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Mindfulness of Breathing (29) Trusting the Calm Mind

So, the eighth step of Anapanasati^[1] is one trains oneself: one calms the mental activity, one relaxes the mental activity. Most English translations will use some language of tranquilizing, which makes tranquil the mental activity. The mental activity here is often translated as mental formations—the formations, the activity, the constructs, the constructing aspect, the doing aspect of the mind. So I think "activity" works relatively well.

We now begin to calm the mental activity, and this doesn't have to be a big project. If it's easy to relax, please, by all means, do. But it's also recognizing this is a natural process of settling that goes on.

As we get more and more settled in meditation, more focused on the breathing, we start shedding a lot of the concerns of the day and we're just more and more here. There starts being a heightened sensitivity to different aspects of our experience. One of them is experiencing bodily tensions, the way we hold tensions in our body. Of course, there's a feeling that the body itself wants to relax and let go, and there's almost a natural letting go and relaxation just from knowing and recognizing what goes on. But we can also participate in that. If it's easy enough and we don't get busy, we can help ourselves relax more.

As we begin having more well-being and getting more settled in meditation, at some point we develop a kind of special sensitivity or awareness of the mind thinking. Of course, we can know that earlier, and we're letting go of our thoughts, coming back to the breathing. But there's more and more sensitivity as we go along to the unsatisfactory quality of thinking. We start noticing that when we're involved in thinking, it's almost like an alienation from ourselves. That's unimaginable for people who identify strongly with their thinking, feeling like thinking is who they are.

But we realize that thinking is just one aspect of our life, that there's a fuller range of who we are that really becomes apparent as we get settled, calm, more embodied, and present here in meditation. We start seeing that thinking is just a piece of what we are. If we get lost in thought, we actually lose touch with the fullness of who we are, the wholeness of who we are in a sense. There's a kind of alienation, even if the thoughts are really great, exciting, or "important," so to speak.

We also become sensitive to the impact that thinking has. One impact is the alienation. Another impact is that unskillful and unwholesome thoughts attract more unwholesomeness. So if we're thinking a lot in agitated ways, angry ways, or greedy ways, those tend to perpetuate themselves and attract more of the same agitation and preoccupation. We also start feeling the impact it has very subtly sometimes on our musculature.

I could go around all day long somewhat calm and engaged in life, but when I sit down to meditate, I realize that my thinking has somehow created a little bit of tension around my eyes and just behind the forehead. I'm too busy with life to really notice the subtlety of it, but as we settle in meditation, that subtlety of where we hold tension and tightness becomes more and more apparent. The tension associated with thinking—the pressure, the agitation that's almost physical in nature—is more closely connected to thinking rather than the surface muscles that we can relax more actively. I call that the "thinking muscle," and part of the meditation is to relax the thinking muscle.

So as we feel this, there's a natural tendency for the psychophysical system to want to relax. The more we are mindful of tension, the more we feel like almost in the tension itself is a momentum to relax. But we can also soften and relax ourselves, softening the mind, relaxing the thinking mind. Certainly, this is very helpful because the more the mind is calm, that attracts more calmness. The more the mind is calm, the less likely we are to be so interested in being caught in our thoughts and wandering off in thoughts. It's easier to stay focused and continue with this process of meditation.

But there are also very important lessons that can come about how our mind works as we get calmer and calmer. One of them is that there's a certain wonderful intelligence and creativity that can happen when the mind is calm and settled, that's much more difficult to happen when it's agitated. It's a little bit of a trap for some people because sometimes they start composing the great world novel, or they have some great idea for something, and the creativity and intelligence of the mind is really operating. It just feels so good, engaging, and right to be involved in some wonderful creative thoughts.

But it's a dead end for the purpose of meditation. It actually becomes another way of being self-alienated, even though it feels so good and exciting, and like, "Finally I feel fulfilled. I'm doing something very important, writing the greatest poetry that's ever been written." So we learn not to get sidetracked by that. The process that got us there is showing us that there's a natural intelligence, creativity, or wisdom that can operate when the mind is not so active. The principle is that actually, the mind operates the best when there's no extra energy, no unnecessary energy operating.

That's a great lesson, and a difficult lesson to really take in. It can be so compelling to worry, so compelling to feel like I have to accomplish, I have to fix something, I have to do something, and I have to think my way to it. We get agitated and pressured, and sometimes we feel like if we're responsible, we have to engage the mind and show ourselves, and maybe even show other people, how serious we are in thinking and taking care of things. We fear that if we allow the natural, quiet, calm mind to operate, then it looks like we don't care, and it looks like we're just letting things go whatever way they go. But what I'd like to suggest is that our love, our care, our responsibility, even a sense that things are really important to take care of—even then, they can be taken care of better if the mind is relaxed and calm, and we don't build up this extra tension in the mind of doing, accomplishing, fixing, and thinking about things.

Learning this shift of perspective, learning how to trust a calm mind, and have that calm mind be engaged and responsibly take care of things, is a process of trust. It is a process of familiarity, of experiencing, "Oh, this actually works." I don't have to believe in the messages even from society around us that I have to be anxious, preoccupied, angry, or apologetic. I don't have to engage my mind in some way to please other people or please myself. It's possible to stay peaceful, and love, intelligence, creativity, and responsibility all can operate when there's no extra, unnecessary energy going on in the mind.

This learning to relax and to calm the mind very much depends on our ability to recognize how we're over-efforting in the mind, where the agitation of the mind is, where that tension in the mind is, the pressure in the mind, the closing down of the mind that goes on. So the seventh step is to feel that and to feel what's going on. And then this eighth step is to relax it.

This has a wonderful effect where some of the problems we have in our lives that we feel like we have to fix and take care of—maybe some of them don't have any solutions. But rather than solving them, we can dissolve them.

For example, someone who wants to know the meaning of life might have a lot of agitation around this, even some anxiety around "What's the meaning of life? I need to know because I need to know where I fit in this universe and what's happening with me and have a purpose." There's a lot of agitated thinking around searching for the meaning of life. But if they do this meditation process and all the agitation and anxiety associated with this question abates, dissolves, and goes away, then, lo and behold, they might discover that the meaning of life still might be an interesting question, but there's no personal need or investment or desperation around it. It just becomes an abstract question. The existential power that held a grip around it has dissolved. Without solving it, it's no longer a problem. It just becomes maybe an interesting academic question.

That might not have been the best example, but I'm hoping that you can just apply that to yourself. Think about what you are concerned with, what you are preoccupied with, that maybe doesn't need to be solved. Maybe more valuable is to dissolve the underlying tension, fear, anxiety, pressure, ambition, or greed that might be the very thing keeping those thoughts pumping up and going. Relax the mental activity and trust softening the mind. It's a wonderful thing. This is especially true in meditation. As meditation continues to develop, there comes a stage where periodically, as it comes and goes, it's really clear that what's really good to do is to trust the calm mind and let go of all the unnecessary energy that's there.

So thank you very much, and we'll continue this process of steps seven and eight for another couple of days. Thank you.