Cultivating Concentration

An Article by Shaila Catherine

Concentration is a central feature of a contemplative life, cultivated through formal meditation practice and also through many daily activities such as drawing, kayaking, skiing, music, cooking and research. Learning or observing anything — whether a technical repair of a computer, a creative pursuit in art, a masterful move in dance, or simply quieting the mind in meditation — requires stability of attention. Concentration brings with it a natural joy that arises as the mind settles. Regardless what perception or activity the mind becomes unified through, the basic absence of distraction brings joy. A surgeon may love surgery, not because the operating room is a pleasant place to be, but because the task demands such complete attention that the mind is filled with the delight associated with concentration. Kayakers are often enveloped in rapture even though their bodies are cramped in little boats and the water may be cold. The danger and intensity of the sport excludes all distractions, bringing a brightness to the eyes and mind, and a feeling of intense happiness. A concentrated mind is steady, unified, one-pointed, and stable, regardless of uncomfortable or luxurious conditions.

For concentration meditation we establish a very simple task. We choose one object. Although it could be anything: the sound of a mantra, the sight of a candle flame, a sensation in the body, or a thought of loving kindness, we generally use the breath as the initial focus for attention. We give ourselves the task of observing the sensations of the breath as it enters and exits at the nostrils. Narrowing the focus to a single object discards many of the stray thoughts that occupy and divert precious mental energy. As concentration grows you will notice when the mind is cluttered with extraneous concepts, and when it is in alignment with your aspirations. You will recognize expressions of agitation, and the sublime beauty of a deeply settled state. With an established practice you will recognize the concentrated mind and the unconcentrated mind. Each has distinct qualities.

Daily Meditation

       Sit in a comfortable posture. Feel how the body is sitting. Feel the contact with the chair. Gently bring attention to the breath. First feel the whole breath, and how the chest and abdomen expand and contract. Then, settle the attention on the sensation of the breath at the very tip of the nostrils; observe that initial point of contact with the breath. Observe the sensations of breathing without altering or manipulating the breath. Let the breath come naturally. Attend to the breath as it is now, not as you think a breath should appear. Follow the sensations throughout the duration of inhale, exhale and pause; inhale, exhale and pause.

        If the attention drifts off into thoughts, bring it gently back to the breath. The mind will probably stray many times. When the mind is lost in thought and mindfulness is weak or absent, the conditions are not present to choose alertness. Your moment of choice is that precise instant when you wake up to the bare fact that thinking has subsumed the attention. Without judging your capacity to meditate, simply return to the sensations. Attention is not developed by riveting the attention to the breath with super glue or hammering it into the nostrils with nails. Attention becomes unwavering by the consistent willingness to gently begin again.

This simple practice of repeatedly directing the attention to the breath and letting it rest there forms the basis of this meditation. With this exercise you are cultivating your capacity to let go of distractions and strengthening your ability to direct attention. This practice affects the conditioned tendencies of attention, diminishing habits of distraction and cultivating a peaceful and calm awareness. Please set some time aside each day to do this fundamental meditation exercise. I recommend twenty to sixty minutes a day as the general guideline for a committed daily practice; however, it is fine to do more or less as your lifestyle and interest allow. A daily practice of any length can bring great fruits in concentration and wisdom.

What Is Samadhi?

In the Pali language of the early Buddhist scriptures, samadhi is the term that is most often translated into English as concentration. Samadhi describes more than the narrow focus implied by the English term concentration. It refers to a calm unification within the mind that occurs when the mind is profoundly undistracted. It is an experience of unreproachable happiness and peaceful tranquility. Samadhi is the beautiful state of an undistracted mind, described in the Pali texts as “internally steadied, composed, unified, and concentrated”.

These four qualities indicate that samadhi is not merely focusing on a single object. This state of profound serenity encompasses a balanced, joyful composure that varies in depth, duration, intensity and strength. Samadhi expresses the naturally settled dimension of undistracted awareness.

