Square One

No matter how much you’ve meditated, it’s always good to keep returning to the basics. If you’re getting started, you need to know some guidance on what to look for, what questions to ask, what things to notice, what your range of possibilities might be. If you’ve been meditating for a long time and suddenly find that you’re on a plateau, nothing new is happening for a long time or you’re actually regressing, then it’s good to go back to reflect on how you got started, what the basic principles are, because there may be something you may have forgotten.

So: What are those basic principles?

After the Buddha gained awakening, he described his awakening in many different ways, but the shortest was a principle of causality: “When this is, that is. From the arising of this comes the arising of that. When this isn’t, that isn’t. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.” This is called “this/that conditionality” because it’s focused on things you see immediately in your present experience. We’re not looking for causes behind what you can see. We’re looking for things you can actually observe. You want to see patterns there.

We’re going to be observing our mind right here as we focus it on the breath, focusing on observing both the breath and the mind. We’ll be doing things. It’s not a passive “just watching things on their own” kind of meditation. We’re mastering a skill that requires a sense of what you’re doing, what results you’re getting, and what you can adjust.

That principle of causality is actually two principles that intersect. One principle — “When this is, that is. When this isn’t, that isn’t” — talks about things that occur immediately as a result of their causes. When the causes go away, they immediately go away as well. So as you meditate, sometimes you’ll be looking for things that will give results right away. You focus on the breath a certain way, and you’ll feel certain sensations immediately. Notice that. If you leave the breath, the concentration goes, the impact of what you just learned goes as well.

As for the other principle — “From the arising of this comes the arising of that. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that” — that’s causation over time. This is one of those cases where you might not see the results immediately. They may take a long time to come. It also means that some of the things happening to you right now are not the result of what you’re doing right now. They may be the result of something you’ve done this morning, yesterday, last week, last month, last lifetime. When it was, you don’t know.

So you’re going to be presented with a complex issue here. Some things you do right now will have an impact right now, and some things won’t, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good. It’s simply that you’ve run up against some past karma. Which is why meditation gets complex. It’s not a simple skill. But what the Buddha does help you focus on what you’re doing in the present moment. Be very clear about that. And he gives some advice on what to look for and what to do. So even though it may not be giving results right away, follow his advice as best you can.

He describes breath meditation in terms of what he calls “fabrication.” Now, there are three fabrications that go into the way you put together the present moment. This is where causality comes in again. You’ve got potentials for an experience of the body right here, right now potentials for feelings potentials for perceptions, thoughts, awareness. But you have to fabricate those potentials with an intention for you to actually experience them.

The three ways in which you fabricate these things are, one, bodily fabrication, which is the in-and-out breathing, the topic of the meditation. You focus on knowing, “Now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out.” And you notice the quality of the breath.

This involves the next type of fabrication, which is verbal fabrication, what the Buddha calls “directed thought and evaluation.” It’s basically the way you talk to yourself. You choose a topic to focus on, try to keep your thoughts directed to that topic, and then you make comments, ask questions. Evaluate things. Come up with new approaches. Use your ingenuity. All of that is the evaluation.

This is where discernment enters into the meditation. As the Buddha said, you need both tranquility and insight to get the mind into concentration. To get the mind into concentration, you’ve got to choose one topic. Clear away all other topics in the mind. They may keep coming in, but just don’t pay attention to them. And you try to be ardent, alert, and mindful.

Mindful means keeping something in mind, i.e., the breath, and whatever lessons you’ve learned from past meditation sessions. Alert: Watching what you’re actually doing right now, along with the results you’re getting. And then ardent: you’re trying to do this well. This is what you talk to yourself about: Is this going well? If you’re not sure, just keep on doing what you’re doing. You don’t have to change things too often.

Sometimes the mind is beginning to settle down and you suddenly decide to do a thorough audit of the mind, and that destroys the concentration. Tell yourself, “You’ve not got that much you’ve got to focus on. It’s just the breath.” Where is the breath? It’s right here, coming in and going out. And as Ajaan Fuang once said, “If you can doubt that, you can doubt anything.” So trust in the fact that you can see the breath as it comes in and as it goes out. If you just stick with it, you’ll naturally calm down without having to think about all these fabrications or principles of causality. But they will be there in the background if you need them.

Finally, the third type of fabrication, mental, consists of feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feeling tones: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions are the labels you put on things that identify what they are, what they mean, how important they are. As with a red light: You can identify that the light is red, you can tell that it means “stop,” and you can tell yourself, “This is important. I have to pay attention to these things.” Those are all perceptions.

In the case of the breath, you’ve got different sensations in the body. The question is which ones count as breath and which ones don’t. For the time being, perceive your whole body as an area of breath sensations. And you’re trying to create feelings of pleasure. So if there’s any tightness or tension anywhere in the body, this is where you use your directed thought and evaluation to ask yourself, “How can I disperse those feelings of tension?”

