The Basic
Method of Meditation
By Acharn
Brahmavamso
PART 1
“The goal of
this meditation is the beautiful silence,
Stillness and
clarity”
Meditation is the way to
achieve letting go. In meditation one lets go of the complex world outside in
order to reach the serene world inside. In all types of mysticism and in many
traditions, this is known as the path to the pure and powerful mind. The
experience of this pure mind, released from the world, is very wonderful and
blissful.
During this meditation retreat
there will be some hard work at the beginning, but be willing to bear that hard
work knowing that it will lead you to experience some very beautiful and
meaningful states. They will be well worth the effort! It is a law of nature
that without effort one does not make progress. Whether one
is a layperson or a monk, without effort one gets nowhere, in meditation or in
anything.
Effort alone, though, is not
sufficient. The effort needs to be skilful. This means directing your energy
just at the right places and sustaining it there until its task is completed.
Skilful effort neither hinders nor disturbs you; instead it produces the
beautiful peace of deep meditation.
In order to know where your
effort should be directed, you must have a clear understanding of the goal of
meditation. The goal of this meditation is the beautiful silence, stillness
and clarity of mind. If you can understand that goal then the place to
apply your effort and the means to achieve the goal becomes very clear.
The effort is directed to
letting go, to developing a mind, which inclines to abandoning. One of the many
simple but profound statements of the Lord Buddha is that “a meditator whose mind inclines to
abandoning, easily achieves Samadhi (the goal of meditation)”. Such a meditator gains these states of inner bliss almost
automatically. What the Lord Buddha was saying was that the major cause for
attaining deep meditation, for reaching these powerful states, is the
willingness to abandon, to let go and to renounce.
During this meditation
retreat, we are not going to develop a mind which accumulates and holds on to
things, but instead we develop a mind which is willing to let go of things, to
let go of burdens. Outside of meditation we have to carry the burden of our
many duties, like so many heavy suitcases, but within the period of meditation
so much baggage is unnecessary. So, in meditation see if you can unload as much
baggage as you can. Think of these things as bur-dens, heavy weights pressing
upon you. Then you have the right attitude to letting go of these things,
abandoning them freely without looking back. This effort, this attitude, this
movement of mind that inclines to giving up, is what will lead you into deep
meditation. Even during the beginning stages of this meditation retreat, see if
you can generate the energy of renunciation, the willingness to give things
away, and little by little the letting go will occur. As you give things away
in your mind you will feel much lighter, unburdened and free. In the way of meditation,
this abandoning of things occurs in stages, step by step.
You may go through the
initial stages quickly if you wish, but be very careful if you do so. Sometimes
when you pass through the initial steps too quickly, you find that preparatory
work has not been completed. It is like trying to build a town house on a very
weak and rushed foundation. The structure goes up very quickly, but it comes
down very quickly as well! So you are wise to spend a lot of time on the
foundation, and on the ‘first storey’ as well, making the groundwork well done,
strong and firm. Then when you proceed to the higher storeys,
the bliss states of meditation, they too are stable and firm.
In the way that I teach
meditation, I like to begin at the very simple stage of giving up the
baggage of past and future. Sometimes you may think that this is such
an easy thing to do, that it is too basic. However, if you give it your full
effort, not running ahead to the higher stages of meditation until you have
properly reached the first goal of sustained attention on the present moment,
then you will find later on that you have established a very strong foundation
on which to build the higher stages.
Abandoning the past means
not even thinking about your work, your family, your commitments, your
responsibilities, your history, the good or bad times you had as a child…, you
abandon all past experiences by showing no interest in them at all. You become
someone who has no interest in them at all. You become someone who has no
history during the time that you meditate. You do not even think about where
you are from, where you were born, who your parents were or what you upbringing
was like. All of that history is renounced in meditation. In this way, everyone
here on the retreat becomes equal, just a meditator.
It becomes unimportant how many years you have been meditating, whether you are
an old hand or a beginner. If you abandon all that history then we are all
equal and free. We are freeing ourselves of some of these concerns, perceptions
and thoughts which limit us and which stop us from developing the peace born of
letting go. So every “part” of your history you finally let go of, even the
history of what has happened to you so far in this retreat, even the memory of
what happened to you just a moment ago! In this way, you carry no burden from
the past into the present. Whatever has just happened, you are no longer
interested in it and you let it go. You do not allow the past to reverberate in
your mind.
