Contemplative Science, page 20
Mindfulness is the principal means of accomplishing śamatha, but it must be accompanied by the mental faculty of introspection. While mindfulness attends unwaveringly to the meditative object, introspection has the function of monitoring the meditative process. Thus, introspection is a type of metacognition that operates as the “quality control” in the development of śamatha, swiftly detecting the occurrence of either excitation or laxity. In the Buddhist tradition, introspection is defined as the repeated examination of the state of one’s body and mind,8 and it is regarded as a derivative of intelligence. 9
The Buddhist assertion of the possibility of introspection as a form of metacognition raises the interesting problem of whether or not it is possible for the mind to observe itself. Buddhists generally assert that at any given moment, consciousness and its concomitant mental processes have the same intentional object, and at any given moment, only one consciousness can be produced in a single individual.10 Moreover, a famous discourse attributed to the Buddha declares that the mind cannot observe itself, just as a sword cannot cut itself and a fingertip cannot touch itself; nor can the mind be seen in external sense objects or in the sense organs.11
I suspect the rationale behind that assertion is that even when one is aware of one’s own subjective experience of an object, there is still a sense of separateness between the observer of that experience and the experience itself. The sense of duality remains. Within the context of ordinary, dualistic cognition, there can be no subjective awareness without an object, just as there can be no object without reference to a subject that cognizes or designates it. According to Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, subject and object are mutually interdependent. All phenomena experienced as subjects and objects arise within, and in dependence upon, the conceptual framework in which they are designated.
When one observes one’s own subjective experience of an object, the observer seems to be distinct from that experience, and if one takes note of that observer, there remains a sense of duality between the noted observer and the one who notes that observer. This hypothesis of an observer perceiving a simultaneously existing observer perceiving a simultaneously existing observer leads to an infinite regression. Śāntideva avoided this problem by suggesting that instead of such metacognition occurring with respect to a simultaneously existing cognition, one is rather recollecting past moments of consciousness. In short, he hypothesized that it is possible to recollect a subjective experience that was not previously cognized as a distinct, isolated entity. In his view, when one remembers seeing a certain event, one recalls both the perceived event and oneself perceiving that event. The subject and object are recalled as an integrated, experienced event, in which the subject is retrospectively identified as such; but he denied that it is possible for a single cognition to take itself as its own object.12
THE STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT OF ŚAMATHA
Progress in the gradual training leading up to the achievement of śamatha is mapped out in terms of nine successive attentional states. The initial challenge is to develop a continuity of sustained, voluntary awareness, but in the first state, called “directed attention,” the mind is strongly dominated by excitation. Indeed, because one is now consciously trying to sustain the attention unwaveringly on a single object instead of allowing it to roam freely, the mind seems more overwhelmed by compulsive ideation than usual. One brings the mental image to mind, but almost immediately it is lost and the attention is scattered.
This initial, limited capacity for sustained attention is borne out by modern experiments that have measured transient, focused attention on the basis of the performance of simple sensory tasks. Such research indicates that this transient, high level of focused attention lasts between one and three seconds. 13 Scientific investigation of attention during the late nineteenth century also suggested that voluntary attention cannot be sustained for more than a few seconds at a time. Such research led William James to conclude, “No one can possibly attend continuously to an object that does not change.”14
According to the Buddhist tradition, it is very difficult to attend continuously to an object that does not change, but the ability can be developed through sustained training. During the successive stages of śamatha practice, even the presence of mindfulness and introspection is no guarantee that progress will be made, for one may recognize the presence of laxity or excitation and still fail to take steps to counteract it. The remedy is the cultivation of the will, which is closely associated with intervention and effort. According to Buddhist psychology, the will is the mental process that intentionally engages the mind with various types of objects and activities. In this case, when either laxity or excitation occurs, the mind is stimulated by the will to intervene in order to eliminate them. The relationship of the mind to the will is likened to that of iron that moves under the influence of a magnet. The will to eliminate laxity and excitation is aroused by recognizing the disadvantages of succumbing to those hindrances and the advantages of overcoming them.15 Thus, the initial two phases of this training are accomplished by learning about the nature of the practice and contemplating the benefits of pursuing it.
At the outset, one is encouraged to practice for many short sessions each day with as few distractions between sessions as possible. As a result of persevering in this practice, it is said that one ascends to the second state, called “continuous attention.” During this phase, the mind is still subject to so much excitation that the attention is more often away from the object than on it, but at times one experiences brief periods of attentional continuity, for up to a minute or so. In other words, occasionally, for up to a minute, the attention does not completely disengage from the chosen mental image. But even during those periods of sustained attention, the mind is still prone to excitation, which manifests as peripheral “noise” or mental chitchat. Experientially, it seems as if the attention is still fixed on the mental image even while other thoughts and sensory impressions come to mind. According to Buddhist psychology, however, it seems more likely that the attention is disengaged from the mental image during those interludes, but they are so brief that there seems to be an unbroken continuity of attention to the main object. In any case, at this point only a gross level of attentional stability has been achieved, and that too is interspersed with periods of gross excitation, in which the meditative object is forgotten altogether.