Three Kinds Of Concentration

Three kinds of concentration are described in the Buddhist Tradition.

• Momentary Concentration
• Access To Jhana
• Absorption

Each level of samadhi is a deeply undistracted state of consciousness; all three can be the support for liberating wisdom. In samadhi the mind is tranquil and calm. It contains only wholesome qualities; greed, aversion, anger and fear are in abeyance as a prerequisite to any kind of samadhi. The development of samadhi requires a persistent willingness to pay attention. The momentum of clear and sustained attention brings calmness to the mind as it simultaneously restricts energy that might nourish unwholesome or distracting mental states. Don’t worry if you feel far away from these beautiful calm states. Most people need diligence to develop the inner conditions for samadhi. Continue with the basic daily meditation instructions; feel the sensations at the nostrils and let go of distracting thoughts. This is the necessary training that purifies the mind of obstruction.

Momentary Concentration

Buddhist disciplines distinguish between the quality of samadhi developed through a continuity of mindfulness of changing perceptions and the quality of samadhi developed with a fixed focus. Readers with experience in mindfulness practices that employ the breath as the primary object of attention may wonder if there is a difference between mindfulness and concentration practices. When the breath is used to develop mindfulness, emphasis is placed on clear perception of changing sensations through the full duration of an inhale and exhale. The meditator experiences with tremendous precision a multitude of fleeting sensations: tingles, vibrations, pressure, heat. Pressure may increase or decrease. Pulsing may vary in rhythm. The intensity of heat or cold may fluctuate. This meticulous sensitivity to physical variations brings the mind to a state of exquisite clarity; you see the impermanent and empty nature of phenomena in the light of mindfulness. With mindfulness you’ll witness the relationship between the mind and body. You can observe how sights and smells can trigger vivid memories, how intentions affect physical movements, and how emotions manifest in the body. Mindfulness encompasses the observation of all mental and physical processes; how does mind and matter interact and change? As the momentum of mindfulness increases, concentration correspondingly strengthens.

The concentration that develops through a continuity of mindfulness with changing objects is called momentary concentration. Through mindfulness based practices the mind is unified, but for only short periods of time. It momentarily collects, but then disperses as the flow of sensory experiences ebbs and alters. Thinking can arise as another sensory perception, but the thoughts do not diminish the concentrated state. Steadiness of samadhi is established even as perceptions rapidly change. The content of thought relates to the phenomena at hand. Mindfulness inhibits proliferations of thought because it meets the experience of thinking immediately. Before samadhi is established, thoughts may multiply through cognitive associations. A personal story is fabricated out of simple sensory triggers. For example, what begins as the simple sight of a stain on my shirt could proliferate into a train of thoughts that include planning how to wash it, reflections on the last meal that might have caused the stain, embarrassed recollections of who I encountered since my last meal, speculations of what those people might think of me, fabricating excuses for the stain. A thought of one of the people I met might spark various tangential story lines, that could drift my attention far off the original subject of the stain.

In contrast to this proliferating tendency, when mindfulness is present, we apprehend the thought quickly. For example I arrived at a retreat quite tired and slept through the early morning meditation on the first day. As I sipped some tea after breakfast, my mind was active: sustaining the story of how tired I was, creating an identity of being a busy person, justifying my extra hour of sleep because of all the important things I was doing in the previous days. Between sips of tea I became aware that this story of being someone was activating restlessness. I reviewed my physical condition and noticed that I was not actually tired. Although the theme of the story was tiredness, my present condition was not tired. The only thing that seemed to be sustaining tiredness was a perverse identification with the story of exhaustion. As I became aware of the experience of thinking, the story of being tired dissolved. The proliferations on that topic ended by becoming mindful of it. Then attention settled easily in the present moment experience of feeling the cup in my hand, hearing the sounds of activity that surrounded me, and sensing my body and breath. Present moment attention is often this ordinary. The mind gathers its energies by connecting with basic physical and mental experience in the present moment. Unobtrusive thoughts might arise, but when there is mindfulness, they quickly pass: as empty ephemeral thoughts they just float by without causing disturbance. We remain steady and present, not swept up in the story line.