I describe this as
developing your mind like a padded cell! When any experience, perception or
thought hits the wall of the “padded cell”, it does not bounce back again. It
just sinks into the padding and stops right there. Thus we do not allow the
past to echo in our consciousness, certainly not the past of yesterday and all
the time before, because we are developing the mind inclined to letting go,
giving away and unburdening.
Some people have the view
that if they take up the past for contemplation they can somehow learn from it
and solve the problems of the past. However, you should understand that when
you gaze at the past, you invariably look through distorted lenses. Whatever
you think it was like, in truth it was not quite like that! This is why people
have arguments about what actually happened, even a few moments ago. It is well
known to police who investigate traffic accidents that even though the accident
may have happened only half an hour ago, two different eyewitnesses, both
completely honest, will give different ac-counts. Our memory is untrustworthy.
If you consider just how unreliable memory is, then you do not put value on
thinking over the past. Then you can let it go. You can bury it, just as you
bury a person who has died. You place them in a coffin then bury it, or cremate
it, and it is done with, finished. Do not linger on the past. Do not continue
to carry the coffins of dead moments on your head! If you are weighing yourself
down with heavy burdens, which do not really, belong to you. Let all of the
past go and you have the ability to be free in the present moment.
As for the future, the
anticipations, fears, plans, and expectations – let all of that go too. The
Lord Buddha once said about the future “whatever you think it will be, it will always be something different”! This future is
known to the wise as uncertain, unknown and so unpredictable. It is often
complete stupidity to anticipate the future, and always a great waste of your
time to think of the future in meditation.
When you work with your
mind, you find that the mind is so strange. It can do some wonderful and
unexpected things. It is very common for meditators
who are having a difficult time, who are not getting very peaceful, to sit
there thinking “Here we go again, another hour of frustration”. Even though
they begin thinking like that, anticipating failure, something strange happens
and they get into a very peaceful meditation.
Recently I heard of one man
on his first ten-day retreat. After the first day his body was hurting so much
he asked to go home. The teacher said “Stay one more day and the pain will
disappear, I promise”. So he stayed another day, the pain got worse so he
wanted to go home again. The teacher repeated “just one more day, the pain will
go”. He stayed for a third day and the pain was even worse. For each of nine
days, in the evening he would go to the teacher and, in great pain, ask to go
home and the teacher would say, “Just one more day and the pain will
disappear”. It went completely beyond his expectations that, on the final day, when
he started the first sit of the morning, the pain did disappear! It did not
come back. He could sit for long periods with no pain at all! He was amazed at
how wonderful is this mind and how it can produce such unexpected results. So,
you don’t know about the future. It can be so strange, even weird, completely
beyond whatever you expect. Experiences like this give you the wisdom and
courage to abandon all thoughts about the future and all expectation as well.
When you’re meditating and
thinking, “How many more minutes are there to go? How much longer have I to
endure all of this?” then that is just wandering off into the future again. The
pain could just disappear in a moment. The next moment might be the free one.
You just cannot anticipate what is going to happen.
When on retreat, you have
been meditating for many sessions; you may sometimes think that none of those
meditations have been any good. In the next meditation session you sit down and
everything becomes so peaceful and easy. You think “Wow! Now I can meditate!”,
but the next meditation is awful again. What’s going on here?
The first meditation teacher
I had told me something, which then sounded quite strange. He said that there
is no such thing like bad meditation! He was right. All those meditations which
you called bad, frustrating and not meeting your expectations, all those
meditations are where you do hard work for your “pay cheque”
….
It is like a person who goes
to work all day Monday and gets no money at the end of the day. “What am I
doing this for?” he thinks. He works all day Tuesday and still gets nothing. Another bad day. All day Wednesday, all
day Thursday, and still nothing to show for all the hard work. That’s
four bad days in a row. Then along comes Friday, he does exactly the same work
as before and at the end of the day the boss gives him a pay cheque. “Wow! Why can’t every day be a pay-day?!”
Why can’t every meditation
be “pay-day”? Now, do you under-stand the simile? It is in the difficult
meditations that you build up your strength, the momentum for peace. Then when
there’s enough credit of good qualities, the mind goes into a good meditation.
