Focused and Fearless

A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity

Shaila Catherine

• Éditeur: Wisdom Publications
• Année: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780861719815
• Sujet: Teología y religión
• Sous-sujet: Budismo

With this accesssible guide, meditators (and non-meditators) can understand how to attain extraordinary states with relative ease. Blended with contemporary examples and pragmatic "how to" instructions that anyone can try, Focused and Fearless provides a wealth of tools to cultivate non-distracted attention in daily life and on retreat. Shaila Catherine has a friendly, wise approach to the meditative states ( jhanas ) that lead to liberating insight. Focused and Fearless is about much more than merely meditation or concentration. It offers a complete path towards bliss, fearlessness, and true awakening.

PART I

The Joy of the Focused Mind

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CHAPTER 1

Cultivating the Focused Mind

Just as a rocky mountain is not moved by storms, so sights, sounds, tastes, smells, contacts and ideas, whether desirable or undesirable, will never stir one of steady nature, whose mind is firm and free.

—The Buddha¹

CONCENTRATION is a central feature of a contemplative life, cultivated through formal meditation practice and also through any of a variety of other daily activities. Concentration brings with it a natural joy that arises as the mind settles and is absent of distraction. A surgeon may love surgery, not because the operating room is a pleasant place to be, but because the task demands such complete attention that the mind is filled with the delight associated with concentration. Kayakers are often enveloped in rapture even though their bodies are cramped in little boats and splashed by frigid water. A concentrated mind is focused, unified, and stable, regardless of whether the conditions are uncomfortable or luxurious.

In the Pali language of the early Buddhist scriptures, samadhi is the term that has most often been translated into English as “concentration,” yet samadhi describes something more than the narrow focus implied by “concentration.” It is a calm unification that occurs when the mind is profoundly undistracted. Samadhi is the beautiful state of an undistracted mind, described in the Pali texts as “internally steadied, composed, unified, and concentrated.”² These four qualities indicate that samadhi is not merely focused on a single object. It is a state of profound serenity that encompasses a balanced, joyful composure, expressing the natural settledness of undistracted awareness.

The Buddhist tradition discusses three levels of samadhi:

• the samadhi of momentary concentration

• the samadhi that grants access to the jhanas

• the samadhi of absorption into the jhanas

Each of these levels is a deeply undistracted state of consciousness, and all three can be the support for liberating wisdom. The momentum of clear and sustained attention brings calm to the mind as it simultaneously restricts energy that might nourish unwholesome or distracting mental states.

Don’t worry if, right now, you feel far away from these beautiful calm states. Most people need to bolster their intention and practice diligently to develop the inner conditions for samadhi. All of this can come with time and practice, and this book is the first step to helping you cultivate them.

THE SAMADHI OF MOMENTARY CONCENTRATION

Buddhist disciplines distinguish between the quality of samadhi developed through a continuity of mindfulness of changing perceptions and the quality of samadhi developed with a fixed focus.

When the breath is used to develop mindfulness, emphasis is placed on clear perception of changing sensations through the full duration of an inhale and exhale. With tremendous precision, the meditator experiences a multitude of fleeting sensations: tingles, vibrations, pressure, heat, for instance. Pressure may increase or decrease. Pulsing may vary in rhythm. The intensity of heat or cold may fluctuate. This meticulous sensitivity to physical variations brings the mind to a state of exquisite clarity that allows you to see the impermanent and empty nature of phenomena and witness the relationship between the mind and body. You can observe how sights and smells can trigger vivid memories, how intentions affect physical movements, and how emotions manifest in the body.

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As the momentum of mindfulness increases, concentration correspondingly strengthens. The concentration that develops through a continuity of mindfulness with changing objects is called “momentary concentration.” The mind momentarily collects, but then it disperses as the flow of sensory experiences ebbs and alters. Thinking can arise, but the thoughts do not diminish the concentrated state. Mindfulness inhibits proliferations of thought because it meets the experience of thinking immediately. The content of thought relates only to the phenomena at hand.

Before samadhi is established, thoughts may multiply through cognitive associations. A personal story is fabricated out of simple sensory triggers. For example, what begins as the simple sight of a stain on my shirt could proliferate into a rapid train of thoughts: plans for how to wash it, reflections on the last meal that might have caused the stain, embarrassed recollections of who I encountered since my last meal, speculations about what those people might think of me, fabrication of excuses for the stain, and on and on.

In contrast to this proliferating tendency, when mindfulness is present, we apprehend the thought quickly. For example, I arrived on my last retreat quite tired and slept through the early morning meditation on the first day. As I sipped some tea after breakfast, my mind was active: sustaining the story of how tired I was, creating the identity of a busy person, justifying my extra hour of sleep because of all the important things I was doing in the previous days. Between sips of tea I became aware that this story was activating restlessness. I reviewed my physical condition and noticed that I was not actually tired. The only thing that seemed to be sustaining tiredness was a perverse identification with the story of exhaustion. As I became aware of the experience of thinking, the story of being tired dissolved. Attention settled easily in the present-moment experience of feeling the cup in my hand, hearing the sounds of activity that surrounded me, and sensing my body and breath.

Ajahn Chah, a master in the Thai Forest Tradition, compared momentary concentration to taking a walk, resting, walking, and resting. The journey is periodically interrupted with the arising of a thought, yet undisturbed, because in a short time the journey is continued. Developed through a continuity of mindfulness, momentary concentration can grow very strong and bring the mind through stages of intense happiness that culminate in wisdom. Although momentary samadhi is not the focus of this book, it is a valid expression of concentration worthy of respect—and extraordinarily useful for insight.

