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Guided Meditation: Mindful of Interest

Eightfold Path: Right Concentration (4 of 4)

Good day, everyone. We are continuing with the fourth and last talk on Right Samadhi. Right Samadhi is the eighth step of the Eightfold Path^[1].

Samadhi^[2], sometimes called concentration, encompasses a variety of different states of being. Depending on how concentrated we are, how open we are, and how settled we are, a lot of different factors come into play regarding the nature, quality, and characteristics of samadhi. There are many kinds of samadhis, but what they all have in common—at least from the early Buddhist tradition—is that samadhi begins when the hindrances abate.

As long as we have hindrances—the five hindrances^[3] being preoccupation with sensual pleasures, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and regret, and doubt or uncertainty—the mind is scattered. When we are preoccupied, caught up in, or in the grip of these five forces, the mind is divided. We fall into a kind of black hole, and awareness doesn't really have a chance to work and see because we get consumed by these things.

A long time ago, I learned of someone who described the five hindrances as strategies of agony. Certainly, many times there is no agony involved, but they can definitely lead to that when they are strong and we make unwise choices based on them. When the five hindrances abate, the mind is no longer restless, agitated, shrunk, or lethargic. It is not caught up in things. The mind then has the ability to stay on track, to stay here and be present. There is a qualitatively different feeling of being a human being when we are not caught in hindrances. Our interest and attention do not get hijacked all the time by things that are unhealthy for us or that take us away from our wholeness.

Once the hindrances abate and get quiet, it feels as if the mind says, "Ah, I'm here. The mind is here; I'm not wandering off." It feels like coming home. It can be quite refreshing and delightful to have the mind finally feel a little bit like it is ours again, or that we belong to it. The mind and I belong together; we're connected, we're here, we're present. The tendency for the mind to wander off in thought again is really diminished. It might begin, but it comes right back. We either bring it right back, or, just by itself, it simply doesn't want to go away. It is so good to be here, settled.

If we continue to practice and develop deeper concentration, a more wholehearted connection to what is going on, then the subjective states begin to change and open up. The subjective symptoms of this kind of samadhi are feelings of lightness—feeling physically light. Sometimes there is a feeling of healing light, like a lamp, sunlight, or moonlight—a real sense of glowing and radiance. Sometimes there is a glowing feeling of joy, delight, or harmony. With samadhi, it can feel like a healing force or energy courses through the whole body as a glow of delight, joy, or happiness. Sometimes the body and mind seem quite expansive and big, and the boundaries of the body begin to fall away and dissolve. As we get deeper and deeper into this holistic sense of concentration, sometimes even the whole sense of the body disappears.

The tradition has beautiful metaphors for describing this. One metaphor comes from the ancient world, similar to when we make dough out of dry flour and water. They made a kind of soap from dry soap powder and water, kneading it together into a ball to lather up. You would knead the powder until the moisture was saturated throughout it. The well-being, the joy, the settledness, and the at-homeness of samadhi are like the water. The idea is to suffuse that throughout our being, so no part of our being is untouched by the sense of being settled, open, present, warm, and connected. This feeling of physical, embodied wholeness comes with samadhi as it develops.

Another metaphor is that of a lake. All the rivers flow into the lake—or actually, the way they talk about it, there are no rivers flowing into the lake. At some point, there is no input from the outside. In deep samadhi, we are not really hearing much, and we are not as aware of the world around us. Gathering together and being really here, nothing is flowing in. The rivers are not flowing in, and it's not raining into this lake. Rather, the lake has a natural spring deep in the center of the bottom that brings forth refreshing new water to renew the lake. So in deeper samadhi, we are not getting input, nourishment, support, or stimulus from the outside, but there is a wonderful, delightful feeling like a wellspring of joy and happiness that comes from the inside out.

For some people, this is a game-changer in their life: to realize that you can have this very deep, satisfying feeling of well-being without chocolate, sex, alcohol, or wonderful recreational opportunities. This is not to dismiss the joy and delight of those things, but to really feel that there is an inner resource of well-being that is so wonderful. Knowing this, we don't have to get involved in other things out of a feeling of lack, a feeling of "I'm not good enough," "I'm inadequate," or "I feel dry inside." Instead, we feel really wet and full on the inside. These other pursuits may have their place, but we are not addicted to them, nor are we dependent on them to have an inner sense of well-being.

The next metaphor the Buddha uses for when samadhi gets deeper is that of a very still mountain lake—again with very refreshing water, but completely still. In this lake grow lotus flowers of many different colors. Sometimes these lotus flowers are underwater; they haven't really surfaced. But no part of the lotus flower is untouched by the delightful, refreshing water. The sense is that all parts of us are very, very still, and in this stillness, there is a quiet happiness in which it all abides. There is no longer the movement of joy, but the stillness of happiness.

The final metaphor for one of the deepest kinds of samadhi is a person—perhaps after taking a refreshing bath in a lake—coming out and wrapping themselves in a blanket that covers their whole being, sitting up against a tree, relaxed and content. Everything is taken care of and very settled. In ancient India, covering yourself completely with a blanket meant that the insects couldn't get to you. You could sit there clean and content, maybe in a new sheet or blanket, feeling safe and contented, just able to sit there with no worries or concerns. This is a deep, deep state of equanimity that can arise.

The main purpose of all this samadhi—of samadhi itself—is healing, wholeness, becoming whole, and becoming collected, in and of itself. But samadhi is also the foundation from which to practice insight, to have deep insight from Vipassana^[4] (mindfulness), to really be able to do its work well.

This works in two ways. First, with the stability of samadhi, our ability to observe, be present, and see what is happening in the details of our experience becomes much more acute. For Vipassana to truly work, we have to be able to register, experience, sense, and perceive the moment-to-moment direct experience of phenomena flowing by as they arise and pass away. This requires a very still, quiet mind. We are able to see more clearly with samadhi.

The second function of samadhi is that the mind of samadhi is not frozen or rigid; it is not tight or locked in. It is soft, ready, malleable, and workable. So it is prepared to do some of the deepest work that Buddhism asks us to do: to let go of the fist in the mind, the grip in the heart that we have held down or held in. It allows our deepest attachments to release. For those attachments to release under the gaze of Vipassana and insight, the mind must first become soft and malleable, not frozen.

I want to end with another metaphor for this that I learned in my son's kindergarten class. Once a week, the kids would make beeswax sculptures. Every kid had their own beeswax up on a shelf, and when they went to get it in the morning, it was always cold and hard. The only thing you can really do with hard, cold beeswax is break it with a hammer; you can't really shape it because it's too hard. So the kids would take their beeswax and hold it between their palms. The teacher would tell a story, and the story was long enough that by the time it was over, their hands had warmed and softened the beeswax. Then the kids could make the beeswax into something beautiful, and they would put that beautiful thing up on the shelf until next week.

It is the same thing for us. If we can hold ourselves in the warm palms of samadhi, the warm hands of concentration and awareness, and do it long enough so we're really warming and softening ourselves, then we can become something beautiful. And the most beautiful thing is liberation—a liberated mind. That will be the topic for the next two days. We have finished the Eightfold Path, but the Buddha also went on to say there is Right Liberation and Right Knowledge. The culmination of the Eightfold Path is these next two steps, which we will cover over the next two days.

Thank you so much, and I look forward to being here tomorrow with you.