief in the mind, so that the mind is more inclined to settle down a little, but not so calm that you are drifty and dreamy: calm with backbone, not calm like mush. Without this level of settling, what follows will be a struggle. So find 4, and begin to acquire a feel for it; this is an important dimension of creating your holding environment.
I generally attempt to stay with this process for at least five minutes.
Next you want to expand the emotional connection and investment, starting with playfulness or delight. The intention here is to increase the energy level somewhat—move the 4 to 5. Don’t let this bring restlessness or distraction back in. Instead, the uplifting quality of delight is what you are inviting.
One particular morning, I imagined I was eight years old, on the way to a baseball game with my father, feeling the anticipation of going to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox for the first time. I stayed with this memory for four minutes, until a feeling of gladness arose and comingled with calm.
Gratitude is next in the ingredients of the holding environment, and this is near at hand. I reflected on how much my father supported me in countless ways, and I only needed to allow a few precious memory snapshots to float by to access this heart quality. Three minutes.
Kindness or friendliness toward myself is next. A Polaroid snapshot of my sister and me, holding hands, all dressed up, taken on the front steps on a Sunday morning soon after a poignant loss, came into view. Sweeter now with time. Three minutes.
Wonder is the final emotional ingredient in the holding environment. I brought to mind my very first memory, of awakening in the middle of the night in my crib, hearing the heating pipes creaking, and experiencing the first sense of a separate self beginning to form. Then, at five years old, experiencing the miracle of bringing a seemingly dead shrub back to life by faithfully watering it day after day. Then the images faded, and the wonder of this breathing in the present moment and the awareness of it. Six minutes.
The mind was supple by then and bright; the breath was soft; the heart, appreciative and open. This entire meditation took twenty minutes. Time is not the important factor here. Sometimes I take more time, sometimes less: as long as it takes for calm and the heart qualities to show up in meditation. My state of mind is then settled, refreshed, enlivened. It is tranquil and engaged. Why wouldn’t I want to do this again tomorrow?
A template is embedded in the above game, an order in which qualities of mind and heart are coaxed and invited. But there is room for an infinite variety of explorations, room for creative use of imagery, memory, and personal meaning making. The idea is to get the heart involved. Finding your own way to do this is crucial.
I can’t say enough how important it is to simply stay with engaging the heart, no matter how long it takes. I have spent many a meditation session just on this game. Almost always, when I check in at the beginning of a meditation session, I find that I can’t settle, and the heart is not available. In the old days, I just tried to force it, which led to futility and self-recrimination. No longer.
If I find myself disconnected from the heart when I sit down to meditate, I take it as an opportunity to change course and cultivate the unification of mind and heart. I reflect a bit, consider what might be useful, and then use my imagination and memory to evoke what needs to be evoked. I know there is no point in rushing it. Feeling can’t be coerced, only invited. If the entire session is utilized in this way, it is time well spent. The need was acknowledged and addressed, and I can now move forward in the next part of my day in more harmony.
As we move deeper into tranquil concentration, the groundwork has been laid.
QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION
There seems to be more roaming around in your approach, more permission for that. I like the idea, but I am so undisciplined that I worry I will just wander.
Knowing what we are doing and why we are doing it is critical. Yes, there is more permission, more leeway to explore and discover what is most effective. But the direction toward balanced continuity is always predominant. A frequent problem is the overemphasis upon continuity at the expense of tranquility and balance. For short periods it is possible to focus intensely in a continuous and precise manner. But this can’t be sustained. This approach soon creates tension, and the organism wants to expel this endeavor as if it were a foreign object. For many meditators this leads to the misplaced notion that one needs to try harder to sustain continuity. A vicious, self-defeating cycle ensues. Excessive pressure to focus is the bane of Western meditators. The Buddha used the metaphor of tuning the strings of a lute. If they are either too tight or too loose, the instrument will not produce the desired sound. So too in meditation. It is possible to be “too loose,” but this is not generally the case for Western practitioners.
There is a lot of emphasis upon setting things up properly, which requires patience. I have so little of that, and I like to push through obstacles. How should I handle that?