Achan Chah, a master in the Thai Forest Tradition, compared momentary concentration to taking a walk, resting, walking, and resting. The journey is periodically interrupted with the arising of a thought, yet undisturbed, because in a short time the journey is continued. Developed through a continuity of mindfulness, momentary concentration can grow very strong.

Access to Jhana

The next two kinds of samadhi (access to jhana and absorption) are developed by focusing on a fixed perception. Focus on the breath as a fixed point. The basic occurrence of breath becomes the object for attention rather than the dynamic flow of changing sensations. Sensations are in fact changing, however, to attain the stage of access you don’t highlight the changing nature of experience. As concentration deepens, the physicality of changing sensations becomes less dominant. The expression of a steady mind comes to the fore as the predominant mental object. This commonly manifests as the occurrence of bright light in awareness or a subtle field of vibrations in the mind. Each practitioner will discover how this shift in consciousness is perceived; experiences can vary.

As samadhi deepens and the conditions for meditative absorption (called jhana) develop, the mind gradually withdraws from its orientation to the sensory world. Sensory orientation is a deeply ingrained aspect of the healthy functioning of perception. It plays a valuable role in the survival of animals, the development of children, and structure of social organizations. The critical refinement that sets the stage for the possibility of absorption and marks jhanic states of concentration as “altered states” occurs as consciousness withdraws its dependence on sensory perception. With access to absorption the object for concentration shifts from the physicality of phenomena to a subtler experience of mental factors or mental reflection of the object. These include but are not limited to mental factors of pleasure, focus, mindfulness, happiness, and equanimity. In the access stage attention dwells consistently in relationship to these positive and pleasant mental qualities. No hindrances or unwholesome states arise. It is a distinctive shift in the direction of seclusion, but not yet the withdrawal into an altered state of jhana.

Achan Chah compared the stage of access to jhana to wandering about inside your own home. Consciousness is at ease within the confines of a comfortable arena of perceptions. Attention does not move away from the meditation object. Thinking may still arise but it circles closely around the meditative experience. Light and wispy thoughts can arise, often as reflections on the meditation process, yet this mental activity does not disturb a calm tranquility that pervades the mind. Attention is still moving, but it does not drift off the meditation object. A strong and fundamental purity has been achieved, yet there is still a subtle restlessness that inhibits the depth of stillness required for absorption.

In an interesting discourse the Buddha reflected on his relationship to the subtle wholesome thinking characteristic of this stage of access that precedes absorption and commented, “If I think and ponder upon thoughts of letting go, even for a night and day, I see nothing to fear from it. But with excessive thinking and pondering, I might tire my body, and when the body is tired, the mind might become disturbed. It is far from concentration. So I steadied my mind and concentrated it so that it would not be disturbed.”

Although there is nothing wrong with thoughts that regulate the meditation experience, greater rest and seclusion can be attained with further stillness. As attention continues to still, an opportunity for absorption (entering the next level of samadhi) may arise.

Absorption into Jhana States

When the mind abandons its contact with the senses, including discursive thinking, the concentrated absorption of jhanas begins. In jhana the mind is utterly still and focused on its object. The specific object of focus becomes progressively refined in the development of concentration, from the physical sensations of breathing, to light, rapture, pleasure, and equanimity. As these perceptions grow increasingly subtle, attention rivets itself to its object. In jhana, attention is virtually merged into its object, creating an impression of complete unification. Even if there is sensory impact from sounds and sensations, the mind remains completely unmoved. Sensory contact, whether strong pain or loud noise, does not disturb the tranquillity or affect the unification of the mind with its object of concentration. It is as though you don’t hear anything in jhana, yet the capacity of hearing is not impaired. It is as if you don’t feel pain, and yet the bodily processes are functioning. There may or may not be subtle awareness of the contact, but the mind lets go so automatically that there can be no residue of the sensory impingement to disturb the concentration. Because the mind is so still that even pain will not disrupt the attention, jhana can be sustained for very long periods of time. Although this depth of detachment is often challenging to attain, once seclusion is established, the sequential development through the stages of jhana unfolds rather effortlessly.

