05 Mindfulness of breathing - phase two

B. Alan Wallace, 05 Sep 2013

Normally sustained focus comes at the cost of relaxation, we concentrate by contraction. This is exactly what is not done here. The balance is to increase the stability of attention, which entails some effort, but without losing the relaxation. Earlier we enhanced relaxation without losing clarity.

In a larger framework, again we come back to issue of balance. We are engaging in retreat, in mindfulness of breathing we are withdrawing our attention from the entire environment and then attending to the flow of sensation of the breath in the body and in the meantime monitoring the mind with introspection. As in warfare, we are retreating to recoup, re-strategise how we go back again.

Post meditation, Alan speaks on sustaining the ongoing flow of mindful presence off the cushion, so that when we return to the cushion it is an enhancement of what we are already doing, rather than something new.

Meditation starts at: 16.18

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Transcript

Fall 2013 Shamatha and the Bodhisattva Way of Life

05 Mindfulness of breathing - phase two

Olaso. So this morning we move into the second phase of mindfulness of breathing, and we shift to a second type of balancing act. You remember—and I’ll keep on repeating it—the first one really focusing on the deepening, deepening of relaxation without losing the clarity with which you began.

And now we move into the act of cultivation of stability. And “stability” here means the voluntary continuity of attention, of sustained attention, all right? So the “stability” means you’re not wavering, oscillating, getting agitated, dispersed and so forth, but there is an ongoing flow of coherent, focused, deliberate attention. So in one word—“stability.” Right? It does imply a stillness of awareness, but I think “stability” is still a little bit better term.

But now, normally, when people really focus on anything, and sustain their focus, they concentrate. Normal, how do we say, normal way of doing this, that increased stability is won exactly at the cost of relaxation. The more concentrated you are, the more you sustain your voluntary, focused attention, the more tight you become, the more drained you become. And so, take a classic example: a jet fighter pilot after four or five hours of very, very focused, sustained, voluntary attention, gets out of the cockpit [and] is completely wasted.

[01:37] So, I won’t elaborate on that, but that is the way of the world, that’s the normal concentration that we concentrate by contraction. We concentrate by bearing down, often with a goal, and again my hand is kind of yearning to go into a fist, you know, into that clenching quality. And that’s exactly what isn’t done in the contemplative cultivation of attention. This is why this big emphasis on relaxation first. So the balance here, again, this is again a point to remember. The balance here is to gently, gradually, perseveringly increase the stability of attention, so for students it’d be very nice if they could sustain their attention all the way through a fifty-minute class. And for any other type of endeavor, that we are explicitly now really increasing the stability. And this entails some effort, some discipline but without losing the relaxation. Okay?

So, there it is. We’re enhancing one without losing the other. Earlier we enhanced the degree of relaxation without losing clarity. Now it’s enhancing stability without losing the sense of relaxation. So, once again, it’s a balancing act as all the way through.

And now let’s go into a larger framework of this whole retreat. Again and again we’re going to come on this theme of balance. You know? Balance. And so on the one hand we have the retreat. Every morning and for the afternoon sessions by and large, we are going to be engaging in retreat. And that is a withdrawal.

[3:00] That’s what a retreat is. And so, it’s a retreat. In mindfulness of breathing, we are very deliberately withdrawing our attention from everything outside of the body. We’re withdrawing it from the visual field, even though the eyes may be a bit open. Withdrawing it, that is, not deliberately giving attention to any sounds or smells or tastes. We’re really withdrawing it from the entire environment, other people, and so forth and so on, withdrawing it into the field of the body, and then attending to the flow of sensations of the breath within the body. And in the meantime we’re monitoring the mind, monitoring the flow of mindfulness, with introspection. So we’re temporarily withdrawn from the world. We’re focusing primarily on the body, but monitoring the mind: aware of the arising of thoughts, of agitation, of laxity, dullness and so forth.

So it’s a temporary withdrawal, and as a strategic retreat in warfare.It’s not a rout. For many, many years I didn’t like the word “retreat,” because I associated it with failure. “I can’t handle the world; I guess I better become a monk. I can’t handle the world; I think I’m going to escape from reality and go to a retreat center.” That kind of thing. Ugh. You know? I didn’t care for that. But then, as I looked into it, I mean it was obvious a retreat is not a rout. A retreat is not failure.

[4:23] It’s not losing the war. It’s often the smartest thing to do. When you’re losing a battle, when you’re outnumbered, you’re overwhelmed and so forth, to stay there and be killed off to the last man is not the smartest strategy. But rather to retreat. Okay?

