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Mindfulness of Breathing (42) Delighting the Mind

Today we're going to touch into that tenth step of Anapanasati^[1]: breathing in, one delights the mind; breathing out, one delights the mind. This word for mind, citta^[2], appears in steps eight, nine, and ten. In step eight, it's calming the activities of the mind. Then in step nine, it's experiencing the mind. And then in step ten, it's delighting the mind.

The word I'm translating now as "delight" can sometimes be translated as "pleasing the mind" or "satisfying the mind." Rather than it being an active verb of what we're doing, we might understand it as recognizing or allowing for a certain sense of deep satisfaction, being deeply pleased, a deep kind of gladness in the mind. That comes from meditation practice. There are a number of ways to understand this, and there are different ways to experience this.

One of the classic ones that the tradition talks about is that, finally, the mind is no longer out of control. Or said differently, finally the mind doesn't have a mind of its own. Where the mind was led around, jumping around, agitated, and thrashing about with our thoughts, we feel like now we've really come home. We're settled, we're back to ourselves. The mind is under control, or the mind is not just doing whatever it wants—wandering around, picking up thoughts, and chasing thoughts. We're really settled here, and we've come home to ourselves. The mind is settled and present.

The word that's often used in the ancient tradition is that the mind is now "tamed." I suspect a lot of us in the modern West don't really like the idea of taming ourselves. If a tame mind doesn't really inspire you, the opposite of that—having a mind which is no longer untamed or out of control—maybe just feels better to appreciate or value. One of the metaphors for an out-of-control mind in the ancient world is like a fish thrashing about in a very shallow puddle of water, just flapping around. Sometimes the mind just flaps and does its things, jumps around, and chases one thought after the other, and we have no control or no say over the mind. But to get the mental activities to quiet down, to settle, and to feel that we're not really going to wander off into the past or the future anymore, that we're not really going to get lost in thought anymore—we are now really here.

It's deeply satisfying to start feeling really connected here, at peace here, or settled here. There's a kind of satisfaction of not having the agitation or the energetics of the mind jumping around, moving out, and going here and there. It allows the mind to start becoming peaceful, to be at deep rest, just here. It can feel very solid or very centered. The mind is in the present moment, and any tendency to leave that present moment by going off into thought just doesn't go very far. It hardly goes anywhere at all. It's like a rubber band is attached to the thoughts, and they just get pulled right back to the present. Or we just think, "No, why bother? It's really good to be here."

This movement of experiencing the mind this way is a movement towards wholeness, to becoming more whole. That's only possible if we're in the present moment. I don't know if "definition" is the right word, but by definition, if we're lost in the future, caught up in future concerns, or past concerns, we are partial. We're involved and focused on the future, and we're not really connected to what's here. Or if we're involved in fantasy, no matter how wonderful and nice the fantasy might feel, a fantasy is only a small part of who we are. There's a disconnect, even dissociation in extreme forms, from our body, our mind states, and what's really happening right here.

As we start settling and are able to be here in the present moment in a rooted, grounded way, it begins allowing for a process of feeling whole. It is a process where a lot of the sharp boundaries we have of time and space begin to fall away, or the sharp boundaries between the body and the mind, or between the edges of our body and the space around us. The sense of wholeness starts moving into what some people would call altered states of consciousness, altered states of mind. But that suggests that somehow it's not normal. Well, maybe it's not so normal because we don't go into those states very much. In meditation, we start feeling settled in the present moment and start opening up to a feeling of wholeness of being here. It starts feeling like this is natural. This is a homecoming; this is what should be ordinary.

Ordinary states of consciousness, ordinary states of mind, are fragmented, narrow, limited, bounded, and frazzled. Even though they might be familiar to us, and in that sense comfortable for us, when we really start experiencing a settled wholeness, it starts feeling like, "Oh, this is health. This is a healthy mind." It's the daily mind states that are the altered states. Those are the ones that are altered, strange, preoccupied, and things like that. But a subtle feeling of wholeness—that feels good.

When some people meditate, they are struggling with a distractible mind. They are caught by the hindrances^[3], caught in desires and aversions of all kinds, and they're coming back and coming back, working with that. To finally have those quiet down, and the mind is able to finally be present, it's like the mind has found itself. It provides a deep satisfaction, a delight, a joy, a pleasure. This is what we're talking about in this tenth step of delighting the mind, pleasing the mind, or gladdening the mind: allowing the mind to feel a deep satisfaction.

I offer all these different words because different people will find different words that speak to their own flavor of what all this might be in their meditation. But the important thing here is that we're allowed to feel the goodness of it. We're allowed to feel the delight, the joy, and the satisfaction. Certainly not to cling to it, hold on to it, and congratulate ourselves for it in some egotistical way, but we're not supposed to ignore the joy, the happiness, the well-being, the pleasure, and the satisfaction of meditation.

In fact, there's a way of feeling it, a way of experiencing it, that allows us to continue this process of settling in, quieting the mind, and expanding the sense of wholeness that we're moving into. In doing so, we open up to states of mind and qualities of mind that are coterminous—that are intimately part of this feeling of wholeness, broad awareness, centeredness, clear knowing, and clarity of mind—that are considered a form of wealth. For the Buddha, the greatest wealth a person can have and acquire is the wealth that comes from a settled, clear, and open mind, a sense of wholeness. The Seven Factors of Awakening^[4] that I mentioned yesterday—mindfulness, investigation, effort, joy, tranquility, samadhi^[5], and equanimity—all belong to the realm of this settled wholeness that comes as the awareness and attention get full and complete.

So it isn't just that we're losing something by settling down, letting go of the distracted mind, and really being present. We gain so much. It's called an inner wealth. If you want to be wealthy, develop your inner life. It qualifies as wealth because it provides some of the greatest pleasure, safety, and happiness that is available to us, certainly greater happiness than any material wealth can ever produce.

Breathing in, delighting the mind; breathing out, delighting the mind. You can't do that too early. You can't just sit down and decide to do that. It comes when meditation has really settled down. Remember, we're talking about the tenth stage of the sixteen stages^[6]. But when it happens to you, when you start feeling inklings of this kind of delight, satisfaction, pleasure, being pleased by what's happening, and deep satisfaction—open to it. Allow for it. Let it spread wide and broad throughout your being. Be nourished by it, and let it be something you appreciate and enjoy.

That sets the stage for the next step of Anapanasati, which we really won't do for a couple of weeks, which is samadhi—the unification of the mind, the concentration of the mind. Until then, we're going to spend next week with the Seven Factors of Awakening. Maybe this will support experiencing the mind and experiencing the delight in the mind, to really spend some time with these Seven Factors of Awakening. They'll also serve for the eleventh step, samadhi.