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December 11, 2015 - April 16, 2017
Its real value and significance is that it points toward a much more profound Insight, provided you don’t make the mistake of clinging to it as a Self. Doing so only nourishes the attachment we are all born with to the idea of being a singular, enduring, and separate Self. Mistaking the Witness state for a true Self is what leads some people to claim that Consciousness is the True Self.
If and when Insight arises, it will be a profound Insight into the truth of no-Self, and it will be so obvious that you’ll wonder why you never realized it before.
nimitta
You can get stuck at any point during the process of pacification of the senses and the arising of meditative joy. If you do, the answer lies outside meditation. Adept practice depends on everything you do, all day long, every day.
The antidote to aversion is deliberately cultivating love, compassion, patience, generosity, and forgiveness toward everyone, including yourself.
The antidote to worry and remorse is practicing virtue in every aspect of your life. You can change bad habits and stop doing things that create the causes for worry and remorse.
There is actually an advantage to working through Stage Eight in daily practice rather than in deep retreat; you have more opportunities to take appropriate action to overcome these hindrances.
You’ve mastered Stage Eight when you achieve physical pliancy and meditative joy almost every time you sit. Experiencing periods of Grade V pīti once or twice—or even every third or fourth time you sit—is not yet true mastery. Consistency is key.
The resulting śamatha has five qualities of mind: fully stable attention, powerful mindfulness, joy, tranquility, and equanimity
For the intensity of pīti to calm, you need to be able to sustain it until the intensity peaks and starts to subside, giving way to tranquility and equanimity.
To deal with these distractions, urges, and misperceptions, recognize them for what they are, and just let them come, let them be, and let them go.
It eventually becomes more of a “bump,” easy to traverse, followed by even stronger tranquility. Sometimes, especially in retreats, the bump disappears completely, and you slide right into tranquility and equanimity.
the stable, comfortable, and pain-free condition of physical pliancy doesn’t change. Next, the coarseness of the bliss of mental pliancy—its energetic, agitated quality—disappears, replaced by a serene happiness and tranquility.
Meditation on Dependent Arising (page 304),
Finding the Still Point and Realizing the Witness (page 318).
Meditating on the mind itself involves bringing attention and awareness together in a completely open state. Essentially, you’re fusing attention and awareness.
Start either from the Still Point, or from an exclusive focus on the breath with strong metacognitive awareness. Expand your scope of attention gradually at first. You’re working against the natural tendency for attention to contract around a particular object, so each time you expand the scope a little more, rest for a while in that larger, more open space. Make sure that everything within that scope is perceived with equal clarity before moving ahead.
Whether you start with the attention focused on the Still Point or the breath, awareness should be almost entirely metacognitive.
When you expand the scope of attention until it includes everything in awareness, the entire field of conscious awareness is the focus of attention. The object of meditation is the mind itself, and the ...
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you know from the practices you did in Stage Eight, metacognitive awareness can include extrospective content; in other words, you can be metacognitively aware of external sensory information passing through the mind. Therefore, allow your mind to project both sensations and purely mental objects into consciousness. Hold a clear intention to allow things to come and go in peripheral awareness, but in a slow and gentle way, rather than as a flood. Attention will still try to contract around specific objects, so...
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The first is where the mind is active. Specific sensations and mental objects are being projected into the field of conscious awareness by unconscious sub-minds.
The other is a state of comparative rest, where no cognizable objects are present, and the space-like field of conscious awareness lies still and empty. Your objective is to investigate the nature of the mind by comparing the active and resting/receptive states.
The main purpose of this practice for this Stage is to generate stable, consistent tranquility and equanimity. Yet, it’s also extremely effective at producing Insight.
Insight: Emptiness and the Nature of Mind
Objects of consciousness arising and passing away in the mind are like the waves that rise and disappear due to forces acting on the ocean.
The mind is as empty as the objects that arise within it. With this further Insight, it’s no longer possible to believe in your mind as the Self.