In a recent retreat that I
gave in
This is what happens when
you go anticipating the future, thinking “How many more minutes until the bell
goes?” That is where you torture yourself, where you pick up a heavy burden,
which is none of your business. So be every time careful not to pick up the
heavy suitcase of “How many more minutes are there to go?” or “What should I do
next?” If that is what you are thinking, then you are not paying attention to
what is happening now. You are not doing the meditation. You have lost the plot
and are asking for trouble.
In this stage of the
meditation keep your attention right in the present moment, to the point where
you don’t even know what day it is or what time it is – morning? Afternoon? Don’t know! All you know is what moment it is
right now! In this way you arrive at this beautiful monastic time scale where
you are just meditating in the moment, not aware of how many minutes have gone
or how many remain, not even remembering what day it is.
Once a young monk in
The reality of now is
magnificent and awesome. When you have abandoned all past and all future, it is
as if you have come alive. You are here, you are mindful. This is the first
stage of meditation, just this mindfulness sustained only in the present. Reaching
here, you have done a great deal. You have let go of effort to reach this first
stage until it is strong, firm and well established. Next we will refine the
present moment awareness into the next stage - silent awareness of the present
moment.
PART 2
“Silence is
so much more productive of wisdom and
Clarity than
thinking.”
In Part 1 of this three-part
article, I outlined the goal of this meditation, which is the beautiful
silence, stillness and clarity of mind, pregnant with the most profound of insights.
Then I pointed out the underlying theme, which runs like an unbroken thread
throughout all meditation, that is the letting go of materiel and mental
burdens. Lastly, in Part 1, I described at length the practice, which leads to
what I call the first stage of this meditation, and that first stage is
attained when the meditator comfortably abides in the
present moment for long, unbroken periods of time. As I wrote in the previous
article “The reality of now is magnificent and awesome… Reaching here you have
done a great deal. You have to let go of the first burden which stops deep
meditation.” But having achieved so much, one should go further into the even
more beautiful and truthful silence of the mind.
It is helpful, here, to
clarify the difference between silent awareness of the present moment and
thinking about it. The simile of watching a tennis match on TV is informative.
When watching such a match, you may notice that, in fact, there are two matches
occurring simultaneously – there is the match that you see on the screen, and
there is the match that you hear described by the commentator. Indeed, if an
Australian is playing a New Zealander then the commentary from the Australian
presenter is likely to be much different from what actually occurred! Commentary
is often biased. In this simile, watching the screen with no commentary stands
for silent awareness in meditation, paying attention to the commentary stands
for thinking about it. You should realize that you are much closer to Truth
when you observe without commentary, when you experience just the silent
awareness of the present moment.
Sometimes it is through the
inner commentary that we think we know the world. Actually, that inner speech
that weaves the delusions that causes suffering. It is inner speech that causes
us to be angry at those we make our loved ones. Inner speech causes all of
life’s problems. It constructs fear and guilt. It creates anxiety and
depression. It builds these illusions as surely as the skilful commentator on
TV can manipulate an audience to create anger or tears. So if you seek for
Truth, you should value silent awareness, considering it more important, when
meditating, than any thought whatsoever.
It is the high value that
one gives to one’s thoughts that is the major obstacle to silent awareness.
Carefully removing the importance one gives to one’s thinking and realizing the
value and truthfulness of silent awareness is the insight that makes this
second stage - silent awareness of the present moment – possible.
One of the beautiful ways of
overcoming the inner commentary is to develop such refined present moment
awareness, that you are watching every moment so closely that you simply do not
have the time to comment about what has just happened. A thought is often an
opinion on what has just happened, e.g. “That was good”, “That
was gross”, “What was that?” All of these comments are about an experience,
which has just passed by. When you are noting, making a comment about an
experience, which has just passed, then you are not paying attention to the
experience that has just arrived. You are dealing with old visitors and
neglecting the new visitors coming now!
You may imagine your mind to
be a host at a party, meeting the guests as they come in the door. If one guest
comes in and you meet them and start talking to them about this and that or the
other, then you are not doing your duty of paying
attention to the new guest that comes in the door. Because a guest comes in the
door every moment, all you can do is to greet one and then immediately go on to
greet the next one. You cannot afford to engage in even the shortest
conversation with any guest, since this would mean you would miss the one
coming in next. In meditation, all experiences come through the door or our senses
into the mind one by one in succession. If you greet one experience with
mindfulness then get into conversation with your guest, then you will miss the
next experience following right behind.