I assume most readers who have done mindfulness practice are familiar with this quality of concentration or can learn about it through the ample literature available on mindfulness with breathing. Therefore, I have narrowed the scope of this book to the sequential development of samadhi with a fixed object for attention, as demonstrated in the next two types of samadhi. The purity of mind produced at the threshold to absorption is called access to jhana and complete absorption is called jhana.

ACCESS TO JHANA

To attain the stage of access to jhana, you don’t highlight the changing nature of experience the way you might with mindful breathing. The basic occurrence of breath becomes the object for attention rather than the dynamic flow of changing sensations. As concentration deepens, the physicality of changing sensations becomes less dominant. The expression of a steady mind comes to the fore as the predominant mental object. For some practitioners, this manifests as the occurrence of bright light in awareness or a “subtle field of vibrations” in the mind. Each practitioner will discover how this shift in consciousness is perceived, and experiences will vary. As samadhi deepens, the mind gradually withdraws from its orientation to the sensory world.

Sensory orientation is, of course, a deeply ingrained aspect of the healthy functioning of perception. It plays a valuable role in the survival of animals, the development of children, and the structure of social organizations—to name but a few broad areas. However, the critical refinement that sets the stage for the possibility of absorption into jhana and marks these states of concentration as “altered states” occurs as consciousness withdraws its dependence on sensory perception.

With access to jhana, the object for concentration shifts from a perception of the physicality of phenomena to a subtler experience of refined mental factors, or visions of light as the mental reflection of the object. These include (but are not limited to) mental factors of pleasure, focus, mindfulness, happiness, and equanimity. In the access stage, attention dwells consistently in relationship to these positive and pleasant mental qualities. It is a distinctive shift in the direction of seclusion, but still not yet the withdrawal into an altered state of jhana.

Ajahn Chah compared access to jhana to wandering about inside your own home. Consciousness is at ease within the confines of a comfortable arena of perceptions. Attention does not move away from the meditation object. Thinking may still arise but it circles closely around the meditative experience. Light and wispy thoughts can arise, often as reflections on the meditation process, yet this mental activity does not disturb a calm tranquillity that pervades the mind. A strong and fundamental purity has been achieved, yet there is still a subtle restlessness that inhibits the depth of stillness required for absorption.

The Buddha said of this stage,“If I think and ponder upon thoughts of letting go, even for a night and day, I see nothing to fear from it. But with excessive thinking and pondering, I might tire my body, and when the body is tired, the mind might become disturbed. It is far from concentration. So I steadied my mind and concentrated it so that it would not be disturbed.”³

Although there is nothing wrong with thoughts that regulate the meditation experience—such as the desire to calm obsessive thinking and the intention to return to the breath—greater rest and seclusion can be attained by cultivating further stillness. As attention continues to still, an opportunity for absorption (entering the next level of samadhi) may arise.

ABSORPTION INTO JHANA STATES

When the mind abandons its contact with the senses, including discursive thinking, the concentrated absorption of jhana begins. The mind is utterly still and focused on its object. The specific object of focus becomes progressively refined in the development of concentration, from the physical sensations of breathing, to a perception of light. Rapture, pleasure, and equanimity may accompany the bright radiant mind, while attention is continually directed toward the place where the breath is known. As these perceptions grow increasingly subtle, attention remains connected and the subtle perception of breath is recognized as a perception of stable brightness in mind.

In jhana, attention is virtually merged into its object, creating an impression of complete unification. Even if there is sensory impact from sounds and sensations, the mind remains completely unmoved. Sensory contact—even strong pain or loud noise—does not disturb the tranquillity or affect the unification of the mind with its object of concentration. It is as though you don’t hear anything, yet the capacity of hearing is not impaired. It is as if you don’t feel pain, and yet the bodily processes are functioning. There may or may not be subtle awareness of the impact of a sound or physical contact, but the mind lets go so automatically that there can be no sensory residue to disturb the concentration. Because the mind is so still that even pain will not disrupt the attention, jhana can be sustained for very long periods of time. Although this depth of detachment is often challenging to attain, once seclusion is established, the sequential development through the stages of jhana unfolds rather effortlessly.

The standard formula repeatedly presented in the discourses of the Buddha describes concentration through the development of four primary levels of jhana:

And what, bhikkhus, is the faculty of concentration? Here, bhikkhus, the noble disciple gains concentration, gains one-pointedness of mind, having made release the object. Secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, he enters and dwells in the first jhana, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion. With the subsiding of thought and examination, he enters and dwells in the second jhana, which has internal confidence and unification of mind, is without thought and examination, and has rapture and happiness born of concentration. With the fading away as well of rapture, he dwells equanimous and, mindful and clearly comprehending, he experiences happiness with the body; he enters and dwells in the third jhana of which the noble ones declare: “he is equanimous, mindful, one who dwells happily.”With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous passing away of joy and displeasure, he enters and dwells in the fourth jhana, which is neither painful nor pleasant and includes the purification of mindfulness by equanimity. This is called the faculty of concentration.⁴

Developing this faculty requires appreciation both of the power of seclusion and forms of happiness that go beyond sensory gratification. The next two chapters explore these elements that are so vital to bringing about jhana.

THE FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICE

THIS INITIAL MEDITATION forms the basis of jhana practice. Though deceptively simple, it leads to profound focus and transformative insight when practiced daily. The many exercises and reflections interspersed throughout this book build upon the primary technique of developing concentration through careful attention to the breath.

CONCENTRATION MEDITATION For concentration meditation, we establish a very simple task: we choose one object and maintain concentration on that. The method I teach uses the breath as the initial focus for attention. We give ourselves the task of observing the sensations of the breath as it enters and exits at the nostrils. Narrowing the focus to a single object discards many of the stray thoughts that occupy and divert precious mental energy. The simple practice of repeatedly bringing attention to the breath and letting it rest there forms the basis of this meditat...