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chanting the texts, and, above all, maintaining the habit of continual self-observation that is the satipatthana method.
The monk will also learn to recognize the mind that is
“free of anger.” Elsewhere in the Pali texts the Buddha asks the
monk to notice a sign of his success that is actually a nonsign.
This is when he doesn’t get angry in situations when he did in
the past. A psychologist would recognize this as “desensitiza-
tion,” or as the “extinction” of a habitual response.
Another instruction in the Sutta reinforces these insights:
“He observes this both in himself and in others.” As social
animals we love to watch others, to speculate on motives,
to try to read people’s minds. In this way, we learn far more
about human psychology than we could from navel-gazing
alone. The Buddha encouraged the monk to learn about the
universal nature of emotion in this way.
These methods of regulating emotion are also supported
by a formulation called “the four efforts.” This is nested away
in the last section of the Sutta. It is the sixth part of the comprehensive path of training called the Eightfold Path. These
“efforts” can be summarized as follows:
1. You know when a bad state of mind is present and how to
abandon it.
2. You know how to prevent a bad state of mind from arising
in the future.
3. You know when a good state of mind is present and how to
strengthen it.
4. You know how to induce a good state of mind when it is
not present.
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The Sutta thus gives us a very thorough bundle of do-it-yourself techniques for disarming a foul emotion. They include stopping and naming the emotion; watching it fade; noticing what
precedes it and understanding its causes; avoiding triggers and
cultivating prophylactic habits; observing the whole dynamic
in others; and constructing situations for positive states in the
future. None of this is particularly “Buddhist.” It is just com-
mon sense, but in the Sutta it is meticulously mapped out. Many
psychologists have been using variants of these techniques for
decades, and we find them throughout Western philosophy.
It is good to have techniques to reduce excessive emotion-
ality, but it is important to remember that this actually wasn’t
the Buddha’s goal. He wanted to extinguish emotion com-
pletely. He taught that even pleasant emotions would lead to
the whole miserable cycle of desire, attachment, disappoint-
ment, and despair. His whole teaching is often crystallized in
the aphorism “Desire is the cause of suffering.”
The Buddha typically equates desire, the first of the five
hindrances, with craving, clinging, greed, lust, attachment,
and bondage. Even aspects of desire that we would find pos-
itive, such as love, affection, familial ties, sensory pleasure,
and the appreciation of beauty, are swept up into this nega-
tive categorization. Verse 212 of the important text called the
Dhammapada states it bluntly: “Anyone who loves is bound
to suffer.”1 These antagonistic attitudes toward the passions
and normal human affections seem extreme, but we forget
that they were once commonplace in many parts of the Chris-
tian world as well.
There was nothing easygoing about the Buddha. He never
held political power, but, in his own zone of control, he created
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just as tight and regulated a monastic order as did Saint Bene-dict, the founder of Christian monasticism. The original Bud-
dhist order had 227 rules for monks and 311 rules for nuns.
(A senior Theravadin monk once told me that, with all their
subdivisions, these rules now exceed 10,000.)
It is not at all surprising that we prefer our mythical
mix-and-match image of the Buddha to the historical one.
Our make-it-up-as-you-go Buddhism is far more palatable
(and useful) than what he originally taught. His strategies
regarding destructive emotions are excellent, but his hos-
tility toward our most common positive emotions is hard to
reconcile with a modern sensibility. I doubt if any layperson
applies the Buddha’s methods now without drastically adapt-
ing them to twenty-first-century values.
Fortunately, in the West we have another tradition of emo-
tional management—namely, that of the Greek and Roman
philosophers. This approach is also based on careful self-
observation, and I’ll examine it in chapter 19. It is quite easy to
incorporate the Buddha’s strategies into their more tolerant,
humane, and practical philosophies.
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18
States of Mind
He lives observing The Seven Factors of
Enlightenment . When he is Mindful, he knows it .
When he is not Mindful, he knows it . He carefully
observes how mindfulness comes and goes, and what
causes it to do so . . . .
Likewise, he contemplates the other Factors
of Enlightenment . He carefully observes how
Investigation, Energy, Bliss, Stillness, Absorption, and
Equanimity arise and pass away, and what causes
them to do so . He learns how to strengthen each one of
these qualities when it is present, and how to bring it
forth when it is not present .
