Shamatha / Samata Meditation, 9 stages, Part 4

Shamatha meditation or samata meditation is the definitive form of meditation underlying all other forms. The technique is to rest the concentration faculty on the object of meditation and steadily strengthen that focus.

Shamatha / Samata Meditation PDF

Sheshin / introspection – the power to Meditate correctly

Samata / Shamatha meditation, also called calm abiding, progresses in stages. To progress, certain skills must be developed to overcome obstacles. See the first part of this series, the antidotes section.

The central skill occurs after meditation truly begins on the 4th stage. It is called seshin, or introspection. It is an awareness of mental activities. Sheshin has three qualities:

1. Seeing the meditator (yourself) and knowing what you’re doing.
2. Seeing whether the mind is on the object of meditation
3. Sensing obstacles to meditation.

In order to do the second and third, the first skill is mandatory. Sheshin needs to know what the meditator is doing or the perceiver is doing. It needs to know what’s happening in the mind.

Sheshin senses the meditator focused on the object of meditation. This ability of the mind to know itself, to see what the mind is doing is pre-existent. The skill does not need to be created. It does need to be discovered and strengthened, however.

It’s considered as the sixth sense: feeling, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, and perceiving mental events. This is the same capacity – knowing the mind’s activity.

We have the ability to know what’s going on in our mind. This ability is poorly developed. It’s so poorly developed in the West that we don’t even acknowledge it as one of the six senses. I would encourage you to develop this native ability. Know what’s going on in your mind. Know your mind. See your mind. Study your mind.

This awareness can be developed so that there’s a sense of knowing the awareness, the Sheshin, knowing when we are meditating and when we’re not meditating. In other words, when the mind leaves the object of meditation, we notice. We’re still sitting there, but we’re engaged in some fantasy of past and future.

Strengthening that awareness more and more and more gives it that role. Practice seeing when you’ve lost the meditation and this will bring you back to the meditation.

The third skill is sensing obstacles that are occurring now and that might be coming up to the meditation. The awareness knows the mind. It knows it at a more subtle level than simply whether it’s lost the object or not. It also knows this is when meditation gets more advanced. It knows when the mind is becoming too tightly focused on the object of meditation or too loose in regards to the meditation.

The awareness is how we keep the balance. The obstacles, those obstacles of tightness and looseness generally come up past the fourth stage when genuine meditation is beginning to take hold. But before then, instead of simply listing all the stages, listing all the factors, listing all the obstacles, and listing all the antidotes, I’m taking the tack of working with the different stages of meditation.

The preparation of the first three stages leads to true meditation in the fourth stage. The actual meditation of the fourth through seventh stages and increases the meditation of the later seventh through the ninth stage.

Obstacles and Antidotes

The next point introduces the five obstacles, then the eight antidotes. These are listed at the top table in this post. Everyone has difficulty meditating. The five obstacles are laziness, forgetting the instructions, wildness/dullness or lethargy, not applying the antidotes, and overapplying the antidotes. See the 5 Hindrances to Meditation for a deep dive into these.

At this point, laziness is the main obstacle. It means not getting to the cushion. It also means not taming the mind and not developing motivation. See the 4 types of laziness at the above link.

After overcoming laziness, the next issue is forgetting the instructions. It’s just not remembering how to meditate. When this obstacle is overcome, valid meditation will occur through effort. In other words, not forgetting the instructions is the definition of meditation to some extent.

The 3 Qualities of Meditation

• Stability
• Clarity
• Power

These are sequential. Stability is non-wandering of mind. The focus remains on the object. Clarity is vividness and detail. The meditative object becomes very subtle and is seen more and more precisely. Power is knowing that the mind is vibrant, full of energy. You gain full control of the mind and what it is doing. Focus is extremely strong. Distractions are absent. The mind feels capable of great accomplishment.

9 Stages of Resting the Mind

With those pieces in place, we can look at the nine stages. The nine stages are

1. Placement
2. Continuous placement
3. Repeated placement
4. Close placement
5. Taming
6. Pacifying
7. Thoroughly pacifying
8. One-pointedness
9. Equanimity.

Placement

In order to enter the first stage, we do need two critical components. An understanding of what it means to meditate, place the mind on the object and leave it there, and motivation, wanting to do it.

We need to want it and we need a sense of direction and clarity on what it is we’re doing. A good thing to do is to sit down and say, “Now I’m going to meditate, I’m going to place my mind on the object of meditation, typically the breath at the stage, and leave it and allow it to remain there. If it wanders, we’ll bring it back.”

A simple statement like that, which can be repeated every time you sit down, is extremely helpful. You know what you’re doing and you do it. We can also meditate on various texts or ideas like the four reminders or refuge practice or bodhicitta and so forth, but generally, we’re working on straightforward Shamatha here.

The breath is one of the best objects, as introduced by the Buddha 2,500 years ago. Definitively place your mind, your consciousness, or concentration on the object – the breathing or whatever object you’ve chosen.

Ensure the object is clearly understood as to what it is and place the attention on it. This is very important because it establishes that you are meditating. This is what you’re doing. Do this immediately after making that commitment. Do the thing itself.

This creates the sense of actually meditating, so you don’t sit and let the mind wander for several hours in a sort of fuzzy state.

It’s good to set a specific time, a clear beginning, and a clear ending to meditation. The time shouldn’t be too long, but it can be very short. In fact, if you’re just sitting somewhere in the doctor’s office, you can say, “I’m going to meditate for the next two minutes or until the doctor calls me.”

By meditating on the breathing, we begin to harmonize mind and body. Breathing is somewhat of a bridge between the two. Breathing is completely controlled by the mind at a subconscious level. By bringing it up into the conscious level, we’re connecting with it. Breathing is obviously intimately connected with the body. It maintains the body as a sense of life and an ongoing, as a sense of ongoing life itself. So joining the two through the breathing is a very powerful technique to synchronize our being.

Stage 2-3: Continuous and Repeated Placement

Continuous placement means we need to bring the mind back to the object of meditation on a regular basis. In other words, we are drifting away. Then we notice, ‘Ah, I am supposed to be meditating,’ so we return to the object. The attention lasts about 21 breath cycles, or around 2 minutes before the mind wanders, on average. It’s called continuous placement because we’re wandering then returning for about the same amount of time in brief periods.

Repeated placement occurs when the placement of the mind on the object lasts quite a bit longer – 108 breath cycles is the typical length, but it’s just a rule of thumb. That would be around ten minutes. This means the mind’s focus does not wander from the object for around ten minutes. Then it gets distracted, wanders for a while, and you notice. At this point, you ‘repeat’ the placement. The mind stays focused for quite a bit longer than it wanders now.

Meditation is still a struggle and still not actually happening. It’s more like athletic practice than an actual game. Genuine meditation does not occur until the mind remains stably upon the object. That happens in Stage 4, the beginnings of samadhi.

That is the next post.

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