When you are perfectly in
the moment with every experience, with every guest, which comes in your mind,
then you just do not have the space for inner speech. You can not chatter to
yourself because you are completely taken up with mindfully greeting everything
just as it arrives in your mind. This is refined present moment awareness to
the level that it becomes silent awareness of the present in every moment.
You discover, on developing
that degree of inner silence that this is like giving up another great burden.
It is as if you have been carrying a big heavy rucksack on your back for forty
or fifty-year’s continuously and during that time you have wearily trudged
through many, many miles. Now you have had the courage and found the wisdom to
take that rucksack off and put it on the ground for a while. One feels so immensely
relieved, so light, and so free because one is now not burdened with that heavy
rucksack of inner chatter.
Another useful method of
developing silent awareness is to recognize the space between thoughts, between
periods of inner chatter. If you attend closely with sharp mindfulness, when
one thought ends and before another thought begins – THERE! That is silent
awareness! It may be only momentary at first but as you recognize that fleeting
silence you become accustomed to it then the silence lasts longer. You begin to
enjoy the silence, once you have found it at last, and that is why it grows.
But remember silence is shy. If silence hears you talking about her, she
vanishes immediately!
It would be marvelous for
each one of us if we could abandon the inner speech and abide in silent
awareness of the present moment long enough to realize how delightful it is.
Silence is so much more productive of wisdom and clarity than thinking. When
you realize how much more enjoyable and valuable it is to be silent within,
then silence becomes more attractive and important to
you. The Inner Silence becomes what the mind inclines towards. The mind seeks
out silence constantly; to the point where it only thinks if it really has to,
only if there is some point to it. Since, at this stage, you have realized that
most of your thinking is really pointless anyway, that it gets you nowhere,
only giving you many headaches, you gladly and easily spend much time in inner
quiet.
The second stage of this
meditation, then, is silent awareness of the present moment. You may spend the
majority of your time just developing these two stages because if you can get
this far then you have gone a long way indeed in your meditation. In that
silent awareness of “Just Now” you will experience much peace, joy and
consequent wisdom.
If want to go further, then
instead of being silently aware of whatever comes into the mind, you choose
silent present moment awareness of just ONE THING. That ONE THING can be the
experience of breathing, the idea of loving kindness (METTA), a colored circle
visualized in the mind (KASINA) or several other, less common, focal points for
awareness. Here we will describe the silent present moment awareness of the
breath.
Choosing to fix one’s
attention on one thing is letting go of diversity and moving to it’s opposite, unity. As the mind begins to unify,
sustaining attention on just one thing, the experience of peace, bliss and
power increases significantly. You discover here that the diversity of
consciousness - like having six telephones on ones desk ringing at the same
time – is such a burden, and letting go of this diversity – only permitting one
telephone, a private line at that, on ones desk – is such a relief. It
generates bliss. The understanding that diversity is a burden is crucial to
being able to settle on the breath.
If you have developed silent
awareness of the present moment carefully for long periods of time, then you
will find it quite easy to turn that awareness on to the breath and follow that
breath from moment to moment without interruption. This is because the two
major obstacles to breathe meditation have already subdued. The first of these
two obstacles is the mind’s tendency to go off into the past or future, and the
second obstacle is the inner speech. This is why I teach the two preliminary
stages of present moment awareness and silent awareness of the present moment
as a solid preparation for deeper meditation on the breath.
It often happens that meditators start breath meditation when their mind is still
jumping around between past and future, and when awareness is being drowned by
the inner commentary. With no preparation they find breath meditation so
difficult, even impossible and give up in frustration. They give up because
they did not start at the right place. They did not perform the preparatory
work before taking up the breath as a focus of their attention. However, if the
mind has been well prepared by completing these first two stages then you will
find when you turn to the breath, you can sustain your attention on your breath
then this is a sign that you rushed the first two stages. Go back to the
preliminary exercises! Careful patience is the fastest way.