And so that’s what it is here. When we come to Phuket for eight weeks, it’s a retreat. It’s not because we’re losers, because we can’t handle the world outside. But we’re coming here to replenish, to restore, to reinvigorate, to restrategize, to reenvision. How do we go back again? Right? And that’s the nature of shamatha all together. It is a retreat in order to recoup, to develop skills of relaxation, stability, and vividness. So that, whether we venture out to, let’s say, a twenty-year retreat, a vipashyana, Dzogchen and so forth, or whether we decide it’s time to get married and I want to have children—then you take those skills, and then you apply them wherever you’re going, whether to long-term retreat, to education, to business, and so forth and so on.

And so the morning sessions here are really very much about retreat, but now in the spirit of balance, as you very well know, we’ve already begun to delve into it, the other aspect of this retreat is the Lojong. Okay? The mind training, the attitudinal shifting, the shifting of the perspective. And this is, on the one hand, we have a retreat for the shamatha. On the other one, another favorite term of mine, is “expedition.” And you know the term. It’s extricating your feet from where they are stuck. Ex-ped, right? And so, we’re getting out of old habits. We’re learning how to adopt a fresh vision.

[6:00] To respond more creatively, more constructively, more meaningfully to whatever life is dishing up, right? That is not a retreat. That is going back to our marriages, back to work. It’s going to our children, our family, or maybe it’s going into a long-term retreat, but now venturing more deeply into reality rather than simply trying to withdraw from it.

Prior to the Budda, prior to him, it really does appear to me that the major emphasis on samadhi in the Hindu tradition, or let’s say the pre-Buddhist Vedic tradition, was really deeply, deeply about retreat. Okay? It was retreat from the sensory world, retreat from the conceptual world, retreat from your coarse mind, going into the subtler and subtler dimensions of reality into the form realm, into the formless realm. And this is what Gautama discovered very early on after he left the palace, you might recall, he trained with one and then another great samadhi master, and they go into these incredibly rarified, subtle states of samadhi, incredibly divorced from or withdrawn from almost the entirety of the phenomenal world. And both of his teachers respectively thought, “Now that we’ve become so far removed from the world of change that this is moksha, this is liberation.” And so when Gautama achieved their same states of realization, of samadhi, ever so quickly, they were of course overjoyed. They weren’t jealous at all, and they said, “Good, you’ve achieved moksha like me. Let’s team up now. You teach. I teach.”

But Gautama saw that simple retreat as an end in itself is in fact not moksha. It’s not even the path to moksha. It’s simply a retreat. Right?

And, so we’re not even aspiring to—at least I’m not—even aspiring to attain such incredibly rarified, subtle, abstract states of retreat, of the formless realm and so forth. They may be useful, but they are not necessary. But rather, the vision here is retreat to, frankly, the bare minimum, the bare minimum of samadhi, because life is short, and there are so many fantastic things that can be done as we venture into the expedition of vipashyana. To understand the nature of this world, this world, the one that scientists study and artists study and philosophers and so forth. To return to the world and to seek to understand it. And that is the nature of vipashyana, right? That’s an expedition.

So, what’s the bare minimum level of samadhi, that according to the Buddha and many, many of the greatest scholars and contemplatives of India, Tibet, and also the Theravada tradition, for that matter. And the bare minimum with a slight variations on interpretation, some would say the first dhyana, a common belief in the Theravada tradition, those who really adhere to what the Buddha said, and don’t go into subcommentaries that were written many, many centuries later. Or in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, quite a strong consensus, where people who are knowledgeable—not every teacher is—but those who are knowledgeable, threshold to the first dhyana. It’s a bit technical. But I’ve written about this in “The Attention Revolution” and so forth. And you’ll find it in much more primary texts than that. But it’s achieving shamatha, achieving the threshold to the first dhyana, shamatha.

[9:05] Now just a brief comment, because this will not be a long talk. There’s a very salient point here that comes up in Dudjom Lingpa’s “Mind Treasures,” and it’s his discussions of the substrate consciousness. Okay? This kind of, not ultimate level, but this kind of base, base continuum of consciousness which is the foundation for your samsara, because each one is individual. Your substrate consciousness, yours and yours. That’s the foundation, the substrate for your individual continuum of samsara from lifetime to lifetime, right? And he makes this comment, which I think is enormously important, and relevant with many repercussions. And that is, he said, the substrate consciousness, which is by nature luminous, of course cognizant, it illuminates, it makes manifest the objects. But it doesn’t enter into them. It doesn’t fuse with them.It doesn’t get lost in them. It illuminates but does not fuse with them.

