On samadhi

From: Eightfold Path 2
Full transcript
Audioclip

The Sanskrit word, samadhi, is a very difficult word to translate. And it has actually a wide range of meanings, but in this context the meaning is actually fairly precise. With some reservations I use the word absorption. I haven’t found anything better yet. There are lots of problems with that word but samadhi is active attention and it is composed or comprised of the union of stability and clarity. In just the resting mind there are those two aspects of the mindfulness and awareness and they come together to form active attention. But then that evolves into the stability or the resting quality and then the insight quality which is basic clarity quality. So when those two come together then you’re experiencing absorption or samadhi.

And the way that I’ve find very helpful in regarding this from the mahamudra perspective, it’s from a book called, Clarifying the Natural State. As you develop the ability to rest you naturally find that you begin to look at experience. So the way that you deepen the resting is to start looking in the resting. Now as soon as you start looking it brings an active quality into the attention which tends to destabilize the resting.

So by working at this and being sensitive to the balance, you’re not only able to look in the resting but rest in the looking. And that’s the two-liner that I find very helpful. Rest in the looking and look in the resting. Those two lines will take you a very, very long way in your meditation practice. The key thing here is to be sensitive to imbalance. When you are just resting the mind tends to grow a bit dull. When there is too much emphasis on the looking, the resting quality destabilizes.

People talk about balance. I find it’s much more useful to talk about imbalance. Because when things are in balance, we don’t experience anything, we are just there. Chuang-Tzu says, When the shoe fits you forget the feet. When the belt fits you forget the waist.

In terms of developing our skill and abilities in meditation practice, rather than trying to maintain balance become adept at detecting imbalance. And so this involves being in touch with your body, in touch with emotions, in touch with quality of attention and as imbalances arise you can quietly correct them. And there’s constant period of adjustment but the net result is that the quality of attention becomes progressively deeper and more stable. That’s the way I found most useful and most effective for working with this last one. So you are bringing attention to the quality of your attention, if you wish.

Note: Another commentary on samadhi: A Trackless Path II 5

Short Meditation

 Short Meditation (from SUS07: Sutra Session (questions) 00:04:17.80 - 00:08:40.50)

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Very short periods of meditation. And I want to put the emphasis on very short. So what does this look like? One breath meditation, that's about as short as you can get, right?.

Then you stop. And you check, "Oh am I still sitting upright, have I gone to sleep. No. OK, that’s good. Let’s do another session of meditation."

And start. OK. So far, so good. And you do that and you may think I’m completely nuts here, but you actually do it this way so that you have the experience of being completely awake and in attention for that one breath. Okay.

Then you do that 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 times--it’s up to you--but do it more rather than less. This can also help you. Then, when you really feel that you can do one breath, you do two breaths.

Then you stop. You don’t have to get up or anything. You just stop, look around, refresh your body and then you do two breaths again. And you gradually build up.

And the point here is, you never give yourself a chance to fall asleep. Because when we do that repeatedly in our meditation, what we’re actually practicing is not meditating--we’re practicing being dull. And that is just as problematic as being carried away by your thoughts—the other sign of the coin. But we actually have to practice this.

I was hearing about this young NBA basketball player. I can’t remember his name. Plays for Oklahoma. He’s one of the top draft picks, but he’s playing in the bottom of the league because that’s how it works. But he’s working really hard--this is his rookie year

And after practice his coach came in and he saw this guy shooting hoops. And he would be standing on one place on the floor and shooting hoops. And he would just shoot from that one position until he could sink every one. And then he would move six inches to the right and do the same thing.

And what he was doing was making sure that his body knew how to shoot from every conceivable point on the floor. He was really working at his game and he’s already a really, really good basketball player. Okay.

That’s what it takes. If we want to practice meditation, it isn’t just sitting down and having a nice thing like that. It’s actually practicing attention. So you practice it. And it’s not enough simply to put in the time. Putting in the time’s very important but in addition to putting in the time we have to be getting the feedback.

Now for the basketball player it’s very easy to get feedback--did the ball go in the hoop or not--very easy. Meditation--it’s a little more difficult getting feedback. That’s why we have to do it very, very short so that "Okay, yes I was there." And then we do it again.

And people think, “Why would I do this?” So that’s my question for you. Why would you do this?

NOTE:  More on one breath meditation here