Appreciating small gains in the moment and taking the focus away from future, idealistic goals—these represent huge and important shifts in orientation. A famous yogi once remarked that idealism is a form of violence. That may be dramatic, but it highlights the fact that setting the bar unrealistically high keeps us from appreciating what is happening. This is a major and largely unrecognized contributor to dissatisfaction. We are creating meditation one small step at a time. Has anyone ever produced sweet music without first emitting a thousand squeaky sounds? Relax, smile, savor, and gradually transmute that pushy energy into a gently persevering and long-enduring mind.
11
MAKING CONCENTRATION ACCESSIBLE
TRADITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS for developing concentration are pithy, to say the least, and this can inadvertently fuel an internal conflict for meditators in the West. Take, for example, these paraphrased classic instructions that Pa Auk recommends:
1. Stay with the flow of sensations of the breath at the nose tip.
Nothing here suggests that this might be challenging and that one should anticipate struggles.
2. When th
e mind wanders, immediately return to the flow of sensations of the breath.
That’s all there is. To make matters more frustrating, the immediate fruit of this practice is highlighted:
3. Soon the mind will become calm and steady!
This only intensifies the dilemma, since there is nothing like this experience on the horizon for most of us. Instead, this can easily become an exhausting dualistic struggle, as the noble part of the self attempts to overthrow the impure, oppositional, laggard self. Worse, one looks around the room and imagines that everyone else is getting it and that he or she is the only failure at this practice, which increases a sense of isolation and failure. Who wants to share this abject sense of failure with the teacher? No one wants to be in the bottom third of the class. Is it any wonder that a few seasoned meditators, struggling with a sense of incompetence and frustration, left Pa-Auk’s retreat early? So we are again left with the question of what Western students of meditation need in order to avert the struggle and disappointment so prevalent here.
For deeper tranquil concentration to be accessible for Westerners, I have found the following two practices to be indispensable.
1. Maintaining the holding environment
The first is the determination to create and maintain a holding environment for meditation, regardless of the instructions you receive. This involves both calming and getting affectively engaged, as explored in chapter 10. I have learned through painful trials that not settling, not getting the heart involved, leads to stress and self-doubt. The Pa-Auk retreat posed one of the greatest challenges to my newly discovered perspective because, despite moments of doubt, I did not stay with the instructions but met my needs for calming and inviting the heart to participate in various ways. It spared me much additional suffering.
Please first allow yourself to settle, to trust that that is what is needed, and give yourself full permission to do that.
2. Momentary concentration
Once a tranquil state has been attained and the heart aroused, momentary concentration practice encourages the attention to alight on multiple objects momentarily and sequentially. In this practice there is no one specific object or anchor for the attention. Instead, you permit it to alight on one object after another in succession. A favorite metaphor for this practice is derived from the old TV show Sing Along with Mitch. I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch this program on Saturday nights. Mitch Miller and his barbershop quartet performed favorite tunes, and as they sang, the lyrics appeared at the bottom of the screen. The best part was that a ball of light bounced from one word to the next, so even if you didn’t know the song, you could sing along with Mitch! Momentary concentration is following the bouncing ball of attention from one moment of experience to the next. This form of concentration practice is much more accessible for most Western practitioners.
Focusing on a single object is more easily attained after some proficiency has been gained in momentary concentration, which gives the mind more freedom to move around. The restless energies of the mind can roam a bit more. This is what Shunryū Suzuki Roshi, the famous Zen master, was pointing to when he suggested that the best way to tame a wild horse is to give it a wide pasture.
The challenge of momentary concentration involves learning to stay with the bouncing ball of attention and not simply wander away. Initially keeping attention in the sphere of sensation supports the mind to not drift or distract itself in the thought world. We are deeply conditioned to identify and engage with thoughts. Here it is best that we rely on physical sensations as our training ground for concentration. For this reason, I strongly encourage you to direct the attention toward sensory experience—in particular, sounds, body sensations, and visual imagery—when doing this practice, and away from thoughts and feelings.
Working with Sensation and Sound
GUIDED MEDITATION 1: MOMENTARY CONCENTRATION WITH BREATH AND SOUNDS
1. As always, take a few minutes to settle the body and soften the breath.
2. Establish the holding environment, arousing qualities of delight, gratitude, warmth, and wonder. (These first two steps may take several minutes. Take your time.)
3. With each exhalation, imagine energy moving down, releasing with gravity.
4. Maintain relaxation of the breath, but with no particular object of focus.
5. Begin to notice some of the minute sensations of breath at the tip of the nose, in the downward flow of the exhalation, as if that flow were actually comprised of a few smaller wavelets and particles of sensation.