And so the strong analogy here, and I like to think that’s more than an analogy, it’s like a manifestation of this, is the difference between a lucid dream and a nonlucid dream. In a lucid dream you’re resting there in kind of a waking consciousness—that is, you’re aware of the whole contents of the dream, the people, the situations. You’re aware of your own persona in the dream. Maybe it’s who you are right now, but the dream version. But maybe it’s you, and if I’m pointing at Maria-Lena, maybe a person who appears to you, that you identify with in your dream tonight, maybe it’s you and you’re a girl. Or a teenager. Or a young adult. Could be. So who knows? But there’s no guarantee, of course, that you in the dream is going to be a replica of you in the waking state. It could be actually quite different. But the point there is, when you’re having a lucid dream, you’re aware of the persona of yourself within the dream, and you know that you’re not that person, you know, with a life span of maybe thirty minutes. You know that you are not that person. You know that’s a figment, a creation with a very short life span—basically the duration of the dream. And so you’re not immersed in, you’re not identified with that persona, that very fleeting persona of a particular dream. You’re aware of it, you see your hands moving, you’re speaking and so forth, but you’re not fused with it, you’re not lost in the dream, you’re not nonlucid.

And likewise as you attend to other people, the environment, situations, activities within the dream, you’re not reifying them, you’re not lost in them, you’re not caught up in hope and fear that “Oh, I hope Valentin will do this and he’ll not do that. I hope that people will do this and not do that.” You’re not fused with the dream. You’re aware that it is a dream.

So there is something of a stillness, of a nongrasping that’s in the very nature of being lucid in a dream. And so that’s what we’re seeking right now, in this practice that’s coming up in a couple of minutes, to emulate, to replicate in our shamatha practice. The theme here, and it’s going to come through all the shamatha practices, is, let your awareness rest in its own place, holding its own ground—direct translations from Tibetan. And that is, it’s not being yanked off of its throne, yanked off of its own place of stillness, its own center, through grasping. That’s exactly what happens in a nonlucid dream. We grasp onto this, we grasp onto this persona that I think I am, the other people, situations. And so, then we’re yanked hither and yon.

[12:35] We’re yanked in all different directions. Hoping this will happen, hoping that will not happen, fearing this will happen. Identifying with this, identifying with the thoughts and so forth and so on. And so we’re just continually being yanked off the throne of our own awareness resting in its own place. Time and time again. And so, it’s suffused with unknowing, and then it’s not only unknowing, but it’s also misapprehending the nature of reality we’re experiencing.

So here, in shamatha, while here, presumably in the waking state, we’re cultivating to sustain a quality of stillness of awareness that illuminates the space of the body. Illuminates, knows the sensations of the breath arising throughout the body. But doesn’t enter into the body, doesn’t identify with the body, doesn’t identify with the breath but is very present with it. Very, very present.

So that’s a theme that’s going to recur, again, in practice after practice, as we’ll actually be going into a deeper and deeper retreat. Here we’re simply withdrawn from the surrounding environment, into the body and mind. Here’s a sneak preview. Next week, when we go to settling the mind in its natural state, we’re withdrawing from the body. Let alone the surrounding environment. Withdrawing from the body. Not deliberately giving attention even to the sensations of the body. We’re going purely into nature of the mind, resting in awareness, observing the events, the comings and goings of the mind. And then when we go to awareness of awareness, we withdraw from the mind. Not even interested in the thoughts, memories, images, the personal stuff, the personal history. Not interested. We’re just then resting in awareness illuminating itself. And then from that, when we’re going to the fourth practice, we’ll just rest in that nonduality, or we’re moving towards an awareness of that nonduality, of the sheer space of awareness and awareness itself. Which is quite an elegant type of retreat. Right? And primes us then to venture right into vipashyana, to fathom not only the relative but the ultimate nature of awareness itself. And then as we come out, off the cushion, and we’re engaging with all these appearances that wouldn’t be there were it not for awareness, that are illuminated by awareness and yet seem to be out there independently. And that’s the big trick. That’s the delusional aspect or delusive aspect of appearances. They seem to be totally out there, just like in a nonlucid dream—for that matter, even in a lucid dream, the appearances seem to be out there, but because you’re lucid you know there’s no “out there.” There is no “in here.” This is all a free creation.