Releasing into the experience of samadhi the meditator encounters positive attributes: happiness, purity, clarity, confidence, ease, interest, alertness. Samadhi reveals the lustrous qualities of mind: bright, concentrated, purified, and ready for insight. Samadhi is the experience of an utterly beautiful mind! Each of the three kinds of samadhi describes a deep state of the stable mind. When attention is perceiving a changing field of phenomena, momentary samadhi develops. When a fixed object for attention is used, a sequential development of samadhi ensues. The purity of mind produced at the threshold of absorption is called access to jhana; the complete absorption is called jhana.

The standard formula that is repeatedly presented in the Discourses of the Buddha describes concentration through the development of jhana. The Buddha presents the sequence as, “And what, bhikkhus, is the faculty of concentration? Here, bhikkhus, the noble disciple gains concentration, gains one-pointedness of mind, having made release the object. Secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, he enters and dwells in the first jhana, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion. With the subsiding of thought and examination, he enters and dwells in the second jhana, which has internal confidence and unification of mind, is without thought and examination, and has rapture and happiness born of concentration. With the fading away as well of rapture, he dwells equanimous and, mindful and clearly comprehending, he experiences happiness with the body; he enters and dwells in the third jhana of which the noble ones declare: ‘he is equanimous, mindful, one who dwells happily.’ With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous passing away of joy and displeasure, he enters and dwells in the fourth jhana, which is neither painful nor pleasant and includes the purification of mindfulness by equanimity. This is called the faculty of concentration.”

Recommended reading on the development of concentration: Focused and Fearless.
Online Courses on the development of concentration: bodhicourses.org

Maranasati for the Modern World

By Kim Allen and Shaila Catherine

“Mindfulness of death, when developed and cultivated, is of great fruit and benefit, culminating in the deathless, having the deathless as its consummation.”
– Anguttara Nikaya 8.7

Our Western society has become particularly adept at hiding death. It occurs behind closed doors or in “sanitized” locations like hospitals and nursing homes. We rarely see corpses, much less the process of dying itself. More seriously, death is often interpreted as a kind of failure or something gone wrong, completely ignoring its spiritual dimension.

In our time and place, Buddhist contemplation of death may be more relevant – and spiritually potent – than ever. The Buddha’s teachings encourage people to contemplate, deeply investigate, and directly understand death for themselves, for it is a path to Liberation.

When the Buddha embarked on his spiritual quest, one of the most powerful prompts was seeing a corpse and understanding that he too would die. He set out to discover that which does not age, sicken, or die – Nibbāna, the Deathless Liberation.

We may not immediately jump at the idea of contemplating our own death. Like animals, we have a biological survival instinct. And yet, as humans, we are in the uncomfortable position of knowing that eventually that instinct will fail us: we will die.

How do we live with this knowledge? There are many avoidance strategies, and they tend to look like all the problems of the world: Denial, aggression, covetousness, anxiety, hyper-busyness, and so forth. Interestingly, just turning toward death, even in a very gentle way, starts to erode the fear and pain that underlie all these strategies.

The range of Buddhist practices around death is called maranasati. “Mara” is recognizable as the force, often personified, of unwholesomeness, temptation, or literal death in Buddhist literature. “Sati” is mindfulness, showing that death is to be approached as another meditation object, held in calm awareness and available for investigation.

The traditional Theravadan schools offer formal maranasati practices based on the Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10). These include envisioning the body as made up merely of 32 “parts” including various organs and bodily fluids, and imagining a human corpse in various stages of decay. Many monasteries have a skeleton placed prominently in various locations to encourage this contemplation.