6. With each exhalation now, notice a few sensations as the breath passes the nostrils. What before was a flow of breath is now seen as many smaller sensations.
7. Imagine that these sensations are soothing.
8. Keeping the breath soft, begin to notice sounds on the inhalation.
9. Listen carefully and precisely. If you stay with one sound, notice that it is comprised of many smaller, fluctuating nuances of sound.
10. Imagine that the sounds are compelling, sweet.
11. Feel pleasant sensations of breath on the exhalation; listen to the harmonious sounds on the inhalation. (I sometimes imagine a lightning bug flashing in the dusk of evening, lighting up sensations of breath on the exhalation and sounds on the inhalation.)
12. Allow everything else that arises in your field of experience to remain on the periphery or in the background.
13. Keep checking to see that the breath is moving easily. When you discover that it is tense, take a short timeout and turn your attention to relaxing the breath.
14. Take a few more easy breaths before slowly opening the eyes.
Trying to attend to a single object is initially too claustrophobic for the restless minds of many Westerners. Momentary concentration gives the attention room to roam, but not too far. The parameters are clearly delineated; thoughts and feelings are not invited in at this time. We are so eager to include thoughts and feelings into mindfulness practice, because this is the territory we are familiar with. However, until concentration is quite stable, thinking will simply lead to more thinking, and that will not strengthen mindfulness. This is why momentary concentration practice, without clear parameters and guidelines regarding thinking, will be far less effective.
Gradually you will want to widen the parameters of momentary concentration. Eventually thoughts can be integrated. This needs to be done slowly and systematically, however, so that the attention will not be seduced by habitual cognitive patterns. The exercise below provides guidance for this widening.
Labeling Thoughts
To protect against being swept away, some practitioners find it useful to attach a label to the type of thought or feeling that is arising (e.g., “planning,” “judging,” “evaluating,” “rehearsing,” “fantasizing,” “remembering”). This reinforces the observational posture of the mind. It is also helpful to not “sink” into a thought, even if one is labeling. Thoughts are seductive. Best to note the thought before moving quickly but gently back to breath sensations or sounds. In the following beginning exercise, you will elicit positive thoughts only.
GUIDED EXERCISE 2: MOMENTARY CONCENTRATION WITH THOUGHTS
1. As always, as if for the first time, take a few minutes to settle the body and soften the breath.
2. Establish the holding environment, arousing qualities of delight, gratitude, warmth, and wonder.
3. With each exhalation, imagine the energy moving down, releasing with gravity.
4. Imagine the out-breath to be tumbling out, like a waterfall moving down.
5. Maintain a state of relaxation on the in-breath, with no particular object of focus.
6. On the out-breath, briefly invite one uplifting thought. Label the kind of thought you have noticed.
7. On the in-breath, notice a series of sounds (as in the previous exercise).
8. Invite one pleasant thought with its label on the exhalation, a series of sweet sounds on the inhalation.
9. Check
frequently to see that the breath is flowing easily.
10. Take a few more easy breaths before slowly opening the eyes.
When you have had some success with this practice, you can try noticing two and then three thoughts on the exhalation. This is the equivalent of advancing to the next level of difficulty in a video game. You can also attend to sensations of the breath on the inhalation, instead of sounds. What we are attending to is not as important as the qualities of attention we are cultivating. In this case, we are cultivating continuity and precision in a relaxed and engaged manner.
The following analogy serves me well when working with thoughts. Have you ever flown a kite? I imagine that the kite is the thinking mind, and the string is the connecting observation, the knowing of the thought. If I let go of the string of observation, I become lost in thought, and the kite flies away or falls to the ground. As momentary concentration grows stronger, it is possible to hold the connecting string for longer periods of time.
Exploring Receptive Attention
I stumbled into the final secret ingredient for deepening concentration by accident. One day I became exhausted by making a strong effort to follow the bouncing ball of attention and decided to take a break. I went outside and lay in the grass in the warm sun. There were a few small black spots, or “floaters,” on the surface of my eyes, which were highlighted by the brightness of the sun. I noticed that if I tried to hold one of the spots in my field of vision, it scurried away. But if I relaxed my attention, the spot stayed! In a sudden burst of insight, I realized that I had been leading my moment-to-moment experience, chasing it, rather than following it.