So, without further ado, we’ll now go to this mindfulness of breathing, adopting a technique that’s often called the Burmese technique. I don’t think it’s a very old technique, but I think it is useful, many people have found it. And that is attending to the sensations now a bit more locally as we’re directing our attention downwards from the head, focusing on the sensations of the rise and fall of the abdomen.

[15:28] So please do find a comfortable position.

And this theme here, again a final, how do you say, front-loading of the method, is although we are illuminating, focusing on, grounding our awareness in the sensations of the rise and fall of the abdomen, corresponding of course to the in- and out-breath, we don’t fuse there, we don’t, again, grasp onto, identify with the sensations of the abdomen but rather, simply let your awareness hold its own ground. And from its own place, illuminate the sensations in the abdomen, of the respiration.

So, let’s continue. [16:08]

[16:17, bell rings, guided meditation begins]

[16:35] Settle your body in its natural state, and your respiration in its natural rhythm.

[17:44] Then, in the spirit once again, of loving-kindness for yourself, allowing yourself the leisure, taking advantage of the opportunity to cultivate the very seeds, the causes of genuine happiness, release all mundane concerns, all pursuits of hedonic well-being—just for the time being.

All thoughts of the future and the past, and let your awareness come to rest in stillness, resting in its own place. Know exactly what that means in your own experience of awareness simply coming to rest and being present without moving anywhere.

[18:55] Bear in mind, when I say, “Awareness resting in its own place,” this is not some place in space. It’s not in the center of your head or behind your eyeballs, or in your heart, or any place else. Simply, awareness at rest without getting caught up in grasping or being carried away by thoughts or sensory stimuli.

[21:31] It is common knowledge in the Tibetan tradition that in order to stabilize the attention, and you find it’s especially prone to excitation or agitation, it can be very helpful to direct the attention downwards. It helps to ground the attention. That’s exactly what we do in this practice. We now more narrowly focus the attention, rather than on the whole field of the body, you focus downwards just to the region of the abdomen, without visualizing or thinking about it. You simply focus on the bare, raw, tactile sensations of the expansion of the abdomen with each in-breath, its contraction with each out-breath.

[23:21] In his quintessential instructions on mindfulness of breathing, the Buddha spoke of attending to the in- and out-breath, recognizing when they are long, recognizing them when they are short. And then attending to the whole body, with each in- and out-breath. And the classic Theravada interpretation of this is that we attend to the whole body of the breath—which is to say, we remain continually engaged, mindfully, with the sensations of the breath throughout the entire course of the in-breath, the entire course of the out-breath.

In other words, you may make this a full-time job, no time for distraction, continually engaged to the best of our ability, attending to the whole body of the breath.

[25:13] As a reminder, as you come to the very end of the out-breath, having relaxed deeply in the body, released the breath, having released thoughts, be especially silent, mentally, as you come to the very end of the out-breath, possibly with a pause, after the breath has been exhaled. And then quietly, nonconceptually, simply allow the breath to flow in, as the body strikes its own balance, reestablishes its own energetic equilibrium, by the breath, the respiration settling in its own natural rhythm.

[27:25] And as there is a natural cycle to the respiration, for as long as it is helpful, you may also enter into a similar cycle with respect to the flow of your mindfulness. Arousing, focusing, concentrating with each in-breath, thereby overcoming the imbalance of laxity and dullness.

And with each out-breath, deeply relax while still sustaining the flow of mindfulness of the sensations of the breath at the abdomen. With this deep letting go, releasing all thoughts, you provide the natural antidote for excitation and agitation.

Let’s continue practicing now in silence. [28:15]

[39:58, bell rings three times, guided meditation ends]

[40:28] Olaso. Danny, do we have enough people to write the synopses for each day? We’re all set? Oh, I’m glad.

Thank you all! I really very much appreciate that. It’s one of the many reasons I’m very happy to come here to lead these eight-week retreats, not only to be able to be to some direct benefit to the people here, but to hundreds, I don’t know how many, but I think it’s easily hundreds of people who are listening by podcast, so by your taking the time to do that, you are really helping many, many people. So I appreciate that, thank you all.

