The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science

by Culadasa (John Yates)

Sustaining Attention by Engaging with the Meditation Object

To help you intensify your focus, use the practices of following and connecting described in Stage Three. In Stage Four, connecting is particularly useful: you observe changes in the breath over time and notice, or “connect,” how those changes correspond to shifts in your state of mind.

As you become more skilled at dealing with distractions, strong dullness will become your next major obstacle.

Overcoming Strong Dullness

The Seduction of Dullness Strong dullness can be a seductive trap. States of dullness lead to dream imagery, archetypal visions, pleasurable sensations, paranormal experiences like channeling, past-life recollections, and the overall feeling that something profound is occurring. If you anchor attention on the breath, you can sustain them for a long time without falling asleep. In certain traditions, these states are purposely cultivated. However, when it comes to cultivating attention and awareness, these states are only a hindrance. Remember that visionary experiences, brilliant insights, and any other seemingly profound encounters should all be avoided at this Stage. When these experiences arise, simply resolve to let go of them. Strengthen your intention to observe the details of the breath as clearly and vividly as possible. Ignore the visions, bring yourself out of dullness, and carry on meditating. This may not be easy if, in another system of practice, you’ve used such experiences and found meaning and value in them. If you find some significance in a vision that arises, set it aside and explore it at another time.

Conclusion

Dullness no longer leads to drowsiness, nor causes perception of the breath sensations to grow dim or take on hypnagogic distortions. By the end of Stage Four, you can direct and sustain your attention at will. This is a unique and powerful ability.

Ānāpānasati Sutta

The Moments of Consciousness Model

Abhidhamma

Yogācāra

Moments of Consciousness

moments of consciousness

If you observed closely enough, you’d find that experience is actually divided into individual moments of consciousness.

Within each moment of consciousness nothing changes, they are like freeze-frames. Your experience of seeing movement is many separate moments of visual consciousness, rapidly following each other.

Seven Different Types of Moments of Consciousness

binding consciousness

Moments of Consciousness

If it’s a moment of peripheral awareness, it will be broad, inclusive, and holistic—regardless of which of the seven categories it belongs to. A moment of attention, on the other hand, will isolate one particular aspect of experience to focus on.

Any moment of consciousness can be either a moment of attention, or a moment of peripheral awareness. Moments of awareness contain many objects; moments of attention contain only a few.

Moments of awareness provide minimally processed information about a lot of things at once. Attention isolates specific objects to be analyzed and interpreted in detail.

the content of moments of awareness usually comes from the physical senses, while the content of moments of attention usually comes from the mind sense.

Only if you diligently practice following the breath, observing ever-finer details, will you train your mind to produce more moments of attention to actual breath sensations.

Mindfulness training increases moments of introspective awareness—awareness of mental objects, and the states and activities of the mind itself.

Mindfulness training involves increasing the moments of introspective awareness—moments of peripheral awareness of mental objects, and states and activities of the mind.

Non-perceiving mind moments

Interspersed among perceiving moments of consciousness are non-perceiving mind moments, potential rather than actual moments of consciousness.

The stronger our intention to attend to a particular object, the more moments of attention will subsequently be focused on that object. So, if you intend to watch the breath, the next few moments of consciousness are more likely to take the breath as their object. Although intention is part of every perceiving moment, awareness of these intentions is usually subliminal—unless, of course, the intention itself becomes the object of a moment of consciousness.

Non-perceiving mind moments are also non-intending mind moments. The lack of intention results in more non-perceiving moments, so dullness grows stronger.

Intention also exerts a powerful influence on how many of the upcoming mind moments will be perceiving rather than non-perceiving. A strong intention to perceive anything results in more perceiving moments, and vice versa. This, in turn, has a strong effect on the activity and energy levels of the mind. In contrast, intention is completely absent from non-perceiving mind moments. Therefore, they are also non-intending mind moments. Just as the intention of perceiving moments leads to more perceiving moments, the lack of intention in non-perceiving moments results in more non-perceiving moments, meaning dullness grows stronger.

With forgetting, there are no moments of attention with the breath as the object, only moments with distractions as the object.

With gross distractions, there are more moments devoted to the distraction than to the

With subtle distractions, there are more moments devoted to the breath th...

Finally, the exclusive focus of an advanced practitioner lies on the far end of the spectrum, because all content is related to a single, clearly defined theme—distractions rarely...

the process of developing stable attention required that you work with introspective peripheral awareness to overcome forgetting and gross distractions.

you use mindfulness—the optimal interaction between moments of attention and moments of awareness—to gradually develop stable attention.

Mindfulness means just the right balance between moments of attention and moments of awareness. Increasing mindfulness means increasing the proportion of perceiving vs. non-perceiving mind moments.

The solution to any loss of mindfulness is to increase the total power of consciousness

That means increasing the proportion of actively perceiving versus non-perceiving mind moments. To do this, we have to convert non-perceiving mind moments into perceiving moments of attention and awareness.

If consciousness is more powerful, we’ll have enough perceiving mind moments to sustain peripheral awareness while keeping attention on whatever task we’re doing—even when multitasking.

But by increasing the total number of perceiving mind moments, they can generate enough moments of awareness to achieve a balance of attention and awareness. By doing so, they’re as able as anyone to achieve a high level of mindfulness.

While moments of attention focus exclusively on one thing, you can still have enough moments of awareness to be mindful. But only if you have enough conscious power for both.

we need enough conscious power to have the necessary awareness accompanying attention. Otherwise, as the number of moments devoted to objects of attention increase, the number of moments of awareness must drop, because we simply won’t have enough moments

Dullness is determined by the number of non-perceiving moments mixed in with perceiving moments. As the proportion of non-perceiving moments increases, we experience more subtle dullness. Increase it even more, and we experience strong dullness.

the different degrees of alertness of everyday life are actually varying degrees of stable subtle dullness. That means we’re already in subtle dullness even before we sit down to meditate!

remember, non-perceiving moments are also non-intending moments, so they don’t generate any intent to perceive in subsequent moments.

there’s no intervention, this cycle turns the stable subtle dullness of daily life into the progressive subtle dullness of meditation. If this isn’t checked, it becomes strong dullness and drowsiness.

Ordinary consciousness includes a significant proportion of non-perceiving mind moments. In the next Stage, you learn to reduce the proportion of non-perceiving moments.

you will learn ways to reduce the proportion of non-perceiving moments and to increase the proportion of perceiving moments. You will have less subtle dullness, more conscious power, and therefore greater mindfulness. A strong intention to perceive in every moment of consciousness is the real antidote to dullness in meditation.

The Moments of Consciousness model will prove useful for understanding both the problem of subtle dullness and how to overcome it in Stage Five.