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Mindfulness of Breathing (48) Samādhi Factor of Awakening

So the topic of today is the samādhi^[1] factor of awakening, and tomorrow's topic will be equanimity. We are one day behind because of the technological glitch that happened on Tuesday. For YouTube, we'll be back meeting again at 7:00 a.m. California time tomorrow.

Concentration and Serenity

Samādhi is commonly translated as "concentration" in English. The prolific translator Thanissaro Bhikkhu^[2]—an American who lives in San Diego—translates it as "serenity." There is a very different feeling between concentration and serenity. When it's translated as serenity, it then raises the question: how is that different than tranquility, the factor of awakening that's listed just before samādhi?

I see that samādhi is characterized by stillness. I don't know if the English words "serenity" and "tranquility" are almost complete synonyms of each other, but if you look at the Pali^[3] words—the ancient language words—passaddhi^[4], the word for tranquility, has more of a connotation of brightness. It has a soft, bright quality. The body can feel very light and soft when there's tranquility. Whereas in samādhi, the primary characteristic could be more a stillness. Things have gotten very still, and the greater the samādhi, the more stillness there is.

With samādhi, the stillness of it can sometimes feel very strong. There can be a strength to it at times, and the mind is not distractible^[5]. The mind won't wander away at all. Sometimes there's a feeling people describe as being "locked in." In samādhi it's so strong, and the stillness just hits—boom, we're locked in. Then the mind's not going to move anywhere, into anything. Whereas in tranquility, the mind is very tranquil and peaceful, but it's not really one hundred percent still.

The Stillness of Space

I associate tranquility, as I mentioned yesterday, with a quiet, very peaceful morning lake. It is completely placid and still, without a ripple of wind on it. The morning light is just very clear and bright, and there is a stillness in the air. The birds haven't come out yet, and this body of water is very flat. Tranquility is kind of like a body of water, and I associate it much more with the body than the mind somehow.

In samādhi, at least for me, there can be a very embodied feeling that comes with it, but it's much more like the stillness of the mind. It's not like a body of water; it's more like the stillness of space. Everything is still in space. Space in and of itself is stillness. If you look up at the night sky^[6], you know space has no boundaries. It goes on forever. You can say that space is soft, I guess, but it's not a quality that has softness or lightness as part of it. It's more porous or open. So, I associate samādhi a little bit more with the mind becoming still and porous—open, with no boundaries to it. But it has definitely landed. It's here. Sometimes the sense of a landing place disappears; it's just here, but with this openness. The body sometimes disappears in deep samādhi.

Tranquility Supports Samādhi

One of the primary functions of tranquility here is to support samādhi. When the body is tranquil, it really supports the mind to become stiller. It's kind of like if you try to land a drone on top of a moving train that's going fast—it's a little hard. But if the train stops, then you can land it on the roof of the train. It's the same thing: if you try to land in a body that's all agitated, it's hard for the mind to land and be here. Tranquility creates a nice home, nourishment, and support for the mind to be settled on our experience, more than being focused on our experience.

The idea of focus in samādhi is sometimes thought of as one-pointedness. Maybe that's a good metaphor for some people, where they think, "Okay, I'm really going to be focused, one-pointed on something." But I think of this so-called one-pointedness as a gathering together, where all of ourselves—all of us—is centered on something. It's being centered on the breathing. Rather than being one-pointed with the mind, it's coming to rest at the center point of the concentric circles of our life. We're just really right here completely with the breath. If the focus is the breath, there's more of a feeling of being centered on it than there is being focused on it, at least that's how it is for me.

The Nourishment of Samatha

The Buddha said that the nourishment for samādhi is serenity, and the word there is samatha^[7]. It's not the same word as samādhi, but samatha in particular, in my rudimentary understanding of Pali etymology, is even closer to the idea of stillness—of landing, taking a stand where we're really still and quiet. It's a kind of serenity of stillness, not the serenity of softness and lightness. And so the nourishment of samādhi is stillness.

That means nourishing yourself with stillness—noticing the places where you are still, where there is stillness. Perhaps that's within. There's a local mindfulness teacher who composed a little CD for children called The Still Quiet Place Within. I love that title. We want to recognize and find a place of stillness, but not in a way where we're being held still or feeling trapped. It has to be something that actually feels nourishing and wholesome. If you're able to touch into that inner place of nourishing stillness, allow yourself to be nourished by it.

The Joy of Meditation

This is one of the wonderful characteristics of the Buddha's teachings around meditation. It's not just this dreary, dry focusing on the breath, staying with the breath, counting the breath, and zeroing in on it as some mental focus technique. It's a settling into, allowing, and touching into all kinds of ways in which we feel nourished and wholesome. We feel the wholesomeness and the goodness of something. We're allowed to feel joy; we're allowed to feel happiness.

One of the characteristics of the Buddhist community in the time of the Buddha, which was apparently a little unusual for the religious circles of his time, was that his disciples were smiling a lot. They were always a joyful group. Meditation is not meant to be a grim practice. Don't take meditation too seriously. Meditation is much too important to take seriously! If you take it too seriously, I think you squeeze some of the life out of it, and that makes it harder to feel the nourishment, the wholesomeness, the joy, and the pleasure of it all. We don't indulge in those things or hold on to them, expect them, or huff and puff for them. But even in the smallest ways, in the course of a day or during meditation, you're allowed to tap in and discover the places that feel wholesome—places where there's inner goodness and nourishment. Each of the seven factors of awakening has a nourishment for it.

Imbibing Nourishment

How does samādhi come about with that orientation? Not through a one-pointed focus, but rather by imbibing the nourishment that's here. If one percent of yourself has this good, nourishing quality, maybe that's worth a lot more than the five percent of who you are that's neurotic. If you give a hundred percent of your attention to the five percent that's neurotic, you're not going to be nourished. But if you give a hundred percent of your attention to the one percent that's wholesome, then you can be nourished by that, and things begin to relax and open. I don't know what percentage you are of all these things, but chances are, if you're a regular human being, you probably give more attention to what's not nourishing than to what is nourishing. So sit down and meditate in the nourishing stillness, the nourishing awareness, the nourishing tranquility, the nourishing joy, and the nourishing mindfulness.

When the samādhi factor of awakening becomes well developed—meaning you're well nourished and supported by it, feeling the goodness of it—that creates the wonderful conditions for the mind to develop equanimity. It's not an enforced equanimity where you hold yourself still, but an equanimity that comes because there's a feeling of being really settled, at ease, and in this nourishing place of stillness.

Until we discuss equanimity tomorrow, those of you coming back might spend some extra time today seeing if you can become more familiar with whatever capacity or ability you have to discover a nourishing inner stillness, quiet, unwaveringness, and unagitatedness within. See what it's like to let yourself enjoy it and be nourished. May samādhi be a delight for you. Thank you.