With further training, one gradually reduces the number of sessions per day while increasing their duration. The emphasis is always on maintaining the highest quality of attention, rather than opting for mere quantity of time spent. The next state in this development is called “resurgent attention,” at which point the attention is mostly on the meditative object, and its continuity needs only to be reinstated now and then when gross excitation occurs. Thus, there are more frequent periods of sustained attention, and they are of longer duration.
When one accomplishes the fourth state, called “close attention,” the mind is stabilized to the point that one does not entirely disengage from the meditative object for the full duration of each session. The third and fourth states are achieved chiefly by the cultivation of mindfulness, and the principal emphasis up to that point is on the development of attentional stability, rather than vividness. In fact, Buddhist contemplatives have found that if one strives initially for enhanced vividness, that effort will actually undermine the development of stability. With the attainment of close attention, the power of mindfulness is well exhibited, gross attentional stability is achieved, and the mind is free of gross excitation.
Particularly at this point in the training, it is very easy to fall into complacency, a feeling of having already achieved the aim of sustained, voluntary attention. In reality, one is still very much subject to subtle excitation and to both gross and subtle laxity, and Tsongkhapa warns that if one fails to recognize these flaws, continued practice may actually impair one’s intelligence. William James was also aware of pathological cases in which the mind was possessed by a fixed and ever monotonously recurring idea, and he mistakenly concluded that those were the only kind of cases in which the attention does become fixed on an unchanging object.16 According to all the evidence available to him, voluntary attention is by necessity only a momentary affair. 17 Buddhist contemplatives maintain, on the contrary, that mental health can be retained and even enhanced as long as one cultivates a high degree of vividness in such sustained attention. The principal difference between such meditatively stabilized awareness and the kind of attention that occurs, for example, in obsessive-compulsive disorders is that the meditative awareness is voluntary and supple. It can be directed at will, instead of being obsessive or compulsive.
The fifth attentional state, called “tamed attention,” and the sixth, called “pacified attention,” are achieved with the force of introspection, with which one closely monitors the meditative process, watching for the occurrence of laxity and subtle excitation. In the stage of taming, gross laxity, in which vividness of the attention is missing, is dispelled; in the phase of pacification, subtle excitation is eliminated, so that even peripheral distractions disappear.
By that time, an increasing sense of joy and satisfaction arises while meditating, so the seventh and eighth attentional states of “fully pacified attention” and “single-pointed attention” are achieved by the force of enthusiasm. In the seventh state even subtle laxity, in which the full potency of attentional vividness is not attained, is eliminated; in single-pointed attention, the mind can dwell with utter stability and vividness on its chosen object for hours on end, without the occurrence of even subtle laxity or excitation. William James predicted that if the attention were concentrated on a mental image long enough, it would acquire before the mind’s eye almost the brilliancy of a visually perceived object,18 and this is exactly what Buddhist contemplatives report from their experience at this point of the training.
With the attainment of the ninth state, called “attentional balance,” accomplished with the force of familiarization, only an initial impulse of will and effort is needed at the beginning of each meditation session; after that, uninterrupted, sustained attention occurs effortlessly. Moreover, the engagement of the will, effort, and intervention at this point is actually a hindrance. It is time to let the natural balance of the mind maintain itself without interference.
THE ATTAINMENT OF ŚAMATHA
Even at the state of attentional balance, śamatha has still not been fully achieved. Its attainment is marked first by a dramatic shift in the nervous system, characterized briefly by a strange but not unpleasant sense of heaviness and numbness on the top of the head. This is followed by an obvious increase in mental and then physical pliancy, entailing a cheerfulness and lightness of the mind and a buoyancy and lightness of the body. Consequently, experiences of physical bliss and then mental bliss arise, which are temporarily quite overwhelming. But that rapture soon fades, and with its disappearance, the attention is sustained firmly and calmly upon the meditative object, and śamatha is fully achieved. The above claims concerning a shift in the nervous system and its consequences have to do with firsthand, empirical, physiological experiences. It remains to be seen how, or whether, such a theory and the corresponding physiological changes can be detected objectively and understood in modern scientific terms.
With the achievement of śamatha, one disengages the attention from the previous meditative object, and the entire continuum of attention is focused single-pointedly, nonconceptually, and internally in the substrate consciousness, withdrawn fully from the physical senses. Thus, for the first time in this training, one does not attempt to recall a familiar object or mentally engage with it. One’s consciousness is now left in an absence of appearances, an experience that is said to be subtle and difficult to realize. Only the aspects of the sheer awareness, luminosity, and joy of the mind remain, without the intrusion of any sensory objects. Any thoughts that arise do not persist, nor do they proliferate; rather, they vanish of their own accord, like bubbles emerging from water. One has no sense of one’s own body, and it seems as if one’s mind has become indivisible with space.