—Satipatthana Sutta
All meditation practices have strategies for coping with run-
away thought, some better than others. Ignore it. Shut it
out. Focus harder. Let it pass through. Watch without reacting.
Put it in a box. And so on. However, the mind can be a monster,
and mental chaos is not a problem that can be so readily solved.
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Naming thoughts to control them is a useful technique,
but it often misses the target. The actual content of the
thoughts may be irrelevant. The real problem may be the
underlying emotion or state of mind. If we are anxious, every
issue is drastic. If we are angry, everyone is against us. If we
are despondent, every venture is hopeless.
There are also poor states of mind that are not directly
attributable to any emotion. A disorderly state of mind will
stuff up anything we try to do. We may be distracted, scat-
tered, obsessed, tired, hyperactive, fed up, worn out, or capa-
ble of nothing. It is better to think of these as states of mind
rather than emotions. In the Sutta the Buddha describes
these states of mind in a similar fashion: “the shrunken mind
and the distracted mind . . . the restless mind and the settled
mind,” and so on.
The Buddha su
ggested that we learn to repeatedly iden-
tify the state or quality of our mind at any time. With prac-
tice we can isolate the quality of our mind from the contents (the thoughts) and from the dominant emotion. For example,
we should be able to say to ourselves, “I’m thinking about
Miranda (mindfulness of thought). I’m obsessing about her
(mindfulness of a state of mind), and I hate her (mindfulness
of emotion).” This is what it means to be fully mindful accord-
ing to the satipatthana method.
As usual, the Buddha asks that we name a state of mind
to get a good grasp of it. Even if we can’t shift it, we will at
least know what we are dealing with. Our terms don’t need
to be fancy. They just have to be words that feel right, that
seem to click. Any psychologist will recognize the therapeu-
tic value of descriptive words and the importance of having
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appropriate language for self-analysis. A client who can recognize “I’m ruminating again” or “I’m catastrophizing again”
is taking a huge step toward self-control.
Most of our bad states of mind will be familiar visitors.
If we can be mindful of them, however—if we can learn to
hold them in mind and appraise them consciously—we will
discover something intriguing. The state of mind may be
familiar, but the valence will vary from day to day. Some days
the anxiety is raging. At other times it just grumbles in the
background. If we see this fact repeatedly, and store that in
memory (the etymological root of sati), we will eventually
become much more attuned to triggers, to causes, and also
to solutions.
Here are some kinds of faulty cognition that we are likely
to recognize if we look for them:
• Overthinking: due to worry or perfectionism.
• Obsession: fixating on one issue to the exclusion of all
others.
• Scattered thought: the tendency to jump too quickly from
one issue to another due to anxiety.
• Distraction: being unable to pay attention due to boredom,
disinterest, or escapism
• Rumination: aimless, chaotic, low-level, mental mumbling.
• Dullness: due to fatigue, sickness, disappointment, or
depression.
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Many of these states of mind will be familiar to you, but can you distinguish them? If you can say, “Right now I’m obsessing” or “Right now I’m scattered,” then you would be mindful
of your present-moment state of mind. It is this kind of refine-
ment that the Buddha was recommending.
Among the dozens of different states of mind, the one
every meditator needs to be able to recognize is attention.
She needs to know when she’s focused and when she’s not;
when she’s mentally in control and when she’s not; when she’s
on track and when she’s lost it; when she’s doing what she
intended to do (for instance, focusing on the body), and when
she’s wandered off. Similarly, no meditator will achieve any-
thing much until she can recognize the opposite state that
the Buddha called “the distracted mind.”
All of the Buddha’s strategies for managing emotions
apply equally well to states of mind. The teaching is as fol-
lows: Name the state of mind. Notice how it arises and passes
away. Notice what precedes it and understand its causes.
Observe the whole dynamic in others. Avoid triggers and cul-
tivate prophylactic habits. Construct situations that support
positive states in the future.
All these strategies can help stop us from drifting into bad
states in the future and help us gradually dissolve them when
we do. They also helps us boost the good states when they are
present and helps keep them around longer than usual. This
sequence corresponds to the four efforts that I described in
the last chapter (page 199).
