Here is an explanation of meditation,which I found in a manual. It is a long manual,and I would not want to bore every one by putting all of it here.
But it seems to me,that this person and me are singing from the same hymn book,when we speak of meditation;what meditation is.
Because here he write about,sitting down,and deciding what to meditate about,and then,going ahead and meditating about it. That is what meditation is all about.
As I said,the manual is very long. These teaching are called Lamrim Chenmo, written by tsongkapa.
1. Stage One - Setting the Mind
The first stage is called setting the mind or placing the mind. There are various translations for theseterms so what I say may not be what you read in a book because different translators use differentwords. The first stage is called setting, or placing, the mind and this is when you are first starting out and you are just struggling to get the object of meditation.
For example, say our object of meditation is the image of the Buddha. We sit down and try to get the object but most of the time our mind is in distraction. We get the object for a couple of seconds and then the mind goes away. Then you bring the mind back to the image of the Buddha and the mind goes away again. So in this first step the time spent in distractions are much more than the amount of time you actually spend focused on the object.
Sometimes when you are on this stage it appears that the thoughts become worse than they used to be.
People very often say when they start to meditate, "My mind is crazier now than it was before." It is not that it is crazier now and that there are more thoughts; it is just that we are probably noticing them for the first time. When you live by the highway all the time, you do not hear the cars, but when you go away on.
A quiet vacation and then come back, the noise can seem like thunder. It is the same when we finally sit down and try to concentrate: the distractions seem like they get worse, but be rest assured they are not.
The Power of Hearing
The power we are basically practicing here is the one of hearing. We had to first hear the teachings from our teacher, then we try to remember them, then we need to think about them. So we try to recall all the teachings on calm abiding, think about what the object of our meditation looks like and then try to focus on it.
The Engagement is Forceful
The type of engagement is called forceful; other translations render this word as painstaking.
In the beginning the mind is really uncontrolled and so the kind of force, or mental engagement, that is necessary is one that needs a little more force to it because it is right at the beginning when the mind is so distracted. We are just starting out with mindfulness, with memory and with trying to get the object of meditation. So this is the first stage.
2. Stage Two - Continuous Setting
Then the second stage is called continuous setting or continuous placing. Once again on this stage the concentration is constantly interrupted by scattering. So on these first two stages, although laxity and excitement are present, scattering is the predominant thing that happens to us because the mind is very soon off onto one thing or another, or somewhere else, or getting angry, or planning our future, or thinking of our past and so on.
So scattering is going on in the second stage but the thoughts are beginning to take a rest. Because of the force used during the first and second stages of continually bringing the mind back, the mind begins to rest. It is as if your child keeps running away and you just keep bringing him back and he runs away again and you bring him back again. After a while the kid gets the point and does not run away quite so often and when he does, he does not stay away quite so long. So there is some progress here, you can begin to see it. You can stay on the object a little bit longer and the length of the distraction of the scattering is not as great as before. That is the difference from the previous stage.
The Power of Thinking / The Engagement is Forceful
Here the engagement is still forceful, but the power is the one of thinking because you are doing more thinking, more reflection and more recalling of the object of meditation. In the first stage it was a matter of just hearing the instructions and remembering what you heard. Here in this stage something is beginning to get integrated because you are thinking, mulling it over, going over it again and again recalling what the Buddha looks like.
3. Stage Three - Resetting
Then the third stage is called resetting and here we still have scattering. Remember scattering can be towards a virtuous object or non-virtuous things. An example of scattering towards a virtuous object would be like when we are trying to focus on the Buddha and instead we start thinking about precious human life, or we start thinking about Tara. But when we start getting really angry, resentful, jealous, comparing ourselves to other people, getting proud, or something of that sort, that is scattering toward a non-virtuous thing.
Scattering is happening during all the first three stages, but in the third stage of resetting, scattering is recognized much quicker. The mind goes off but you are much quicker to recognize the fact that it is off.
In the earlier stages, the mind would go off and you would not recognize it until the meditation bell rang.
[ Now in stage three the mind goes off and you are beginning to recognize it on your own and
bring it back. Mindfulness is increasing in this stage and so is your introspective alertness. Previously, the mind could not return to the object readily once it was distracted, but now when you bring it back to the object of the Buddha it is more compliant and goes back quicker.