Such formal meditation practices are available to us, but Westerners may also choose to develop the understanding of death in additional ways. Some are quite simple and only require that we remember to do them (easier said than done, given our natural desire to avoid death!), and others take more focused effort. A brief list follows, based on the authors’ experience; readers are encouraged to explore these and to discover others.

Practicing the Contemplation of Death

The key to success in any maranasati practice is correct contemplation, which could be summarized as “Me too”: My body, too, will be like that. I am not immune from that. Few people emphasize this, choosing instead to use an aesthetic or scientific/analytical lens when observing a living or dead body. Such lenses create distance and do not help to overcome fear or delusion. In contrast, correct contemplation leads us to understand that death is natural, normal, and will be part of our own experience. Concomitant mindfulness helps to overcome fear. Most importantly, correct contemplation spurs deeper practice.

On the cushion

• Breathe in and out as if it is your last breath. Particularly notice the end of the out-breath, feeling it slip away to nothing, resting in the gap. When another in-breath begins, renew the perception that it is your last.

Daily life contemplations

• Note which things in your life come from people who are now dead. For example, a necklace that you inherited from your great grandmother; a photo on the mantel of relatives that are long dead; or perhaps a child’s drawing from a sibling who died young. Then consider your own possessions: They too will go to others after you are dead. This helps loosen the idea that collecting things during life is useful and reinforces nonattachment to possessions.
• Notice endings or other types of “death” instead of just rushing to the next thing that is beginning. Nothing is immune from death and impermanence: leaves drop from trees, flowers wilt, and parties end. Pause to recognize endings.
• When you encounter roadkill, or when the cat drags in a mouse or bird, think: “My body will be like that too.”
• When friends or relatives die, consciously think, “I too will die.” In the Messengers Sutta (AN 3.36), a man is asked, “Good man, didn’t it occur to you, an intelligent and mature person, ‘I too am subject to death, I am not exempt from death. Let me now do good by body, speech, and mind’?” The man must sheepishly answer, “No, I was heedless…” Reflect for yourself on the certainty of your death and how you would like to live.

Cemeteries and mortuaries

• Notice when you drive by cemeteries and mortuaries how your mind may not want to notice these places, even if you pass them every day. Consider that your body might soon be decomposing there.
• Walk in the cemetery. You might read the gravestones, imagining real people with hopes, dreams, fears, personalities. It is also interesting to notice their ages – some were quite young, younger than you, when they died. Or you might sit quietly and tune in to the energy of the place. Contemplate: Death can come at any time.

Images

• Images of corpses or decaying bodies can be found and used for formal contemplation. Please do this sensitively, being aware of who might find them on your computer screen, book shelf, or desk. Set aside time to view them in a serene setting with a meditative mind. Some anatomy books (such as Rohen and Yokochi, Color Atlas of Anatomy) feature photos of dissected cadavers. Consider that your body is the same.
• There are easily accessible pictures of skeletons on the Web or in books. It is particularly powerful to look at “scattered” skeletons with the bones not in the correct locations and to contemplate, as the Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10) says, “here a hand-bone, there a foot-bone, […] here an arm-bone, there a shoulder-bone, […] here a tooth, there the skull […] this body too will be like that.” It is surprising how we can subtly cling to the structure of the body as something stable.

Volunteering

• You may be able to volunteer in a hospital, or – in some ways even better – a hospice or nursing home where it is accepted that death is on the way. These settings offer a chance to see people quite close to death. You will certainly encounter your own (perhaps unconscious) feelings around death, including your death or deaths you remember from earlier in life. If you know someone who is living in a nursing home, you could make a commitment to visit them frequently, even if you don’t know them well.

Dissection

• It may be possible to witness a dissection or autopsy at a hospital with special permission, or participate in a human dissection through a project called The Atlas of Integral Anatomy.

Fruits of Maranasati Practice

Undertaking practices that bring death into our awareness will surely have an effect on our mind and heart. Several fruits are possible, depending on the conditions of practice and how we understand what we are doing.