If we check our states of mind regularly, we will find that
we’re rarely at our cognitive best all day long. We often have
to cruise on automatic. We find that good, self-monitoring
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thought is hard to maintain and it decays rapidly under less-than-optimal conditions. Here are some causal factors that
the Buddha would want us to recognize.
Our capacity to think clearly suffers if we are stressed; if
we are overemotional for any reason; if our brains are over-
loaded with more information than they can comfortably
handle; if we have made too many decisions in the preceding
hours ( decision fatigue); or if we are physically tired.
If we are mindful of these states of physical or men-
tal depletion, we will also see what helps and what doesn’t.
Pushing on regardless or having another cup of coffee are
usually dodgy strategies. If we are too tired to think straight,
we should just stop trying. It is far more sensible to leave the
issue till later, potter around with trivia, do some brainless
housework, watch TV, or just go to bed.
States of mind often have a bodily inertia that makes them
much harder to modify than thoughts or valences. Being
aware of them, however, enables us to sensibly adjust to the
real-life circumstances that induce those states of mind. The
second-century bce Stoic Epictetus said, “Know what you can
control and what you can’t control.” The corollary is “Don’t
stress out about what you can’t control. Learn to cheerfully
accept it.” It is often futile to struggle against a state of mind.
This is when the modern idea of mindfulness as “a state of
nonjudgmental acceptance” may be perfectly appropriate.
THE IDEAL MEDITATIVE STATES OF MIND
The Buddha regarded the five hindrances, the painful emo-
tions discussed in the previous chapter, as being the negative
states of mind. The seven factors of enlightenment (which will
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be discussed one by one in the next section of this chapter) are the countervailing positive states of mind. These are not
“good” emotions or moral qualities such as compassion, hon-
esty, or justice. (The Sutta was composed for solitary monks
who don’t interact with other people in those ways.1) Rather,
the seven factors are the ideal states of mind that are essential
for the most profound states of meditation ( jhana). This, in
turn, is the basis for the intuitive thought and insight ( vipas-
sana) that lead to full awakening. This is why they were called
the seven factors of enlightenment.
Perfect meditation states are rare, but they really do
occur—even for beginners. Most religious traditions recog-
nize and try to describe them. They are quite organic and
intrinsic
to consciousness. The literature acknowledges that
countless people achieve them with little or no instruction.
We are guided to them by our natural homeostatic instincts
for body-mind equilibrium.
In Buddhism, these states are called absorptions—in Pali,
jhana. There are said to be four (or eight) jhana of increasing subtlety and depth. The commentaries analyze and argue
about the distinguishing characteristics of each jhana in enor-
mous detail. Much ink has been spilled and hot air released
over this. One teacher refers to this as “the jhana wars.”
In the Pali texts, there is a lot of overlap between the
descriptions of the four jhanas and the seven factors. More-
over they both converge on the ideal mental state of equa-
nimity ( upekkha).
The jhanas are meditation states and are therefore tran-
sient, but their effects are expected to trickle back into ordi-
nary life. Over time, a good practitioner will be peaceful under
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all circumstances, not just when she has withdrawn from the world to meditate. This cyclic model of attainment is common in many spiritual practices. It involves a repeated retreat
or withdrawal from the mundane, to allow time and space for
ascent into perfection, followed by a return to ordinary life until
the ideal mental qualities are well expressed in both.
The jhanas and the seven factors of enlightenment can
be interpreted broadly or narrowly. Monks have tradition-
ally insisted that only they can achieve even the first of the
jhanas. The impure, sensual, and money-grubbing lives of
laypeople were said to preclude all but the most modest med-
itative attainments. That was the usual hardline interpreta-
tion when I was training.
In 1986 I did an eleven-week solitary retreat at Wat Bud-
dha Dhamma in the forest north of Sydney, Australia. The
abbott was Phra Khantipalo, one of the most senior Western
monks in the world. When I said I seemed to be entering the
first of the jhanas he politely but firmly dissuaded me. That
was quite impossible, he said. I had a girlfriend. Even though
I hadn’t seen her for months, just the thought of sensuality
would undermine my spiritual attainments. Phra Khantipalo
has since disrobed and married (and separated) and may well
have changed his opinion on this matter.