Face to Face with the Object of Meditation

By: Sayadaw U Pandita

It is as if you are walking along a road and you meet a traveler, face to face, coming from the opposite direction. When you are meditating, the mind should meet the object in just this way.  Only through direct confrontation with an object can true mindfulness arise.

They say that the human face is the index of character.  If you want to size up a person, you look at his or her face very carefully and then you can make a preliminary judgment.  If you do not examine the face carefully and instead become distracted by other parts of his or her body, then your judgment will not be accurate.  

In meditation you must apply a similar, if not sharper, degree of care in looking at the object of observation.  Only if you look meticulously at the object can you understand its true nature.  When. you look at a face for the first time, you get a quick, overall view of it.  If you look more carefully, you will pick up details--say, of the eyebrows, eyes, and lops.  First you must look at the face as a whole, and only later will details become clear.

Similarly, when you are watching the rising and falling of your abdomen, you begin by taking an overall view of these processes.  First you bring your mind face to face with the rising and falling.  After repeated successes you will find yourself able to look closer.  Details will appear to you effortlessly, as if by themselves.  You will notice different sensations in the rise and fall, such as tension, pressure, heat, coolness, or movement.

From In This Very Life: The Liberation Teachings of the Buddha. Sayadaw U Pandita (1921-2016) was a towering figure in the Insight meditation tradition of Burma. He was a successor to Mahasai Sayadaw and taught many prominent American meditation teachers,

Tuning the Breath in Zazen

By: Keizan Jokin

When sitting in meditation, your body may seem hot or cold, uneasy or uncomfortable, sometimes stiff, sometimes loose, sometimes heavy, sometimes light, sometimes startled awake.  This is all because the breath is not in tune and needs to be tuned.  The way of tuning the breath is as follows: open your mouth, letting the breath be long or short, gradually harmonizing it; following it for a while, when a sense of awareness comes, the breath is then in good tune.  After that let the breath pass naturally through the nose.

Keizan Jokin (1268-1325) is considered the “second founder” of Soto Zen. Keizan and his disciples are credited with spreading Soto Zen in Japan, away from monastic practice and toward a popular religion appealing to all levels of Japanese society.

What We Call "I" is Just a Swinging Door

By: Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing.  When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world.  When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world.  The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is limitless.  We say the “inner world” or “outer world,” but actually there is just one whole world.  In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door.  The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door.  If you think “I breathe,” the “I” is extra.  There is no you to say “I”.  What we call “I” is just a swinging door when we inhale and when we exhale.  It just moves; that is all.  When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I”, no world, no mind, nor body, just a swinging door.

From Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Dogen on Samadhi

By: Eihei Dogen

The Buddha says: 'When you monks unify your minds, the mind is in samadhi. Since the mind is in samadhi, you know the characteristics of the creation and destruction of the various phenomena in the world [...] When you gain samadhi, the mind is not scattered, just as those who protect themselves from floods guard the levee.

From The Eight Awarenesses of the Enlightened Person, in The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment, by Taizan Maezumi and Bernie Glassman. Dogen (1200-1253) was the founder of the Soto Zen school in Japan.

Ways to Consider Samadhi

By: Rob Burbea

…samadhi is usually translated as ‘concentration’, but in many respects that does not convey the fullness, or the beauty, of what it really means.  Therefore we shall keep it in the original language...  For samadhi involves more than just holding the attention fixed on an object with a minimum of wavering.  And it certainly does not necessarily imply a spatially narrowed focus of the mind on a small area.  Instead here we will emphasize that what characterizes states of samadhi is some degree of collectedness and unification of mind and body in a sense of well-being.  Included in any such state will also be some degree of harmonization of the internal energies of the mind and the body.  Steadiness of mind, then, is only one part of that. 

 …although, as the Buddha did, we can certainly delineate a range of discrete states of samadhi (the jhanas), in this present context let us rather view it mostly as a continuum: of depth of meditation, of well-being, of non-entanglement, and of the refinement of consciousness.  [The advantage of this perspective is that there is less chance that] the relationship with practice becomes fraught with wondering too much if one “has it” or “doesn’t have it”, is “succeeding” or “failing”, is “in” or “out”.  Instead of relating to samadhi practice in terms of measurement or achievement of some goal, it is usually much more helpful, more kind, and less self-alienating to conceive of it as a caring, both in the present and in the long term, for the heart and mind.

From Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. Rob Burbea (1965-2020) was the Resident Teacher at Gaia House in England. He was an exceptionally gifted and innovative Dharma teacher, drawing on the Insight tradition, Tibetan emptiness practice, depth and archetypal psychology and the imaginal. A wealth of his teachings in both text and audio can be found at hermesamara.org

How Samadhi Can Arise With Zazen Practice

By John Daido Loori

Whether we work on the breath, with a koan, or shikantaza, zazen eventually leads to samadhi.  The first indication is usually an off-sensation of the body.  This happens most frequently during sesshin because of the long periods of sitting.  When you sit for a while without moving the body, it stops receiving information about its edges through the senses, such as the friction of your clothing, or an itch on your leg.  So, although you know the body is there, you don’t feel it.  Some people get frightened at this point and involuntarily their body twitches and defines its edges.  Then they slowly move to that place again, and gradually they learn to trust it and they begin to go a little further each time.  Next comes the off-sensation of the mind.  The mind is dependent on thoughts, but when the thoughts disappear, the mind disappears, the self disappears.  That constant reflex action that says, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here” is the ego manifesting itself.  This is when we realize that we are constantly re-creating ourselves.

From The Art of Just Sitting. John Daido Loori (1931-2009) was the Abbott of Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York. He received Dharma Transmission from Taizan Maezumi Roshi. He also received Dharma Transmission in the Harada-Yasutani and Inzan lineages of Rinzai Zen as well.

Attributes of the Mind With Samadhi

By: Bhikkhu P.A. Payutto

The mind with samadhi contains the following main attributes:

1.        Strong and vigorous.  It is compared to a stream of water channeled into one direction, which has greater power than water that has been allowed to flow about without direction.

2.        Calm and serene, still and deep.  It is like a pool or lake of still water, the surface untouched by wind and unbroken by waves. 

3.        Clear, lucid, transparent.  It is like still water, without ripples, in which any dust has settled to the bottom.

4. Pliant and malleable, or fit for work, because it is not tense, not willful, not confused, not dull, not agitated.

From: The Essential Buddhadhamma:The Teachings and Practice of Theravada Buddhism. Bhikkhu Payutto is widely acknowledged as one of Thailand’s foremost Buddhist scholars. His Essential Buddhahamma is considered to be one of the most significant scholarly works on the Buddhism of the Pali Canon published in the last century. It was first published in Thailand in 1971 and was recently translated into English.

Melville's Equanimity Teaching

By: Herman Melville

Oh grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul…Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm.

From Moby Dick

The Sublime Joy Realized Through Dharma Practice

By Nyanaponika Thera

Life, though full of woe, holds also sources of happiness and joy, unknown to most. Let us teach people to seek and to find real joy within themselves and to rejoice with the joy of others! Let us teach them to unfold their joy to ever sublimer heights! Noble and sublime joy is not foreign to the Teaching of the Enlightened One. Wrongly, the Buddha’s Teaching is sometimes considered to be a doctrine diffusing melancholy. Far from it: the Dhamma leads step by step to an ever purer and loftier happiness.

Nyanaponika Thera (1901-1994), born Siegmund Feniger, was a German born Theravada monk and scholar who lived in Sri Lanka. He was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Nyanaponika Thera was a co-founder of the Buddhist Publication Society and the author of, among other things, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, an excellent guide to mindfulness meditation and his most famous work. Upon his death, he was given a state funeral in Sri Lanka.

The Buddha on Equanimity

As a solid mass of rock is not stirred by the wind, so a sage is not stirred by the wind.

As a deep lake is clear and undisturbed, so a sage becomes clear upon hearing the Dharma.

Virtuous people always let go, they don’t prattle about pleasures and desires.

Touched by happiness and then by suffering, the sage shows no sign of being elated or depressed.

From the Dhammapada.

Mettā Toward Self is Not Getting Rid of Anything

Pema Chödrön

…[L]ovingkindness—maitrī (Pali, mettā)—toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitrī means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Curiosity involves being gentle, precise, and open—actually being able to let go and open. Gentleness is a sense of good-heartedness toward ourselves. Precision is being able to see clearly, not being afraid to see what’s really there. Openness is being able to let go and to open. When you come to have this kind of honesty, gentleness, and good-heartedness, combined with clarity about yourself, there’s no obstacle to feeling lovingkindness for others as well.