There is no sense of self in this experience, no Witness—nothing. In the words of the Buddha, it is “gone to suchness,” or in the words of Nisargadatta, “I am that.” The more you engage in this practice, the deeper this Insight will go, penetrating bit by bit, ever deeper into the most hidden recesses of your psyche.
The mind is as empty as the objects that arise within it. The more you engage in this practice, the deeper this Insight goes, penetrating into the most hidden recesses of your psyche.
For this particular Insight experience to occur, a specific constellation of causes and conditions must be present. In addition to stable attention, mindfulness, and joy, you require tranquility, equanimity, investigation, and diligence.
The more complete and lasting your śamatha, the more strongly developed these factors are, and the more chance there is for Insight to arise. Yet keep in mind, attachment to Insight can itself be an impediment. It’s far better to surrender all hopes and expectations. Just practice from a place of trust, for the sake of whatever your meditation may bring. These Insights will come in their own time. Awakening is an accident, but meditating on the mind is a practice that will make you accident-prone.
It’s especially important not to be deceived by mere intellectual understanding. You may think you “got it” just by reading this description.
When the intensity of pīti subsides, the mind’s energy level doesn’t drop. The mind actually has more energy, but it’s being channeled differently, so the joy is accompanied by a sense of tranquility.
But just as with a river, the turbulent energy of pīti eventually opens the “inner channels,” and the energy flow becomes tranquil and serene. Serenity and tranquility are quite blissful, and as they increase, so does the bliss.
When the excitement of pīti subsides and there’s enough tranquility, equanimity naturally arises. Equanimity is non-reactivity to pleasure and pain.
You have mastered Stage Nine when you consistently achieve stable attention and mindfulness, accompanied by joy and tranquility. Equanimity is also present, and grows much stronger in the Tenth and final Stage. Together, these five factors constitute the state of śamatha
All five factors of śamatha are present in Stage Ten. Each time you sit, you quickly enter a state where attention is stable, mindfulness is powerful, and the unified mind rests in a state of joy accompanied by tranquility and equanimity.
Your goal for this Stage is to reach a point where śamatha persists between sittings, permeating your everyday life. This is the one real change left in the perfection of śamatha. Then, śamatha becomes the “normal” condition for the adept meditator. The distinction between meditation and non-meditation largely disappears.
As with the goals for the other adept Stages, all you have to do is keep practicing and śamatha will last longer each time after you get up. You don’t need to do anything new.
Sustaining Śamatha with Joy, Equanimity, and Mindfulness
post-meditative joy can also help sustain equanimity.
which in turn supports and sustains the continuation of joy in everyday life.
the key to extending śamatha in everyday life is to support joy and reinforce equanimity through mindfulness.
Practicing mindfulness off the cushion means being aware whenever des...
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As equanimity grows stronger in meditation, the mind outside of meditation grows less prone to grasping, less compelled to pursue pleasant experiences, and less repelled by unpleasant experiences.
Stage Ten is ideal for doing any type of Insight practice.
Your mind is also in a perfect state to practice the luminous jhānas as well.
Experiencing the mind while breathing in, he trains himself. Experiencing the mind while breathing out, he trains himself. Making the mind tranquil and fresh while breathing in, he trains himself. Making the mind tranquil and fresh while breathing out, he trains himself. Concentrating the mind while breathing in, he trains himself. Concentrating the mind while breathing out, he trains himself. Releasing the mind while breathing in, he trains himself. Releasing the mind while breathing out, he trains himself. Ānāpānasati Sutta
The practice in this book is śamatha-vipassanā, but we have focused mostly on the Stages of śamatha. The reason was purely practical: to prepare the mind as quickly as possible for the ultimate goal of Insight and Awakening
Never lose sight of the fact that śamatha and vipassanā must work together. Like two wings of a bird, you need both to arrive at your ultimate destination.
Śamatha creates the ideal conditions for Insight and an Awakening that isn’t subject to passing away.