The Power of Mindfulness / The Engagement is Interrupted
In the third stage the engagement is called interrupted. You are over with the forceful engagement and it is now either "interrupted" or "repeated," because you are repeatedly renewing your attention. Your attention is interrupted and engagement is not completely smooth yet because there are still interruptions with scattering, laxity and excitement..The power that you are emphasizing here is the one of mindfulness. It is not that you did not have mindfulness before, you did have mindfulness in the first and second stages and because of that, your mindfulness is getting a little bit firmer now.
An important point to notice as we are going through these six different powers is that in each stage there is a particular power that is predominant. But that does not mean that you do not use that power in the other stages, it just means that at this stage it is the predominant one. Simply because one distraction, or one hindrance, is more prominent at each stage does not mean that you do not have the other ones; it just means that it is the chief one that you are focusing on. But there is some progression and the mind is getting a little bit tamed in this stage.
4. Stage Four - Close Setting
Then the fourth stage is called close setting, or close placing. Here the mind is much more familiar with the object, much closer to the object and you are better able to set the mind on the object. At this point you do not really lose the object anymore. This one sounds really good to me, imagine getting to the point that you do not really lose the object. Sometimes you might have subtle excitement where your mind is thinking about something else under the surface, or there is subtle laxity, or you get spaced out, but you never really completely lose the object and go off in never-never land. That just does not happen any more, your mind is always somehow close to the object. You can really see that you are beginning
to get somewhere at this point.
Engagement is Interrupted / Power of Mindfulness
The coarse dullness is actually the biggest problem on this stage. Where we have stability we have some clarity, but not so much clarity. The mind gets spaced out. This is the coarse kind of laxity. The engagement here is still the interrupted one because our concentration is not smooth. It still has interruptions from laxity and excitement and the power is one of mindfulness because the mindfulness is getting really strong. It is the strength of the mindfulness at this fourth stage that allows us to remain on the object without ever really losing it again.
5. Stage Five - Disciplining
Then the fifth stage is called disciplining, taming, or controlled. There are different translations, maybe taming is the nicer translation. What happens here is because of the fourth stage, your mind was getting pretty stable on the object and you were not really losing the object any longer, but now the mind gets too sunk into the object. So laxity, specifically the subtle kind of laxity, becomes a problem. Somehow the mind gets too withdrawn. Remember I said that subtle laxity was when you had stability and clarity,
but your clarity was not very intense. So the mind somehow is not quite altogether there.
This was the one I said to really be careful about. This is the chief fault on the fifth stage.
Engagement is Interrupted / Power of Introspection.
Here the engagement is still interrupted. Obviously, we are interrupted in this case mostly by subtle laxity, but of course we are also sometimes interrupted by excitement and other things. But mostly in this stage the interruption is by subtle laxity. The power here is the one of introspection. If you remember when we went through the hindrances and were talking about laxity and excitement, the antidote was introspective alertness. This is the mental factor that pops up and checks from time to time, "Am I still focusing? Am I spaced out?" We had that before on the earlier stages and we were developing it all along, but on this stage it is the one we are chiefly relying on. By having that introspective alertness and by getting that fine-tuned, we are able to recognize the subtle laxity. Only by having a more finely tuned introspective alertness can we discern the subtle laxity and then tighten the mode of apprehension on the object and tighten the concentration to remedy it. That is what happens on the fifth stage.
6. Stage Six - Pacifying
Now the sixth stage is called pacifying, or pacification. On the fifth stage because of the subtle laxity, we were tightening the concentration to get the strength of the clarity back and what happened is we went over the balance point a little bit so now the mind is a little bit too tight and subtle excitement becomes the problem. You can see within this whole progression how it is always a thing of finding a balance.
They always compare developing concentration to tuning a guitar. We are not to tune the string too loose, nor too tight, but the correct tuning is somewhere in the middle. You can see here the attention has gotten a little bit too tight, so agitation becomes a problem. The subtle kind of agitation is when we are on the object but part of the mind is thinking about something else, or part of the mind is about ready to jump out on a full-fledged attachment. We are not completely there, but the mind is half day-dreaming about something that we really like.
The Engagement is Interrupted / The Power of Introspection
The engagement here is still interrupted – we are obviously interrupted by the subtle excitement – and the power again is introspection. That is the introspective alertness that checks and sees, "Oh look, there is subtle excitement." Then we apply the antidote of bringing the attention back by making the mind more sober . So we bring the mind in a little bit more and loosen the concentration a bit, because if the mind gets too tight that is what makes the excitement come.
