I once had an experience while on retreat in Rangoon of seeing a perfectly formed and brightly colored mandala. It was during my afternoon nap that I awoke into an alternate reality. I somehow knew that my body was still sleeping, and that I was having a vision, but I was completely immersed in this other world. As I looked more closely at the mandala, it became an entire landscape, with buildings and trees and rivers. It was full of detail at every level of scale, the shapes and colors were sharply defined, and it was perfect in every way. If fact, it was much more vivid than my ordinary waking state, with colors that don't exist here on Earth. I found myself flying over this wonderful city, saw a person walking far below, and flew down to investigate. It was my brother, smiling at me! He said, "If you want to fly, you have to help me first." I was overwhelmed with joy at seeing him, and I took him by the hand and pulled him into the sky.
Today I'd like to continue the narrative of the ñanas with the 11th ñana, Knowledge of Equanimity. The equanimity ñana is a very happy time for a yogi. Having suffered through the solid physical pain of the third ñana, and having endured the dark night of the tenth ñana, the yogi wakes up one day to find that everything is just fine. Dissolution of mind and body continue, but it is no longer a problem. In fact, nothing is a problem. In the early stages of the eleventh ñana, the yogi can sit happily for hours at a time. If pain comes, no problem. Wandering mind, no problem. Objects present themselves to the mind one after another, obediently posing for inspection. This is where the yogi really gets a feel for what vipassana is all about, as he effortlessly deconstructs each thought and each sensation that appears.
I mentioned earlier that the third and tenth ñanas are the only places where a yogi gets hung up. I should perhaps include the middle stages of the eleventh on that list, as it is possible for a yogi to get stalled-out here for lack of motivation. When everything feels fine, there is little reason to meditate. Many of us are motivated to meditate by our own suffering. And since there is very little suffering in the eleventh ñana, it is tempting to stop meditating and enjoy the passing parade.
This lack of motivation works together with the inherently slippery mind of the middle stages of the equanimithy ñana to slow down a yogi's progress. By slippery mind, I mean an inablility to stay focused on one object, and a tendency to drift off into pleasant reverie. Slippery mind is a natural consequence of a mind that is very quick and nimble, and the fact that the equanimity ñana is still part of the dissolution process. In the first stage of dissolution, the fifth ñana (Knowledge of Dissolution, appropriately enough), the focus was on the passing away of gross physical sensations, so it was experienced as blissful. In the middle stages of dissolution, the dukkha ñanas (numbers 6-10), the mind itself was seen to be dissolving, along with the physical world and even one's own sense of identity. The fear and grief induced by the loss of the apparent self were mind-shattering. Now, in the eleventh ñana, Knowlege of Equanimity, the yogi has entered the final stages of dissolution. Even the fear and grief are seen to disappear as soon as they arise. Things are as they are, and life is good. But the yogi will have to relearn the art of concentration.
One way to understand what is happening here is to hearken back to the phases of chicken herding. In order to master the equanimity ñana, the yogi has to completely develop the fifth and final phase of chicken herding. In this phase, the herder has become one with the flock, and is aware of the entire barnyard, all at once. This takes a great deal of momentum, and a great deal of practice... momentum because you can't "do" this as much as you can "allow" it... the later phases of concentration arise naturally when the momentum is strong. And in order to have momentum, you must practice. Frustrated by his slippery mind, however, the yogi may try to hold the objects of meditation too tightly. This will not work with slippery mind. Holding tightly will not allow the later phases of concentration to develop, and will result in yet more frustration. At this point, a concentration practice like counting the breath or gazing lightly at a kasina object can be very helpful.
This is a good place to mention wandering mind and its relationship to concentration. It is the nature of the mind to wander, and even the most advanced meditators have to deal with this phenomenon. Wandering mind cannot be defeated, but it can be managed. I once had a beginning meditation student tell me that she had just finished a sitting in which she thought about her kids, her husband, the shopping, her job, and the fact that she was never going to be good at meditation.
"Excellent," I told her. "You just kind of meditate in between all that."
During any meditation sitting, there are moments when the monkey-mind slows down enough that it's possible to concentrate on an object for a few moments, whether the object is the breath, a kasina object, or whatever it may be. Those few moments of concentration condition the mind in such a way that there is a little less time before the next window of calm appears in between the passing storms of monkey-mind. This momentum, or snowball effect, where each little bit of calm conditions the next moment of calm, is an important principle in Buddhist meditation. In traditional teachings, the Buddhists list "proximate causes" for various mental factors. For example, the proximate cause for metta (lovingkindness) is seeing goodness or "loveableness" in another person. The proximate cause for mudita (sympathetic joy at the good fortune of another) is seeing another's success. And the proximate cause for concentration is none other than... concentration. With this in mind, it is easy to see how important the snowball effect is when you are trying to steady the mind. And from this point of view, there is no reason to feel frustrated when an entire sitting goes by with just a few brief windows of calm. Every moment of concentration makes it more likely that the next moment of concentration will arise.