When you focus on the
breath, you focus on the experience of the breath happening now. You experience
“that which tells you what the breath is doing”, whether it is going in or out
or in between. Some teachers say to watch the breath at the tip of your nose,
some say to watch it at the abdomen and some say to move it here and then move
it there. I have found through experience that it does not matter where you
watch the breath. In fact it is best not to locate the breath anywhere! If you
locate the breath at the tip of your nose then it be-comes
nose awareness, not breath awareness, and if you locate it at your abdomen then
it becomes abdomen awareness. Just ask your-self the question right now “Am I
breathing in or am I breathing out?” How do you know? There! That experience
which tells you what the breath is doing, that is what you focus on in breath
is doing, that is what you focus on in breath meditation. Let go of concern
about where this experience is located; just focus on the experience itself.
A common hindrance at this
stage is the tendency to control the breathing, and this makes the breathing
uncomfortable. To overcome this hindrance, imagine that you are just a
passenger in a car looking through the window at your breath. You are not the
driver, nor a “back seat driver”, so stop giving
orders, and let go and enjoy the ride. Let the breath do the breathing while
you simply watch without interfering.
When you know the breath is
going in, or the breath is going out, for say one hundred breaths in a row, not
missing one, then you have achieved what I call the third stage of this
meditation, sustained attention on the breath. This again is more
peaceful and joyful than the previous stage. To go deeper, you now aim for full
sustained attention on the breath.
This fourth stage, or full-sustained
attention on the breath, occurs when one’s attention expands to take in
every single moment of the breath. You know the in-breath at the very first
moment, when the first sensation of in breathing arises. Then you observe those
sensations develop gradually through the whole course of one in-breath, not
missing even a moment of the in-breath. When that in-breath finishes, you know
that moment, you see in your mind that last movement of the in-breath. You then
see the next moment as a pause between breaths, and then many more pauses until
the out-breath begins. You see the first moment of the out-breath and each
subsequent sensation as the out-breath evolves, until the out-breath disappears
when its function is complete. All this is done in silence and just in the
present moment.
You experience every part of
each in-breath and out-breath, continuously for many hundred breaths in a row.
This is why this stage is called “FULL sustained attention on the breath”.
You cannot reach this stage through force, through holding or gripping. You can
only attain this degree of stillness by letting go of everything in the en-tire
universe, except for this momentary experience of breath happening silently
now. “You” don’t reach this stage; the mind reaches this stage. The mind does
this work itself. The mind recognizes this stage to be a very peaceful and
pleasant abiding, just being alone with the breath. This is where the “doer”,
the major part of one’s ego, start to disappear.
You will find that progress
happens effortlessly at this stage of the meditation. You just have to get out
of the way, let go and watch it all happen. The mind will automatically
incline, if you only let it, towards this every simple, peaceful and delicious
unity of being along with one thing, just being with the breath in each and
every moment. This is the unity of mind, the unity in the moment, the unity in
stillness.
The fourth stage is what I
call the “springboard” of meditation, because from here one can dive into
blissful states. When you simply maintain this unity of consciousness, by not
interfering, the breath will begin to disappear. The breath appears to fade
away as the mind focuses instead on what is at the centre of the experience of
breath, which is the awesome peace, freedom and bliss.
At this stage I use the term
“the beautiful breath”. Here the mind recognizes that this peaceful breath is
extraordinarily beautiful. You are aware of this beautiful breath continuously,
moment after moment, with no break in the chain of experience. You are only
aware of the beautiful breath, without effort, and for a very long time.
Now you let the breath
disappear and all that is left is “the beautiful”. Disembodied beauty becomes
the sole object of the mind. The mind is now taking its own object. You are now
not aware at all of breath, body, thought, sound or the world outside. All that
you are aware of is beauty, peace, bliss, Light or whatever your perception
will later call it. You are experiencing only beauty, with nothing being
beautiful, continuously, effortlessly. You have long ago let go of chatter, let
go of descriptions and assessments. Here, the mind is that still that you
cannot say anything.
You are just experiencing
the first flowering of bliss in the mind. That bliss will develop, grow, and
become very firm and strong. Thus you enter into those states of meditation
called Jhana. But that is for Part 3 of this
talk!
PART 3
“Do absolutely
nothing and see how smooth and beautiful and timeless the breath can appear.”