Sometimes there seem to be bands of tension wrapping around your head or a ball of tension in the middle of your chest. That’s a sign that you’re pushing the breath too much. Here you can bring in a perception: What seems to be solid and unyielding in the body is actually composed of atoms. Atoms have a lot of space in between them. Try to make your attention as refined as possible so that the breath can go through those spaces and gradually disperse them. Don’t push any pressure on them. Just think of them dispersing, dispersing—allowing them to disperse.

Or you can use the image of a knife. Where there are bands of tension, think of the knife cutting through the bands effectively and very precisely. There are lots of ways you can use your perceptions to deal with feelings of discomfort in body or mind.

So you can see that these fabrications are not separate things. It’s not the case that the breath is one thing, and unrelated to the breath is the way you talk to yourself, and unrelated to the way you talk to yourself are the perceptions and feelings you hold in mind. That’s not the case. They all work together. After all, you use perceptions as you’re talking to yourself. And what are you talking to yourself about? You’re talking about the breath.

So when things are not going well, you ask yourself, “What’s up with the breath? Or how am I talking to myself? Or what perceptions am I holding in mind? If things aren’t going well, what can I change?” It’s going to be one of these three things.

That’s square one. This is where you get started. This is what you come back to on a regular basis to make sure you haven’t gone off astray. It’s also good to think about these terms — the principles of causality, the three fabrications: one, as an overall checklist to make sure you’ve got all the issues covered; and, two, as a series of reminders of areas where you might want to do a little bit more detailed analysis.

When you’re talking to yourself, exactly how many conversations are going on in the mind? You’ve got you as the meditator talking about the breath, but there might be some other you’s with other conversations going on as well. Maybe they’re getting in the way. So breathe through them. Try to figure out who in the mind is talking to whom and why.

Sometimes you might discover that you’ve picked up some attitudes that are not really good. One is the attitude, “I can’t do this.” Two, “I hear that other people, when they get their minds in concentration, have visions. Why am I not having a vision? I must be a failure.” Those are bad attitudes to have.

You’re not here to get other people’s concentration. You’re here to get your concentration. Your concentration is going to be different from theirs. Some people have visions. Some people have experiences of light. Other people don’t. That’s not a measure of progress of concentration. Some people go through the different levels of concentration very quickly. Others go more slowly. Again, that’s not a matter of whether you’re better or not. Those levels of concentration have their uses. You’ll get nourishment from each one of them.

So we’re not here to jump through jhāna hoops. As long as directed thought and evaluation is helpful, keep on doing it. There will come a point, though, when it doesn’t seem to be giving any results. Then you can experiment. You can stop talking to yourself about the breath. Just hold on to the perception, “breath.” Think of the image of the breath filling the whole body.

Remember what the Buddha said about breath. It’s not a tactile sensation at the nose. It’s the energy flow throughout the entire body. Try to be fully aware of that. And notice what perceptions you have of your relationship to the breath, your place in the body.

Sometimes we feel like we’re perched up here on our shoulders looking down at the breath. But remind yourself: The breath is all around you. You’re in the entire body, from your head down to your toes. Hold that perception in mind. The breath is surrounding you, bathing you. However long it takes to bathe you, that depends on how much cleaning you need, how much refreshment you need, because it’s nourishing you as it bathes you. Sometimes you’ve been working really hard all day, and the mind just needs to rest.

You may wonder, “When am I going to gain insights?” The insights will come when the foundation is solid. Insights that come when the foundation is not solid are not secure. They’re not safe. They can fall down on you. It’s like building a building. It can be a really beautiful building, go very high, but if its foundations are not solid, the whole thing will come crashing down on you.

So keep coming back to square one. There’s a lot to learn in square one. It keeps the meditation grounded. It keeps you coming back, coming back, coming back. After all, where was the Buddha on the night of his awakening? He was under the Bodhi tree, of course, but his mind was not there. His mind was on the breath, right here, right where you are right now. He didn’t leave the breath until he’d completed all he needed to do with the breath. He said, “Maybe you haven’t completed all you need to do with the breath yet, so work on it. Stay here.”

I was interviewed once by someone in a tradition where they have very clearly delineated stages in the practice — you do stage one, then you’re eligible for stage two, three, four. His question was, “When you’re meditating on your own, how do you know which stage you’re ready for?” My answer was that you always keep coming back to the foundation. It’s just that you see the foundation more clearly each time you come back. You come at it from a different angle; you get a better appreciation of it—because right here is where everything is. Those three fabrications that are right here, when you take them apart, it can lead to the deathless.

So we’re here to get really well acquainted with square one. As Ajaan Lee once said, “Once you get the mind to a one and you know it thoroughly, then you can turn it to zero.” The image he gave was of the zeros that you put in front of numbers. You can put a two and you can put lots of zeros in front of the number, but they don’t change the meaning or the value of two. They don’t count. In the same way, when your mind is zero, then people can praise you or criticize you, but doesn’t count—because your mind has found something solid.

So make sure this foundation is strong. Keep inspecting it to make it stronger. You don’t have to go anywhere else. Everything you need to know is going to be right here.