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To allow
the mind to become peaceful we have to work at it, and for
this we need to have some sort of a structure. I have found
the Buddha’s teaching on the mindfulness of breathing in the
Anapanasati Sutta a very effective and complete way of
training the mind. When we first look at it we might think:
‘Wow! That’s really complicated, sixteen stages of mindfulness
of breathing – that’s too much, I just want to watch my
breath.’ But when we really learn how to use the steps of
training that the Buddha laid down, we can see how complete
and effective it is for training the mind. It’s a tool for
changing the whole process of the mind and the way that we
relate to the mind.
The sixteen stages are related to the four foundations of
mindfulness. Paying attention to each breath, to the in-breath
and the out-breath, is just reading about the theory of them,
we start to apply the foundations of mindfulness in a tangible
way. In the sutta there are four sections with four stages
each, making sixteen stages altogether. Each section gives a
way of applying the breath with each of the four foundations
of mindfulness: the body, the feelings, the mind and the mind
objects.
The first set concerns the body, and the first two stages
of it are just about knowing the short breath (rassam pajanati),
and knowing the long breath (digham pajanati). From then on
each stage starts off with: ‘The monk trains himself thus…’ I
shall train in this way. So the training in terms of the body,
where the third stage is: ‘Experiencing the body* (sabbakaya
patisamvedi), I shall breathe in. Experiencing the body, I
shall breathe out.’ This means really taking the time on each
in-breath and each out-breath to experience the body sitting
and breathing; clearly, from the beginning of the in-breath to
the end of the in-breath, from the beginning of the out-breath
to the end of the out-breath – really experiencing what the
body is feeling. We do not have to change it, we’re not having
to try to do anything special but just experiencing the body,
experiencing the actual posture and the feeling of the breath
as it comes into the body. What sort of tension is there? How
relaxed is it? How do we experience the body? Some people tend
to be so up in their heads, thinking all the time – on and on
and on – that they don’t experience their bodies. They can sit
for a whole meditation period, and just be totally up in their
heads and feel nothing below their neck; there’s nothing
there, just this void. That’s a lack of mindfulness. So it’s
important to really settle mindfully into one in-breath, one
out-breath.
Then the next stage is calming the body (passambhayam
Kayasamkharam) – to consciously calm the body, taking it on a
very small workable scale. For one in-breath we can try to be
a bit calm, to feel a sense of calmness, and then the same for
one out-breath. It may not be like that the next breath, but
for this in-breath and this out-breath, we remember, ‘I am
trying to calm the body.’ Remember, it’s a training so we keep
coming back, knowing that that’s actually what we are doing:
‘Right now, I am working to consciously calm the body.’
The next section is concerned with feelings, beginning
with: ‘Experiencing joy (pitipatisamvedi), I shall breathe in,
experiencing joy, I shall breathe out.’ It’s possible to
create a certain space in the mind where we can allow a sense
of well-being to establish itself; it doesn’t have to be
ecstatic joy, just a sense of well-being. This leads on to the
next stage, which is to experience happiness (sukhapatisamvedi),
this means something that is felt throughout the whole body as
well as in the mind. Through really taking an interest in
something we find joy in it. So in our meditation we really
allow a sense of interest, a sense of joy, to settle into the
practice. Often times there is so much striving - trying to
make the mind be a certain way or to attain something, or just
sort of struggling along - that we tend to get caught in a lot
of negativity, which goes in the opposite direction of
peacefulness. So in the developing of meditation we really
need to create a firm foundation in positive mental states and
a sense of well-being, a sense of happiness. Then we can turn
our attention to that.
Learning how to meditate, how to develop the mind, is
learning how to direct attention in a skilful way. What we
direct our attention to is what our reality is. We can direct
our attention to all the chaos in the world around us, or to
the chaos is the world around us, or to the chaos of our own
personal dramas – but we don’t have to do that. We can direct
our attention in other ways, we can learn how to direct
attention to things which are very soothing to the mind,
things that are conducive to peace, to a sense of clarity. Or
we direct it to the things that come up, investigating and
contemplating them simply as feelings.
For the next two stages the focus is on experiencing and
calming the mind conditioners (cittasamkhara
patisamvedi/passambhayam cittasakharam) – the things that
condition the mind. These include feelings, perception and
memory. We start to see how the mind is conditioned, and to
notice when the mind starts to move. We can ask, ‘What’s it
moving from? What’s pushing it?’ and begin to recognize all
these feelings, these perceptions and memories that come up.
For example, perception is the way we perceive ourselves, our
relationship with the world around us and our expectations.
All these things are perceptions in the mind, that sort of
overlay the mind, and then we proliferate and build things on
that. But we can come back and start to watch, and to question
what it is that’s conditioning the mind on the bare level of
feeling and perception. Then we start to get a handle on the
movement of the mind, we don’t have to follow that movement,
that proliferation, we can calm it down by coming back to just
one in-breath and one out-breath; just watching, paying
attention to that. We’re going to lose it all the time, but we
keep coming back to the breath, having hat as an anchor;
returning to some aspect of this training.
The next section concerns the mind itself and the state of
mind. The first thing is just experiencing the mind (cittapatisamvedi),
recognizing clearly what the state of the mind is. Usually we
get caught up in identifying with the mind, mental sates,
moods and feelings, as ‘me’, but when we contemplate one
in-breath and one out-breath and experience the mind in the
way we can see that this is just the way the mind is. It
immediately allows us to step back from it and watch it. This
watching allows us to let go of the mind, the mental states,
and the habits, the conditioning. That’s what changes. We are
changing the process of consciousness; learning how to watch
and observe, rather than being caught up in all the
proliferations and the identification with it all.