Parts 1 and 2 describe the
first four stages (as they are called here) of meditation. These are:
- Present
moment awareness.
- Silent
awareness of the present moment.
- Full
sustained attention on the breath.
Each of these stages needs
to be well developed before going in to the next stage. When one rushes through
“stages of letting go” then the higher stages will be unreachable. It is like
constructing a tall building with inadequate foundations. The first storey is
built quickly and so is the second and third storey. When the fourth storey is
added, though, the structure begins to wobble a bit. Then when they try to add
a fifth storey it all comes tumbling down. So please take a lot of time on
these four initial stages, making them all firm and stable, be-fore proceeding
on to the fifth stage. You should be able to maintain the fourth stage, “full
sustained attention on the breath”, aware of every moment of the breath without
a single break, for two or three hundred breaths in succession with ease. I am
not saying to count the breaths during this stage, but I am giving an
indication of the sort of time interval that one should remain with stage 4
before proceeding further. In meditation, patience is the fastest way!
The fifth stage is called “full
sustained attention on the beautiful breath”. Often, this stage flows on
naturally, seamlessly, from the previous stage. As one’s full attention rests
easily and continuously on the experience of breath, with nothing interrupting
the even flow of awareness, the breath calms down. It changes from a coarse,
ordinary breath, to a very smooth and peaceful “beautiful breath”. The mind
recognizes this beautiful breath and delights in it. The mind experiences a
deepening of contentment. It is happy just to be there watching this beautiful
breath. The mind does not need to be forced. It stays with the beautiful breath
by itself. “You” don’t do anything. If you try and do something at this stage,
you disturb the whole process, the beauty is lost and, like landing on a
snake’s head in the game of snakes and ladders, you go back many squares. The
“doer” has to disappear from this stage of the meditation on, with just the
“knower” passively observing.
A helpful trick to achieve
this stage is to break the inner silence just once and gently think to yourself: “Calm”. That’s all. At this stage of the
meditation, the mind is usually so sensitive that just a little nudge like this
causes the mind to follow the instruction obediently. The breath calms down and
the beautiful breath emerges.
When you are passively
observing just the beautiful breath in the moment, the perception of “in”
(breath) or “out” (breath), or beginning or middle or end of a breath, should
all be allowed to disappear. All that is known is this experience of the
beautiful breath happening now. The mind is not concerned with what part of the
breath cycle this is in, nor on what part of the body this is occurring. Here
we are simplifying the object of meditation, the experience of breath in the
moment, stripping away all unnecessary details, moving beyond the duality of
“in” and “out”, and just being aware of a beautiful breath which appears smooth
and continuous, hardly changing at all.
Do absolutely nothing and
see how smooth and beautiful and timeless the breath can appear. See how calm
you can allow it to be. Take time to savor the sweetness of the beautiful
breath, ever calmer, ever sweeter.
Now the breath will
disappear, not when “you” want it to but when there is enough calm, leaving
only “the beautiful”. A simile from English literature might help. In Lewis Carol’s
“
This pure mental object is
called a NIMITTA. “Nimitta” means “a
sign”, here a mental sign. This is a real object in the landscape of the mind (CITTA)
and when it appears for the first time it is extremely strange. One simply has
not experienced anything like it before. Nevertheless, the mental activity
called “perception” searches through its memory bank of life experiences for
something even a little bit similar in order to supply a description to the
mind. For most meditators, this “disembodied beauty”,
this mental joy, is perceived as a beautiful light. It is not a light. The eyes
are closed and the sight consciousness has long been turned off. It is the mind
consciousness freed for the first time from the world of the five senses. It is
like the full moon, here standing for the radiant mind, coming out from behind
the clouds, here standing for the world of the five senses. It is the mind
manifesting, not a light but for most it appears like a light, it is perceived
as a light, because this imperfect description is the best that perception can
offer.
For other meditators, perception chooses to describe this first
appearance of mind in terms of physical sensation, such as intense tranquility
or ecstasy. Again, the body consciousness (that which experiences pleasure and
pain, heat and cold, and so on) has long since closed down and this is not a
physical feeling. It is just “perceived” as similar to pleasure. Some see a
white light, some a gold star, some blue pearl… the important fact to know is
that they are all describing the same phenomena. They all experience the same
pure mental object and these different details are added by their different
perceptions.