7. Stage Seven - Thorough Pacifying
The seventh stage is called thorough pacifying. Even though different afflictions may arise in the break time between one meditation and the other and you rely on the antidotes to get rid of them in between your sessions, now when you are concentrating, the mind is pretty stable and you do not fall prey to the afflictions so much. This is really one of the nice things about developing concentration. Now when you are in meditation, these twenty secondary afflictions just do not come up so much. They really start to lose their energy.
Concentration takes away the manifest afflictions in this way, but it does not cut them from the root, we need the wisdom to do that. But at least now in the seventh stage during the time when you are concentrating, you are more calm.We are so lucky. So in the seventh stage the mind is much, much more pacified. That is why this stage is called thorough
pacifying. In meditation you are not having the gross afflictions . At this point you still have some subtle laxity and some subtle excitement, but they are not super big problems because your introspective alertness is strong enough by this point that you can notice them fairly quickly, apply the antidote and re-center yourself. Things are coming up but they are not super big problems now. You can really see how your confidence is beginning to grow at this point.
The Engagement is Interrupted / The Power of Effort
The engagement is still interrupted. The laxity and excitement do not really interrupt so much now but they are still there, you have not completely gotten rid of them. The power that we rely on is the power of effort and that is the effort to continually keep the mind away from the laxity and the excitement. And of course we are still using introspection, we are always using it but it is not the chief thing. It is not emphasized so much here because by this time introspection is pretty strong.
8. Stage Eight - Single-pointedness
Then the eighth step is called making one-pointed, or single-pointedness. ‘Single-pointedness' is a better translation. On this stage what happens is when you sit down to meditate, you just go over the details of the object of meditation and the mind will be on the object. It takes some effort at the beginning of the session to go over the detail, but once your mind is on the object it is firmly on the object and you can just relax. You do not need to worry about the excitement and you do not have to worry about the laxity because the mind is pretty one-pointed at this stage. So, at the beginning of your session you might use a little bit of effort against laxity and excitement, but after that it is like clear sailing.
Before in the preceding stages, sometimes not applying the antidotes was a problem. Maybe you would get the laxity or the excitement but you would not apply the antidote. Do you remember that not applying the antidotes is one of the obstacles? You have kind of gotten over that one by the time you get to the eighth stage and that is no longer a problem. Now the problem is we have swung to the other side. Now we are applying the antidote a little too much.
That is the difficulty at the eighth stage: over application. Here we need to have some equanimity. So again, especially before stages six and seven, maybe we really had to put some effort forth to apply the antidote. Even before that, more effort was especially required to apply the antidote. But by the eighth stage, you are so much in the habit of applying the antidote that you are doing it even when it is not needed. What is needed now is some equanimity.
The Engagement is Uninterrupted / The Power of Effort
The engagement now is uninterrupted because the subtle laxity and excitement do not arise anymore and the engagement with the object is uninterrupted, it is consistent. You sit down, you get the object and you go on. The power of effort has matured at this point, it is really, really strong and very clear at this point.
9. Stage Nine - Setting in Equipoise
Then the ninth stage is called setting in equipoise. Here you can basically maintain your concentration without any effort; even though you still do not have the actual calm abiding. Again, at the beginning of the session maybe a tinge of effort is needed, but basically it is effort in the sense of just making up your mind that you are going to concentrate. It is effort in the sense of turning your mind to the object of concentration, but once you turn your mind to the object of meditation, your mind is on it like a completely obedient child. This stage sounds really good.
The Engagement is Spontaneous/Effortless
Meditation is really a breeze at this point because just a very minute amount of effort is needed to turn your mind to the object of meditation and then the rest, because of the previous training and the force of the habit of concentration, just very naturally flows. The engagement is called spontaneous engagement or effortless engagement in the sense that now your effort, your engagement with the object, is effortless. You do not have to strain and it is spontaneous. That is why they say that many people as they are developing more and more concentration, they begin to look younger, more youthful, more radiant and more relaxed because the mind is more relaxed, well tamed and pacified. It is so relaxed that you do not need to make an effort to concentrate.
The Power of Familiarity
I guess it would be like when you are bringing up a child. At first you take your child over to your relative's house and you do not know what in the world your child is going to do that might be really embarrassing. But by this stage your kid is just a breeze and you do not have to worry about him at all. It is kind of like that, you are just totally relaxed, with complete confidence and the concentration really flows. That is why the engagement is spontaneous and the power is familiarity; we are just so familiar with the object now.
At this point you still do not have calm abiding, even though you are looking more radiant and youthful.
