Adjust the Flame

When the Buddha defines right concentration, he calls it the four levels of jhāna. The word jhāna is related to the verb, jhāyati, which means to burn with a steady flame. Not like your defilements, which are like a bonfire and flicker and flare all over the place. You want your mind to be burning at a steady flame, like the flame of an oil lamp. You can read by a steady flame like that. In other words, you can see your mind clearly when it’s burning just at the right rate. So you want to make sure, as you examine your mind when you sit down to meditate, that you don’t put the flame out, and you don’t turn it into a bonfire.

The Buddha himself gives this analogy. He says sometimes your mind is like a fire that is ready to go out. If you’re trying to calm it down at that point it’s like pouring ashes and dirt on top of the fire. That puts it out. So if you find that your energy level is low, you may not want to deal with a meditation topic that’s calming, relaxing. Work with the breath. Try to breathe in a way that’s energizing and give the mind work to do. Think of the breath going to the different parts of the body. Make a very thorough examination. The fact that you’re having to pay attention, careful attention, and you’re moving around helps to wake you up.

There was a time when I had to look after Ajaan Fuang with some of the other monks. The other monks kept finding excuses to take time off to do something else. So my time looking after him got longer and longer, until it stretched from 2:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. So you can imagine what it’s like around 2:30 a.m. or 3:00 a.m. in the morning, dozing off. I found that if I moved my point of concentration around, it helped wake me up: three breaths at the middle of the chest, three breaths at the navel, three breaths at the neck, three breaths in the eyes. In other words, give the mind work to do.

You can think of the different parts of the body. This is when the thirty-two parts of the body are useful. Visualize each part of the body in the list and then see if you can think of parts that are not mentioned in the list, like your eyes. Get the mind inquisitive. Get the mind curious. Get the mind engaged. This is what’s going to wake it up.

Other times when your energy level is too high, you have to breathe in a calming way. And you may not want to work quite yet at spreading the breath through the body. Just stay at one point. Tell yourself: Any thought that leaves this point, you’re going to kill. You’re going to wipe it out. In that way, your energy gets concentrated in the right place and you can begin to calm down.

So basically you’re adjusting the flame.

When you sit down to meditate, get a sense of how big the flame is in your mind. Then realize there are ways of bringing it into balance so that it’s steady, bright, and you’re still, but mindful. Alert, but calm. Finding this point of balance is one of the important skills in meditation. So always keep it in mind.