The Meditation Experience - 17 Important Steps
Posted: Wednesday, January 27, 2010
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
(Based on the teachings of Ajahn Brahm and Ajahn Thanissaro)
The goal of meditation is to calm and clear the mind until it becomes like a calm, pure lake with no ripples disturbing the surface. Then we can see down into the depths of our being, an experience that positively affects every aspect of our lives.
1. But to expect a busy, disturbed mind to be suddenly capable of deep meditation is not feasible. We first have to establish a sense of morality and way of life that allows our minds to become somewhat blameless, which means no harming of innocent beings, no lying, no cheating on our partners, no stealing, and no dependencies on alcohol or drugs.
3. To prevent our meditation practice from becoming too intense and stressful, we begin each session by wishing happiness for all beings, beginning with ourselves. Then our immediate family and close friends, our acquaintances, even people that we don't know, and finally, our enemies.
4. Then we let go. We let go of our past and of our future, which are mental burdens, and only see what is happening now, right in this very instant. We see a body, and we see the body breathing, We see a mind, and we see the mind thinking and being aware. This is what is going on right now. We are merely observing, as a bystander, the body and mind doing its thing. The busy world outside is not affecting us now, we are only watching the body and the interior activity going on. This is called going inward, the path to a new realty.
5. If we have thoughts of the past, we let them go. Thoughts of the future, we let them go. "How much time is left to this meditation session" is a thought of the future. Thoughts of our friends and relatives are thoughts of the past. We let all of these go; we stay anchored in the present moment. And as the thoughts calm down, we notice the body breathing. This is the beginning of silence of the mind, as we begin to notice our breathing during those silent moments between thoughts.
6. We now learn to breathe comfortably with full alertness. We make the breath comfortable, calm and peaceful, smooth and easy; not tight and restricted. We stay focused in the present moment. Stay focused on the breath. Let thoughts that come up go, always returning to the awareness of breathing. Know each in breath and each out breath.
7. Begin exploring the body. Focus your attention on the area just beneath the naval. Feel the breath in this area. Then move to the right of this area and feel the breath there, then to the left, then move your awareness up to the solar plexus and feel the breath there, then to the right of the solar plexus, then to the left. Then feel the breath in the middle of the chest, then at the base of the throat below the Adams apple, then gently and carefully move the breath to the center of the head and imagine it coming in from all areas, from the eyes, ears, back of the head, top of the head, front of the head. If any areas feel tight or restricted, such as your eyes or throat, keep the breath in this area for awhile and relax it. Now move your awareness slowly down the back, out the legs, to the tips of the toes, and the spaces between the toes. Then, again beginning with the back of the neck, go down the shoulders, through the arms, past your wrists, and out through your fingers.
8. One part of the body will feel most comfortable and centered, where you can easily feel the breath moving in and out. This is where you should establish your primary concentration spot. It can be any part of the body, but usually involves the solar plexus area or the area around the breathing diaphragm.
9. Spread your awareness. Like a candle that from one spot in the middle of a dark room spreads its light in every corner, let your awareness of the breath spread throughout the body, as if the body is a sponge absorbing all of the breath energy, from the tips of the toes to the top of the head. Imagine the breath energy coming in and out of every pore, while at the same time remaining fully aware of your primary concentration spot.
10. After you can experience every part of each in-breath and out-breath, continuously for many hundred breaths in a row, you reach a stage 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 entire 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 the 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, starts to disappear.
11. The beautiful breath. 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 very simple, peaceful and delicious unity of being alone 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. This stage is the `springboard' of meditation, because from here one can dive into the 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 center of the experience of breath, which is the awesome peace, freedom and bliss.
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 aware only of the beautiful breath, without effort, and for a very long time. And 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 the mind as 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 so still that you can not say anything.
You are just experiencing the first flowering of bliss in the mind. That bliss will develop, grow, become very firm and strong. Thus you enter into those states of meditation called Jhana.
12. This stage flows on naturally, seamlessly, from the previous stages. 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 perceptions 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.
13. The disappearance of the breath. 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 Carroll's `Alice in Wonderland', Alice and the Red Queen saw a vision of a smiling Cheshire cat appear in the sky. As they watched, first the cat's tail disappeared, then its paws followed by the rest of its legs. Soon the Cheshire cat's torso completely vanished leaving only the cat's head, still with a smile. Then the head started to fade into nothing, from the ears and whiskers inwards, and soon the smiling cat's head had completely disappeared - except for the smile which still remained in the sky! This was a smile without any lips to do the smiling, but a visible smile nevertheless. This is an accurate analogy for the process of letting go happening at this point in meditation. The cat with a smile on her face stands for the beautiful breath. The cat disappearing represents the breath disappearing and the disembodied smile still visible in the sky stands for the pure mental object `beauty' clearly visible in the mind.
14. Nimitta appears. 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, it is 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 a 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.
15. Recognizing a nimitta. You can recognize a nimitta by the following 6 features:
It appears only after the meditator has been with the beautiful breath for a long time;
It appears when the breath disappears; It only comes when the external five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are completely absent; It manifests only in the silent mind, when descriptive thoughts (inner speech) are totally absent; It is strange but powerfully attractive; and it is a beautifully simple object.
These features are mentioned so that you may distinguish real nimittas from the many imaginary visions that can come up in meditation.
Sometimes when the nimitta first arises it may appear `dull'. In this case, one should immediately go 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 a lighthouse beacon and then disappearing. This too 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 more subtle 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.
16. The main reason why the nimitta can appear dull is that the depth of contentment is too shallow. You are still `wanting' something. Usually, you are wanting the bright nimitta or you are wanting Jhana. Remember, and this is important, Jhanas are states of letting go, incredibly 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.
Put another way, the reason why the 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 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 are in. So now, do not assess or try to work it all out. There is no need to 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 disturbance.
Let the mind incline where it wants, which is usually to the center of the nimitta. The center 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 center 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 First 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 entering Jhana but it is 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.
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 very 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 outside or produce any thought, not even `good' thoughts. There is just a 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.
17. Ending your meditation session. It took effort and concentration to build the steps necessary for the mind to calm down into breath meditation. Don't waste the effort by jumping up from meditation and forgetting about everything. Keep the meditating and awareness of breathing going as long as possible - when you first stand up, when you are walking, when you are listening or talking to someone. This is how insight develops, when the mind is absorbed in meditation.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)This is stunningly beautiful-you should record it. BUT the veil between the physical and spirit world is now very thin; thus I am very concerned about people meditating or praying deeply without first protecting their spirit from negative energies,I will post some simple psychic protection exercises for meditation/praying when I have time.This in no way detracts from the awe-inspiring quality of your article, I just want to keep everyone safe and sound.P.S. I am studying Buddha's teachings myself now with much pleasure.Kind regards and please write more,CAROLThanks so much Carol. If you have any questions about Buddhism that you can't find answers to, email me and I will see what I can do. My field of Buddhism is "Theravada," which differs slightly from Zen and Tibetan.
Metta.............e
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