More than Just Calm

Concentration is one of the factors for awakening. Right concentration is one of the factors of the noble path. But some people object to the translation, “concentration.” The Pali term is samādhi. They propose instead that it be translated as “lucid calm.” But calm is one of the factors for awakening already—passaddhi—and when it’s combined with mindfulness, it’s lucid. Samādhi is stronger. Calm can drift around from object to object very calmly. Samādhi stays with one object, focused and centered.

In Pali, it’s defined as ekaggatā of the mind. Eka—one. Agga can mean top, summit, like the ridge of a roof, or the summit of a mountain. It can also mean a meeting place. Because samādhi is said to be something that you enter into and dwell in, that second meaning seems to be the more appropriate. We’re gathering the mind around one object.

In Pali when they say “object,” they use the word, ārammaṇa, which literally means “support.” So in concentration you’re placing the mind on one thing, supporting the mind with one thing, dwelling on one thing. All your thoughts, all your interests: Everything is gathered around just one object. In this case, we take the breath. You breathe in, you notice where the breath is most obvious in the body, and you focus your attention there first.

Then you adjust the breath to see what kind of breathing feels good at that spot—long breathing, short breathing, fast, slow, heavy, light, deep, shallow—because an important part of concentration is that you like being here. The image the Buddha gives us of a cook who fixes food for a king. If the cook wants to maintain his job, he’s got to notice what the king likes. Sometimes the king will say, but a lot of times he won’t. It’s just that he reaches for something again and again. In that case, the cook knows, “Okay, he likes that.” If the king reaches for something once and doesn’t try it again, it’s a sign that he doesn’t like it. As the Buddha said, if the cook notices what the king likes and provides him more and more of that, then he’s going to get rewarded.

In the same way, when you practice mindfulness, you find that the mind likes certain objects, you give it more of that object, you’ll be rewarded with concentration. So give the mind a breath that it likes. What would you like right now? Fast breathing, slow breathing, deep, shallow, heavy, light? Experiment for a while and be careful to notice that the way you’re breathing may feel good for a while but then doesn’t feel good. You can change. As long as you’re with the breath, you’re fine. Any other thoughts that come into the mind, you don’t have to follow them. If you follow them, even if you’re trying to chase them away, they’ve got you. So you stay still. Thoughts can come and thoughts can go, but you don’t have to get involved in them. You’re more concerned with this one object, which is the breath, and how the breath feels in the body.

When it starts feeling good, think of that good feeling maintaining itself, and then think of it starting to spread. This, the Buddha said, is another aspect of concentration. It’s not just reduced to one point. Your awareness fills the whole body. You may be focused in one spot, but it’s like looking at a painting. You may focus on, say, the eyes of the person being depicted, but you can still see the whole painting. And a lot of the pleasure in the painting comes from seeing how the different parts are related to each other, how they come into balance.

In the same way, you may be focusing on the breath at the middle of the chest, the base of the throat, down in the navel, in the middle of the head, anywhere where it’s obvious, but then think of your awareness spreading so that it fills the whole body, and you allow the breath to follow the awareness. You’re aware down the legs, aware down the arms. Think of the breath going down the legs, the breath going down the arms. Then try to think of the whole body all at once. As you breathe in, all the different cells in the body are breathing in. As you breathe out, all the cells are breathing out. They’re all in harmony.

So you’ve got the mind thinking about one thing, and that one thing fills your awareness. That’s real oneness. That’s real ekaggatā, as they call it in Pali, all gathered into one.

This is different from simple calm, because it’s stronger, more focused—and you see things a lot more clearly. With calm, it’s like drifting around in a calm river. A little bit of current pushes you here, pushes you there. You stay calm, but you’re not really clearly aware of any one particular thing. Whereas with concentration, you’re really aware of the breath or whatever your single object is. It’s very clear and it fills the whole of your awareness; it fills the whole of your body. When you’re unified like this, the mind has a lot of strength.

The Buddha uses the analogy of food for the mind. Concentration is like feeding the mind well. When it’s strong from being well fed, it can see things a lot more clearly: one, because you’ve been dealing directly with the mind as you get it to settle down. So you’re already beginning to see: When the Buddha talks about perceptions, you’ve been dealing with perceptions, the images you hold in mind to keep with the breath. When he talks about fabrication, you’ve been engaged in what he calls directed thought and evaluation, where you’re talking to yourself about the breath until you’ve talked enough and then can just be with the sensation of the breath. So you already have some experience with these mental events that the Buddha wants you to focus on.