Way to develop actual calm abiding from this
So now we are at the ninth stage and we still do not have calm abiding. Now there are some more things that we need to do to get to full calm abiding. Calm abiding is a single-pointed concentration that is conjoined with the pliancy of mind and body.
Remember when we were talking about the first hindrance, the first obstacle of laziness, the actual antidote to that was pliancy, or flexibility, which is a serviceability of both the body and the mind so that you can use your body and mind however you want to. This is where you do not have to face aching knees, a distracted mind, a hurting back or restless energy in your body where you cannot sit still because you feel it jumping all around. There is none of that anymore. The body and mind are completely pliant.
Mental Pliancy
Mental pliancy is the mental factor that we really need to develop here. When that is complete and we have the single-pointedness, then we have actual calm abiding. As you go from the ninth stage to the calm abiding you familiarize yourself with concentration. The bad physical states which are due to different kinds of energy (the Tibetan word lung, or the Chinese word chi) begin to become subdued because the concentration is getting stronger. So at a certain point, some of these kinds of energies leave the head through the crown and sometimes there might be some sensation at the crown of the head as these bad winds, or energies, are leaving. As soon as that has happened then one has mental pliancy. So the first thing that you get is mental pliancy. The mind is really flexible now, completely flexible, you can do with your mind whatever you want and the mind is totally serviceable. You can put it
on the virtuous object and it stays there. There is a lightness and clarity of mind and an ability to use the mind in any way that you want to.
Physical Pliancy
By the power of having this mental pliancy you then get a wind, or energy, in your body that is called physical pliancy and this is a physical serviceability. Physical serviceability is a physical quality where your body is now completely serviceable and it ceases to be a problem as you are meditating. It does not get in your way and there is no sense of hardship when you are meditating. You can use your body for whatever you wish; there is no kind of coarseness, or of being uncomfortable, or any bad physical states. So the body, they say, feels very light like cotton and all the internal winds are pretty mild and subdued.
Bliss of Physical Pliancy
This physical pliancy now leads to what is called the bliss of physical pliancy, which is a very blissful physical sensation. You have the mental pliancy that gave the physical pliancy, which now leads to the bliss of the physical pliancy. As you remain in concentration, you get the feeling that your body has just melted into the object of meditation and there is no sense at all of other objects. At this point you have a bliss of mental pliancy which is the next step.
Bliss of Mental Pliancy
The bliss of mental pliancy is when the mind is very joyous . You do not have to make any effort. You can just concentrate. You feel like your mind is so fine tuned that you can concentrate wherever you want to. The mind seems so joyous, almost as if it is going to explode and it can no longer stay at the object of meditation. It is almost as if the joy is a little bit too much, so it peaks and settles down and it becomes more stable. So the intensity of that bliss of the mental pliancy settles down, calms down and becomes more stable.
Full Calm Abiding
At this point you get what is called an immovable, or an unchangeable, mental pliancy. This is where the bliss is very stable, the pliancy is very stable and at this point you have actually attained full calm abiding. You feel like you can completely absorb yourself in the object and it is called ‘calm' because the mind is totally calm from distractions and totally calm from any kind of agitation or distraction to external objects. It is ‘abiding' because the mind abides on this internal object, whatever your object of meditation is, so this is full calm abiding.
Signs of Having Attained Calm Abiding
Some signs of having attained calm abiding are that you have mental and physical pliancy so that the body and mind are totally pliant, completely wieldy. You can meditate as long as you want without any kind of physical or mental discomfort.
Also, there is no longer an internal civil war to do anything and during your meditation, during meditative equipoise, the sense of appearances vanish and the mind is filled with incredible spaciousness. There is no narrow tightness in the mind; it is incredibly spacious.
Then another quality is that you can abide firmly and steadily on the object and even if a sound is made nearby, like a cannon goes off, or one of those jets that breaks the sound barrier goes by, it does not faze you at all; it does not interfere with your concentration at all.
The mind is so finely tuned…
…the manifest afflictions ‘delusions.'] are gone. The manifest afflictionsare gone, but the seeds are still there and that is why you need the wisdom.
It becomes very easy to mix, let us say, your sleep with concentration. You do not have so many things making the mind muddy and murky so even when you sleep, you can be meditating.
Then they also say that when you arise from equipoise, there is a sense of getting a new body and even though you might get some of the afflictions in your break time rising in a manifest way like a little tinge of anger, annoyance, or something like that, nothing really takes hold. It is just there and then it is gone.
The mind is pretty smooth. .