From “No(thing) to Improve”, Tricycle Magazine, March 20, 2021

Love Yourself and You Won't Hurt Others

By: Ānāgarika Munindra

If I do not love myself, I cannot love others also. If we really love ourselves, we cannot think wrongly, cannot talk wrongly, cannot act wrongly. If you know how to love yourself, you do not bring hatred anywhere. Mind is the forerunner of all good and evil. When mind becomes purified, it creates good karma. When mind is nonpolluted, then your action will be pure, the world will be pure. When you talk, it will be wise, nice, friendly. If you do not understand your anger and mind is influenced by anger, it becomes poisonous, and you suffer physically. When you act, it will create tension. It is the same for everybody.

From Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra, by Mirka Knaster.

Munindra (1915-2003) was an Indian Vipassana teacher in the lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw. He was a teacher to Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg, among many others.

The Eleven Advantages of Mettā, According to the Buddha

The Buddha addressed the monks gathered at Jetavana at Anathapindika’s Monastery, in Savatthi as follows, regarding the advantages of mettā:

"Monks, eleven advantages are to be expected from the release (deliverance) of heart by familiarizing oneself with thoughts of loving-kindness (metta), by the cultivation of loving-kindness, by constantly increasing these thoughts, by regarding loving-kindness as a vehicle (of expression), and also as something to be treasured, by living in conformity with these thoughts, by putting these ideas into practice, and by establishing them. What are the eleven?

1. "He/she sleeps in comfort. 2. He/she awakes in comfort. 3. He/she sees no evil dreams. 4. He/she is dear to human beings. 5. He/she is dear to non-human beings. 6. Devas (gods) protect him/her. 7. Fire, poison, and sword cannot touch him/her. 8. His/her mind can concentrate quickly. 9. His/her countenance is serene. 10. He/she dies without being confused in mind. 11. If he/she fails to attain arahantship (the highest sanctity) here and now, he/she will be reborn in the brahma-world.”

From the Discourse on Advantages of Mettā, Anguttara Nikaya, 11.16, translated by Piyadassi Thera, and modified for gender inclusivity.

We Don't Need to Watch

By: Charlotte Selver

Is there watching and wishing…as opposed to simply being present and surprised by what sensations simply come and are there?  The art is not to watch it or to try to feel it but just to be there in it. 

Most of us are still under the influence of an education in which we were constantly watched, and watching, and judging was constantly asked from us.  It was asked by our parents, and it was asked by our teachers, but they didn’t understand what the organism actually is.  We have very much more endowment for being aware, for being alert, than most people realize.  I must admit that it is not easy to know the difference between letting something be conscious and watching it.  And it doesn’t come by trying to get it.  It will only come if we are hungry for it.  We don’t need to watch; we simply could be awake.  The moment we watch ourselves, we split ourselves in two.

Giving Up On Doing Things the "Right Way"

By: Charles Brooks

As children, we naturally gave full attention to everything, though it all may have changed every moment.  Then the authorities told us about our responsibility not just to do things but to do them right.  Since then, our attention has been divided between what we are doing and whether we are doing it right.  ….. we are not able to give our attention fully; there are too many whispers of conscience distracting us.  We must take the bull by the horns and deliberately practice, feeling how we do what we do, gradually learning to give up the cherished notions of the right way and the wrong way, which simply lead us away from the task itself, and coming more and more to feel the real situation and what it asks of us.

Trusting Your Own Inner Wisdom

By: Charlotte Selver

We have been thoroughly deprived of trusting the inner wisdom which each person has in him- or herself.  There lies a great unused richness in us, which we gradually have to dig out and develop.  When you get to it, you will be astonished by what comes into the open which you didn’t know was there.

Following Your Own Authority

By: Charles Brooks

During my life, I have often rejected one authority only to accept another.  Underneath, I was afraid at the thought of living in a world where there was not someone, somewhat like myself, who knew.  But I have now come to feel that, to know what one is doing with life, it is no use to consult authorities.  It is precisely through the veils which authorities have spun for us that our own ears and eyes and nerves must begin to penetrate if our hands are to grasp the world and our hearts to feel it.  We must recover our own capacity to taste for ourselves.  Then we shall be able to judge also.

A Relationship of Respect and Wonder

By: Charlotte Selver

There’s a certain relationship which we have to have with our inner functioning. That of respect and that of wonder. When we are quiet enough and positive enough that we can follow these fine indications inside which lead us to more functioning, we will find out what precious qualities we have which we don’t usually use.