You can recognize a nimitta by the following 6 features:
1) It appears only after the
5th stage of the meditation, after the meditator
has been with the beautiful breath for a long time;
2) It appears when the
breath disappears;
3) It only comes with the
external five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are completely
absent;
4) It manifests only in the
silent mind, when descriptive thoughts (inner speech) are totally absent;
5) It is strange but
powerfully attractive;
6) It is beautifully simple
object.
I mention these features so
that you may distinguish real nimittas from
imaginary ones.
The sixth stage, then, is
called “experiencing the beautiful nimitta”.
It is achieved when one lets go of the body, thought, and the five senses
(including the awareness of the breath) so completely that only the beautiful nimitta remains.
Sometimes when the nimitta first arises it may appear “dull”. In this
stage, one should go immediately back to the previous stage of the meditation,
continuous silent awareness of the beautiful breath. One has moved to the nimitta too soon. Sometimes the nimitta
is bright but unstable, flashing on and off like lighthouse beacon and then
disappearing. Again this shows that you have left the beautiful breath too
early. One must be able to sustain one’s attention on the beautiful breath with
ease for a long, long time before the mind is capable of maintaining clear
attention on the far subtler nimitta. So train
the mind on the beautiful breath, train it patiently and diligently, then when
it is time to go on to the nimitta, it is
bright, stable and easy to sustain.
The main reason why the nimitta can appear dull is that the depth of
contentment is too shallow. You still “want” something. Usually, you want the bright
nimitta or you want Jhana.
Remember, and this is important, Jhanas are
states of letting go, incredible deep states of contentment. So give away the
hungry mind, develop contentment on the beautiful breath and the nimitta and Jhana
will happen by themselves.
The main reason why nimitta is unstable is because the “doer” just will
not stop interfering. The “doer” is the controller, the back seat driver,
always getting involved where it does not belong and messing everything up.
This meditation is a natural process of coming to rest and it requires “you” to
get out of the way completely. Deep meditation only occurs when you really let
go, and this means REALLY LET GO to the point that the process becomes
inaccessible to the “doer”.
A skilful means to achieve
such profound letting go is to deliberately offer the gift of confidence to the
nimitta. Interrupt the silence just for a
moment, so gently, and whisper as it were inside your mind that you give
complete trust to the nimitta, so that the
“doer” can relinquish all control and just disappear. The mind, represented
here by the nimitta before you, will then take
over the process as you watch it all happen.
You do not need to do
anything here because the intense beauty of the nimitta
is more than capable of holding the attention without your assistance. Be
careful, here, not to go assessing. Questions such as “What is this?”, “Is this
Jhana?”, “What should I do next?”, and so on
are all the work of “the doer” trying to get involved again. This is disturbing
the process. You may assess everything once the journey is over. A good
scientist only assesses the experiment at the end, when all the data is in. So
now, do not pay attention to the edge of the nimitta
“Is it round or oval?”, “Is the edge clear or fuzzy?” This is all unnecessary
and just leads to more diversity, more duality of “inside” and “outside”, and
more disturbances.
Let the mind incline where
it wants, which is usually to the centre of the nimitta.
The centre is where the most beautiful part lies, where the light is most
brilliant and pure. Let go and just enjoy the ride as the attention gets drawn
into the centre and falls right inside, or as the light expands all around
enveloping you totally. This is, in fact, one and the same experience perceived
from different perspectives. Let the mind merge in the bliss. Let the seventh
stage of this path of meditation, Jhana,
occur.
There are two common
obstacles at the door into Jhana: exhilaration
and fear. Exhilaration is becoming excited. If, at this point, the mind thinks,
“Wow, this is it!” then the Jhana is most
unlikely to happen. This “Wow” response needs to be subdued in favour of absolute passivity. You can leave all the “Wows”
until after emerging from the Jhana, where
they properly belong. The more likely obstacle, though, is fear. Fear arises at
the recognition of the sheer power and bliss of the Jhana,
or else at the recognition that to go fully inside the Jhana,
something must be left behind – You! The “doer” is silent before Jhana but still there. Inside Jhana,
the “doer” is completely gone. The “knower” is still functioning, you are fully
aware, but all the controls are now beyond reach. You cannot even form a single
thought, let alone make a decision. The will is frozen, and this can appear
scary to the beginner. Never before in your whole life have you ever
experienced being so stripped of all control yet so fully awake. The fear is
the fear of surrendering something so essentially
personal as the will to do.