Wandering mind, then, becomes ever more manageable with practice, and this is good because the later phases of concentration (chicken herding 4 and 5) will not arise if the mind is not still. This does not mean that thinking stops during deep concentration, but rather that it fades into the background, slows down, and does not pull the mind away from its target. When you are firmly abiding in a jhana and thinking arises, it is felt as subltle physical pain as it begins to pull you out of your pleasant state. With practice, this pain becomes a familiar signal that it's time to turn the mind away from thoughts and toward the object of meditation... or face the consequences. The consequences are simply that you unceremoniously exit the jhana. The skill to exit a jhana according to the schedule you decided upon before entering the jhana as opposed to staying too long or being dumped out prematurely is, as we discussed earlier, the fourth parameter for mastery of a jhana.
So, how does the yogi get to equanimity in the first place? Why do some people get hung up for years in the preceding ñana? The key to coming to terms with the tenth ñana, Knowledge of Re-observation, is surrender. Once the yogi surrenders to whatever his practice brings, he is free. Having surrendered, it does not matter whether the present experience goes or stays, or whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. It this attitude of surrender, along with time on the cushion, that results in the full development of the strata of mind where fear, misery, and disgust live. Once those mental strata are developed, or once the kundalini energy is able to move freely through those chakras, it is as if a groove has been worn through that territory. You now own that territory and although you move up and down through those same mental strata every day and in each meditation session, they no longer create problems in your meditation.
It is helpful to think of the Progress of Insight as a vertical movement upward through ever more subtle layers of mind, culminating in the Path moment, in which Nibbana is seen for the first time at that level, forever removing the energy blockages in that section of the mind. Each of the first three Paths then becomes a platform from which to continue transforming the energy on the next leg of the journey. And while the territory to be covered is vast, it is finite. It is for this reason that it is said to be possible to become "fully enlightened;" once you have cleared the energy pathways and developed the chakras throughout the body/mind, there is no more to be done on that score. Recall the traditional words of the arahats upon their attainment of Fourth Path: "Done is what needed to be done, there is no more coming into being, etc."
This consensus that there is a resolution to this particular process of physio-energetic development is important, because it gives hope to people who are tortured daily by the poorly understood but very clearly felt sensation that there is something to be done with regard to meditative development. These people should be told clearly and often that they can resolve this feeling of unease in this very life, as U Pandita points out in his book by that title. Where U Pandita has failed us (and understandably so, as the rules of his monastic order prevent him from claiming any attainment) is that does not speak from the authority of personal experience. He uses traditional language, reminding us that "the Buddha said this, the Buddha said that," blah, blah, blah. We need someone to stand in front of us in the flesh and say, "I did this, I did that, and I came to the end of this process. I am no longer tortured by the burning hunger that tortured me for so many years." It is the need for such honesty and clarity that inspires me to come out of the closet with regard to my attainment in spite of the heat that will inevitably follow as people rightly point out that I am no superman.
It must also be pointed out again and again that arahatship is not the end of anything except this one particular process of energy development. We can speak here of two kinds of development: the vertical and the horizontal. Vertical development, with regard to jhanas, ñanas and Paths, is finite. Horizontal development is infinite. There is no limit to how much one could explore the mind at every step of the way from before the first ñana before First Path to the sixteenth ñana that results in Fourth Path. So an arahat is by no means done with his development; no human being will ever be done with horizontal development.
We have so far limited our discussion to the physio-energetic development that culminates in Fourth Path/arahatship. There are many other ways for a human being to develop, from the emotional and the psychological to the social and the professional. All of these are valid and important, as most of us do not aspire to be emotionally immature arahats with poor social skills and no job. I hope that, as people become better educated about what "spiritual" development can and cannot do for us, they will stop expecting too much from their gurus. And I hope the gurus will stop imagining themselves to be above the petty concerns of the masses. From what I've seen, many enlightened sages could benefit from a good twelve-step program, or perhaps some kind of therapy.
This process of becoming an emotional grown-up, while not addressed in traditional Buddhism, has not been neglected by the western Buddhists. Whereas I criticized Joseph Goldstein earlier in these letters for unintentionally dead-ending an entire generation of yogis, I would now like to praise him and his Insight Mediation Society contemporaries for training all of us in how to be better human beings. The IMS teachers have used a combination of traditional Buddhist practices and modern western psychology to create a community of truly decent people. I am one of the people they have touched (although I will leave it to others to judge my decency) and I am forever in their debt. Now, if only the IMS teachers would get enlightened...
I'll continue the narrative of the ñanas in the next installment. Next stop: nibbana.