And, ah, just one comment in terms of between sessions. Even if you’re already meditating four or five hours a day, which would be a good start, that leaves something like twenty hours that we’re not formally on the cushion, and so then the major challenge comes to: How do we maintain as much continuity of practice as possible in this very, very precious time in this wonderfully conducive environment, continuity throughout the course of the day, even when we’re not on the cushion? And there are various ways of doing this. Of course, we have other types of practices we can engage in. But one really kind of a good baseline that’s taught in multiple traditions—Tsongkhapa emphasizes this in the lam rim. It’s wonderfully emphasized in the Theravada tradition, the modern Vipassana tradition—and that is maintaining an ongoing flow of mindful presence in between sessions. And one way of doing that, which many people find helpful, is very deliberate, very conscious, mindful walking. You know. And that can be a practice in and of itself. You may have a twenty-four-minute session of just going up and down your room, or we have all of this covered area, even when it’s raining you don’t have to get wet.

So, one classic way, or at least it’s a very common way to practice these days, is walking quite slowly and very, very meditatively, very mindfully, experiencing the rise of your foot and the placing of the foot on the ground, and the rising of the next foot. And really bring your awareness fully, as they say, coming to your senses. Bring your awareness very much to the body and attending to the earth element where your body is in contact with the ground, the sensations throughout your body. But this is also a time to refresh yourself. It’s not time to clamp down or try to really concentrate, but to kind of expand again this kind of coming into shamatha, that coming out.

[42:35] So as you’re mindfully walking, whether it’s very slow, or of course you can be very mindful as you walk at a normal pace, right, just going for a walk. But not falling into the old rut of just rumination, rumination, rumination while your body is moving along. But try to come to your senses, to the present moment, mindfully present of the sensations arising in the body. But of course your eyes are open, so really let your awareness come out, out into space. If you see clouds on the horizon, looking at the hills on the horizon, let your awareness really come out. Be very, very mindfully present with whatever is arising in the visual field, and likewise let your awareness come out to the auditory field. And be very, very present to sounds, to sights, to tactile sensations. And enjoy it, just being kind of flowing along in that ongoing present moment. That can be very refreshing, good for the body. Get it moving a little bit. And then, if you’re maintaining that quality of mindfulness, that flow of mindfulness—not falling into dullness, or into excitation, rumination, and all of that, then after you’ve been out for some mindful walking, whether just going for a walk or as a more disciplined practice of just going back and forth, then when you return to the cushion, you’ll find that transition from this in-between-session practice to a formal practice on the cushion very smooth, because you’re coming from a quasi-meditative state already. And then it just becomes a bit more coherent, a bit more contained as you go into your shamatha practice.

And so, Tsongkhapa makes this point that if you’re really truly sincere in your aspiration to develop, to evolve along the path of shamatha, then it’s absolutely imperative that you do not confine your practice just to the cushion. But as much as possible you maintain a flow of mindfulness, including mindfulness of your meditative object, in between sessions. So for the time being, our meditative object is the breath, right? Well this is one of the beauties of the breath, and that is, you don’t have to conjure it up. Like if you’re focusing on a Buddha image as your meditative object, then you’d have to conjure it up. You’d have to keep on giving effort to generating that Buddha image between sessions, which is exactly what Tsongkhapa suggests.

[44:50] But the breathing, as long as you are still alive, then the breathing continues to dish itself up, to present itself to you. And so the sensations of the breath are always there. So it’s like that’s an ongoing invitation: “Would you like to dance, would you like to dance?” But not getting carried away in rumination, but “would you like to dance” in terms of maintaining an ongoing flow of mindfulness, more peripheral awareness, because you want to enjoy your walk, be aware of the environment, and so forth and so on. Not bump into things, but maintaining a peripheral awareness. And then, with that continuity of some awareness of the in- and out-flow of the breath, as you’re moving along, you’re doing this, doing that. Then once again, when you come back to the cushion, then it’s just kind of an enhancement, a kind of a higher focus of what you’re already doing, rather than in between sessions just being caught up in chitchat, blabber, blabber, blabber, rumination, and then trying to put the brakes on that or releasing all the energy behind that, when you’re on the cushion, which makes a real disparity between being off the cushion and on the cushion. We’d like to have that more and more blend. So you really feel as Drom Tönpa, the great disciple of Atisha, said that, you know, “Release all attachment to this life, all attachment to mundane concerns, and let your mind become Dharma.”

[46:08] So you don’t have a sense of practicing Dharma like picking up a phone and putting it down, and so, “Oh yeah, let’s practice Dharma again,” and you pick it up and put it down. But rather, your mind has become Dharma, manifesting in mindful walking, manifesting in shamatha, manifesting in discursive meditation on a lojong and so on. Okay? That’s enough for now. I’ll see you this afternoon at four thirty.

Transcribed by Melanie Erler

Revised by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Final edition by Elmer Fan

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