While remaining in this absence of appearances, even though it is still impossible for a single moment of consciousness to observe itself, one moment of consciousness may recall the experience of the immediately preceding moment, which, in turn, may recall its immediately preceding moment—each moment having no other appearances or objects arising to it. Thus, due to the homogeneity of this mental continuum, with each moment of consciousness recalling the previous one, the experiential effect is that of consciousness apprehending itself.
The defining characteristics of consciousness retrospectively perceived in that state are first a sense of clarity, or implicit luminosity capable of manifesting as all manner of appearances, and second the quality of cognizance, or the event of knowing. Upon attaining śamatha, by focusing the attention on the sheer clarity and the sheer cognizance of experience, one attends to the defining characteristics of consciousness alone, as opposed to the qualities of other objects of consciousness.
THE USE OF NONIDEATION AS THE OBJECT IN ŚAMATHA PRACTICE
If one’s chief aim in developing śamatha is to ascertain the nature of consciousness, one might ask whether a more direct strategy—not engaging with a mental image or any other object—might be used. Many Buddhist contemplatives have in fact trained in an alternative technique of cultivating nonconceptual attention from the outset, without focusing on any other object such as a mental image. In this method the eyes are left open, gazing vacantly into the space ahead. According to Buddhist psychology, this space is a type of form that is apprehended by mental, not sensory, perception.19 Mentally, one completely cuts off all thoughts of the past, future, and present. Bringing no thoughts to mind, one lets it remain like a cloudless sky, clear, empty, and evenly devoid of grasping onto any kind of object.
In this, as in all other techniques for the development of śamatha, attentional stability and vividness are cultivated by means of mindfulness and introspection. The object of mindfulness is the mere absence of ideation, and with introspection one monitors whether the mind has come under the influence of excitation or laxity. Tsongkhapa especially emphasized that while following this method, one must ascertain the absence of ideation as the meditative object, rather than simply letting the mind go blank. His concern, I presume, was to ensure that the meditator does not drift into a nebulous trance but maintains an actively engaged intelligence throughout this training. In this way, one progresses through the nine attentional states explained previously. Eventually śamatha is achieved, and—as in the previous method—it is characterized by joy, luminosity, and nonconceptuality.20
Buddhist contemplatives raise the question of whether this nonconceptual state of śamatha actually transcends all conceptual structuring and modification and whether the mere suppression of ideation is sufficient for entering a totally nonconceptual state of awareness. The eminent Tibetan Buddhist contemplative Karma Chagmé (1612–1678) voiced the consensus within the Tibetan tradition when he asserted that although this state may easily be mistaken for conceptually unstructured awareness, it is not unmodified by ideation, for one still maintains the conceptual sense that attention is being sustained in the absence of conceptualization.21
Once śamatha is achieved, the conceptually discursive mind becomes almost entirely quiescent. Only occasionally does an isolated thought or mental image fleetingly arise, only to fade back into the space of awareness, with no ripple effect. But even though one’s awareness seems to be devoid of thoughts, there is still a subliminal sense of subject and object and other indications that this experience is subject to precognitive conceptual structuring. So the vacuum state of the mind of śamatha is relatively empty of conceptual content, but not absolutely so.
SETTLING THE MIND IN ITS NATURAL STATE
There is something contrived about the above state of nonconceptuality, for during the training that leads to it, the mind has been artificially withdrawn from appearances and ideation has been suppressed. The consciousness in which one perceives the characteristics of joy, luminosity, and nonconceptuality has been conceptually isolated from its normal processes and from the appearances with which it is normally engaged. The question may then be raised: Is it not possible to identify the natural characteristics of consciousness in the midst of the mind’s activity, without suppressing ideation? After all, consciousness is obviously present and active while thoughts arise, so in principle there seems no reason it could not be identified.
It is for this purpose that the technique of “settling the mind in its natural state” has been devised and taught within the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition. 22 Like all other techniques for developing śamatha, it entails freeing the mind from distraction, so that the attention is not compulsively carried away by either mental or sensory stimuli. However, this method is exceptional in that the attention is not fixed upon any object. One gazes steadily into the space ahead, but without visually focusing on anything. Mentally, one brings the attention into the domain of the mind, and whenever any type of mental event is observed—a thought, an image, a feeling, a desire, and so on—one simply takes note of it, without conceptually classifying it and without trying to suppress or sustain it. Letting the mind remain at ease, one watches all manner of mental events arise and pass of their own accord, without intervention of any kind. Settling awareness in the present, the attention is not allowed to stray in thoughts concerning the past or the future, or to latch onto any object in the present.