At the same time, the mind is very clear. It’s still. So any little movement is something you’re going to see clearly. If you’re moving all the time, everything seems to be moving, so you have no idea what really moved and what didn’t. It’s like being born on a train. As you look out the window, the countryside passes by, cars move, people move, trees seem to move, mountains seem to move, houses seem to move, because you’re moving. But when you get off the train and stand still, you can see, oh, people move, the cars move, but the houses don’t move and the mountains don’t move. So you get a very clear idea of what’s moving in your mind, what’s not.

And finally, there’s that sense of well-being. If something comes up in the mind that you’d ordinarily be attached to, you’ve got a better sense of well-being now, so it’s easier to say No to things that otherwise would capture your imagination, capture your attention. Now you can watch them without being captured.

In other words, you can see them as simply events arising in the mind. They can have a good or bad influence, but because you’re not hungry, because you’re sitting here surrounded by a sense of well-being, you’re a lot less likely to want to go for the things that you can see are unskillful, things that promise a little bit of pleasure but you know down the line are going to provide pain. Now you can say No, because you’ve got something better right here.

This is why we get the mind into concentration, and why “concentration” is a good translation for the word samādhi. It’s more than just calm—it’s a focused, centered, unified, strong sense of oneness. When the mind is one like this, it can understand itself a lot better. This helps solve our big problem: that we all want happiness but we do things that cause suffering, and we don’t know why. When the mind gets still like this, you can start to see more clearly why you go for things.

Now, it’s not the case that you can trust every insight that comes up with the concentration, but you’re in a better position. You have some better idea of what’s actually going on.

When Ajaan Fuang was studying with Ajaan Mun, his mind was the sort that when it got really still and unified like this, he could see devas. So he was checking out the devas in the nearby hills. He happened to mention this to some of the other monks. Ajaan Mun found out and was very strict with them. He said, “You don’t talk about your visions in meditation, because you can’t guarantee they’re going to be true. You have to test them, and they’re basically messages for you, not for anybody else. If you start talking about what you’ve learned in your concentration, you’re bragging, and that’s a defilement.”

What you’ve learned is for your own sake. When something comes up—even if a deva comes and appears to you and tells you *x, y, and z—*you don’t have to believe it just because it’s a deva. Simply ask yourself, “Is x, y, and z in line with the Dhamma?” If it doesn’t seem to be in line with the Dhamma, or if it’s something you can’t test—like the deva telling you who or what you were in a previous lifetime—just let it go. If it’s something you can test, and it seems likely that it’s going to be good, okay, go ahead and test it. Sometimes you find that what you learned is right, and sometimes you find that even though it seemed right, it was actually wrong.

So you can’t trust everything that comes up in a concentrated mind. You have to test it. But the fact that you’re concentrated means that you’ll be open to things, sensitive to things that you might not realize otherwise.

You’re putting yourself in a good position here: centered, unified, strong, well-fed. There’s a power that comes with concentration that simple calm doesn’t provide.

So try to take an interest in the breath. Remind yourself that the breath is the force of life, and of all the elements in the body, it’s the one that you have the most control over. It’s actually the one that you have the most direct contact with. It helps you understand the relationship between the body and the mind. If the mind is going to tell the body to do something, it has to go through the breath. And if the mind is going to be aware of what’s going on in the body, it has to go through the breath. So everything is centered right here.

If you take a full interest in the breath, you don’t have to worry about concentration, or jhāna, or any of those other terms. When we’re getting the mind concentrated, we do try to get the mind into a state that’s called jhāna, which means absorption, but jhāna is not the object of the concentration. The object is the breath. So give your full attention to the breath, your full attention to the mind related to the breath. Try to bring them to a state of oneness.

When everything is gathered together like this, they all have a good chance to grow. It’s like having a seed. If the seed is in one spot, the soil in another spot, the sunlight in another spot, the water in another spot, the seed is not going to develop. But when the seed—your alertness to what’s happening in the present moment—is right here, the breath is right here, your mind is right here, the body is right here, then your understanding of how they relate to one another is going to have to grow.