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 realise 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 realising 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 recognise 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 recognise 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 marvellous for each one
of us if we could abandon the inner speech and abide in silent awareness of the
present moment long enough to realise how delightful it is. Silence is so much
more productive of wisdom and clarity than thinking. When you realise 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 realised 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 coloured circle
visualised 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 it’s
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 recognises 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 recognises 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, 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
recognises 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 savour 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 tranquillity 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 recognise 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 are still “wanting” 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 practised 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. Ajahn 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 counselling to those in need.