Next we have delighting the mind (abhippamodayam dittam)
The word used in the Thai translation means something which is
amusing or fun. We have to bring a certain delight into our
practice; we have to enjoy it. It can get really dreary just
sitting, meditating and trying to be mindful, if we don’t
bring a sense of enjoyment into it. Again, the power of
mindfulness is really the factor that changes things. Someone
asked me one time what I do on retreat. I explained that
mostly I stay in my dwelling place in the forest or on my
walking path, except when I go to collect food; that’s about
it. She said, ‘That must be boring!’ I said, ‘Well, it’s not
boring . . . I was thinking about it afterwards, and realized
that the reason why we get bored is because we are not
mindful, but as soon as we start learning how to be mindful
then it’s not boring. I could stay by myself for hours and
hours on end and be quite happy.
So through mindfulness we learn how to bring a sense of
delight into the mind, changing the whole process of the way
the mind works, That’s our meditation, we have to really learn
how to work with it. Our minds tend to easily drift off into
some sort of amorphous or dreamlike wanderings, or to get
caught up in the busyness of mind, or in dullness. But we have
these guideposts that we can work with which are very
important for keeping us on the right track. So in the section
on the mind, we have experiencing the mind; delighting the
mind; concentrating the mind (samadaham cittam) and liberating
the mind (vimocayam cittam) – freeing the mind from its
constrictions, allowing it to settle.
The last section is on dhammas – the objects of mind, where
the mind goes. Firstly, the Buddha instructs us to experience
impermanence (aniccanupassi). To train ourselves with the
in-breath and the out-breath in contemplating impermanence –
whether internal or external – of the body, mind, feelings or
memories; there’s always something changing. So we can start
to recognize that. Then through the clear insight into
impermanence the mind can start to let go of its
identification; the whole structure of ‘I am’ starts to fall
apart when we see the impermanence of things. We can really
start to see the whole identification with ‘I’: ‘I am these
states’, ‘I am this mind’, ‘I am this body’, ‘I am these
moods’. We don’t have to make ourselves relinquish it or give
it up, or let go, or force it out of the mind; it’s just that
it’s seen clearly. It ceases to pull on the mind any more.
The last three stages are: experiencing dispassion (viraganupassi),
experiencing cessation (nirodhanupassi), and experiencing
relinquishment (patinissagganupassi). Normally, we are
attracted to things, we are held and bound by the objects that
we experience, but when there is a sense of dispassion, when
we allow that to settle in, we can feel what the difference
is. We can ask ourselves: ‘What does it feel like when we are
caught up in something?’ and, ‘What does it feel like when
there is a sense of dispassion there?’ When we can just sit
back and observe, pay attention to it, be mindful of it, it
has a very different quality. The mind starts to really have a
sense of coolness to it, of establishing a sense of firmness.
The quality of passion of attachment is unsettling, so when we
start to investigate dispassion in that way and bring it up as
a possibility, the mind will start to go towards that, towards
something which is cooling, which gives a sense of firmness.
It’s the same with cessation. If we start to pay attention
to the cessation of feelings, thoughts and perceptions, there
is a different quality in the mind than when we are always
going towards new things to experience. It’s not necessary to
create anything to experience cessation because it’s the
nature of everything; it’s the nature of the mind, it’s the
nature of the breath. As soon as you breathe in, that
in-breath is finished. It’s ceased; it’s stopped, and the same
with the out-breath. Everything is ceasing all the time, but
usually we don’t notice it, so we are not able to tune into
the cooling quality of it. But we can learn to turn attention
back, to pay attention to cessation and dispassion; these
things are always there. The mind, the process of
consciousness can work in that way if we allow it to.
Finally, there is relinquishing. This means a sort of
giving back the things that we take as ourselves. It’s as
though we have been thieves for a long time, taking things
that don’t belong to us. Now we can give them back – these
thoughts, feelings and habits that keep torturing us; we can
relinquish them, give them up. This shouldn’t be taken as an
ultimate state that we’re trying to attain, but rather as
something to get in tune with, getting in touch with it on
this one in-breath and one out-breath. Just do that.
You can work with these aspects of the mindfulness of
breathing in different ways. You can actually go through it in
quite a step-by-step way to familiarize the mind with the
structure, as training. Or you can just take one particular
aspect and work with that, or just recognize when different
aspects come up. There are all sorts of different ways to
work, but work with these. It’s really helpful to have this
structure to work with, something to give certain parameters
to keep you on the path of training and developing. Then you
will find that your practice goes along quite smoothly and you
learn how to work with the mind and to understand it. That’s
what leads to a quality of peace, freeing the mind – just
understanding.
In one sense we have to push the mind a bit, we have to
overcome a certain inertia in the mind that doesn’t want to
work so much. It just wants to get as much as possible with
doing as little as possible. That’s the normal human
condition. It’s like a cartoon I saw in Thailand; these two
winos were sitting on a park bench with an empty bottle
between them down on the ground and another half bottle
between them. One of them says to the other, ‘Let’s face it,
Sid, not having been born great, not having achieved
greatness, one can only assume that we’ll have it thrust upon
us.’ I sometimes think that meditation is like that? But we
can’t just wait for these peaceful states to sort of drop on
us, for enlightenment to just sort of pop up from nowhere . .
. There’s a certain amount of work that’s involved. It takes
care, being circumspect with what we are doing, being patient
with it, being patient with ourselves. Now that’s hard enough
work. So having these parameters, having a structure to work
with is very helpful. So I offer that for your reflection.
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