This can be overcome through
confidence in the Buddha’s Teachings together with the enticing bliss just
ahead that one can see as the reward. The Lord Buddha often said that this
bliss of Jhana “should not be feared but
should be followed, developed and practiced often” (LATUKIKOPAMA SUTTA,
MAJJHIMA NIKAYA). So be-fore fear arises, offer your full confidence to
that bliss and maintain faith in the Lord Buddha’s Teachings and the example of
the Noble Disciples. Trust the Dhamma and let the Jhana warmly embrace you for an effortless, body-less
and ego-less, blissful experience that will be the most profound of your life.
Have the courage to fully relinquish control for a while and experience all
this for yourself.
If it is a Jhana it will last a long time. It does not deserve
to be called Jhana if it lasts only a few
minutes. Usually, the higher Jhanas persist
for many hours. Once inside, there is no choice. You will emerge from the Jhana only when the mind is ready to come out, when
the “fuel” of relinquishment that was built up before is all used up. These are
such still and satisfying states of consciousness that their very nature is to
persist for a long time. Another feature of Jhana is
that it occurs only after the nimitta is
discerned as described above. Furthermore, you should know that while in any Jhana it is impossible to experience the body (e. g.
physical pain), hear a sound from out-side or produce any thought, not even
“good” thoughts. There is just clear singleness of perception, an experience of
non-dualistic bliss which continues unchanging for a very long time. This is
not a trance, but a state of heightened awareness. This is said so that you may
know for yourself whether what you take to be a Jhana
is real or imaginary.
There is much more to
meditation, but here only the basic method has been described using seven
stages culminating with the First Jhana. Much
more could be said about the “five hindrances” and how they are overcome, about
the meaning of mindfulness and how it is used, about the Four Satipatthana and the Four Roads to Success
(IDDHIPADA) and the Five Controlling Faculties (INDRIYA) and, of course,
about the higher Jhanas. All these concern
this practice of meditation but must be left for another occasion.
For those who are misled to
conceive of all this as “just Samatha practice”
without regard to Insight (VIPASSANA), please know that this is neither Vipassana nor Samatha.
It is called “Bhavana”, the method taught by
the Lord Buddha and repeated in the Forest Tradition of N. E. Thailand of which
my teacher, Venerable Ajahn Chah,
was a part. Acharn Chah
often said that Samatha and Vipassana can not be separated, nor can the pair be
developed apart from Right View, Right Thought, and Right Moral Conduct also so
forth. Indeed, to make progress on the above seven stages, the meditator needs an understanding and acceptance of the Lord
Buddha’s Teachings and one’s precepts must be pure. Insight will be needed to
achieve each of these stages that is insight into the meaning of “letting go”.
The further one develops these stages, the more profound will be the insight,
and if you reach as far as Jhana then it will change
your whole understanding. As it were, Insight dances around Jhana
and Jhana dances around Insight. This is the
Path to Nibbana for, the Lord Buddha said,
“for one who indulges in Jhana, four results
are to be expected: Stream Winner, Once Returnee, Non Returnee and Arahant” (PASADIKA SUTTA, DIGHA NIKAYA).
Venerable Brahmavamso (Peter Betts) was born in
From 1975, he trained under Ajahn Chah, being one of the
first residents Wat Pah Nanachat. In 1983, he joined Venerable Jagaro
at the newly established Bodhinyana Monastery in
Venerable Brahmavamso is known amongst the community of Western monks
for his erudition in the Vinaya, the monastic
code of conduct, and his work in this area currently provides the foundation
for Vinaya instruction to Westerners in the
monasteries in
In April, 1995 when
Venerable Jagaro left Bodhinyana
Monastery and disrobed, Venerable Brahmvamso took
over his duties and became the abbot of Bodhinyana
Monastery and Spiritual Director of the Buddhist Society of West Australia.
Since then he has worked diligently training Anagarikas
and novices and guides monks at the Monastery Serpentine. He spends the
weekends at Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre teaching the
lay community the Buddhist scriptures, meditation and giving talks services and
provides counseling to those in need.