A common effect of an encounter with death is stronger appreciation for virtuous behavior. A friend dies, or we spend a scary night nearly dying in the emergency room, and this gives us a new perspective on how much we value our relationships and lifestyle. Sometimes this lasts for a short period, and sometimes a person’s whole outlook is transformed into one that is organized around generosity, gratitude and virtue.

The long-term result of living this way is that one no longer fears death. The Buddha consoles a man worried about the fate of his mind at death by saying, “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid! Your death will not be a bad one, your demise will not be a bad one. When a person’s mind has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom, [it] goes upwards, goes to distinction.” (SN 55.21).

When maranasati practices are taken on as a formal meditation process, they can serve as vehicles for a deepening of tranquility, concentration, or compassion. The inevitability of death can bring a deep restfulness. With proper guidance, using corpse images as objects of concentration practice can even unify the mind to the point of attaining jhana. With the mind attuned to the commonality of death among all beings, great compassion can arise for our shared experience of this type of suffering. All of these practices deeply fortify and expand the heart.

But the fruit of maranasati most emphasized by the Buddha was the one he experienced: Desire to practice for the attainment of Liberation. This “spiritual urgency” is called samvega, and is a key step in Buddhist practice. In fact, samvega is considered the sign that the mindfulness of death practice has “succeeded.” Maranasati is often prescribed as an antidote to complacency – for example, for those who have a comfortable lifestyle.

No longer satisfied with the temporariness of sense pleasures, the practitioner seeks deeper happiness before his or her own death intervenes. On numerous occasions, the Buddha praised energetic and immediate maranasati practice. In AN 6.19 and 8.73, he says:

The [practitioner] who develops mindfulness of death thus: “May I live just the length of time it takes to chew and swallow a single mouthful of food so that I may attend to the Blessed One’s teaching. I could then accomplish much!’ […] [This one] dwells heedfully … develops mindfulness of death keenly for the destruction of the taints.”

In AN 6.20 and 8.74, he likens samvega to practicing as if one’s clothes or head had caught fire, upon which one “would put forth extraordinary desire, effort, zeal, enthusiasm, indefatigability, mindfulness, and clear comprehension.”

Thus, following this wholesome desire all the way to its end leads to the Deathless Liberation, the extinguishing of suffering. May you too find maranasati practice to be of great fruit and benefit.

Kim Allen has practiced insight meditation since 2003 with Gil Fronsdal as her primary teacher. Her practice includes 15 months of intensive retreat, the study of Buddhist texts, and completion of the Sati Center Buddhist Chaplaincy Training program. In 2011 she co-founded the Buddhist Insight Network that connects and serves teachers and sanghas in the Insight tradition. She is now involved in starting up the Insight Retreat Center in Scotts Valley CA, USA.

Shaila Catherine is an insight meditation teacher and founder of Insight Meditation South Bay (www.imsb.org) in Mountain View, CA, USA. She has practiced meditation since 1980, accumulating over eight years of silent retreat experience. Since 2003 she has emphasized deep concentration and jhana, and authored two books: Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm and Clarity, and Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana.

The Focused Mind

The following article by Shaila Catherine was originally published in the Insight Meditation South Bay e-newsletter volume 8, October 2012.

Do you sit down to meditate and find that your attention is quickly swept away by plans, fantasies, and stray thoughts? Are you unable to sustain the focus and interest required to follow projects and tasks through to completion? Do you find it difficult to hold complex problems in mind? These are common expressions of a distracted mind.

Concentration not only supports our proficiency in life, it also brings the consistent happiness and ease that is the expression of a calm, clear mind. The undistracted mind is a bliss filled state.

A concentrated mind is focused, unified, and stable, whether the physical and social conditions are uncomfortable or luxurious, pleasant or unpleasant. When you establish a calm abiding during meditation, the mental acuity that results spills over into every aspect of life — academic achievements, creative problem solving, patience in difficult situations, all grow from the power of seeing everything with clarity.

Concentration has many practical benefits, however, the Buddha’s teachings are not concerned with improving our productivity at work or making our home lives more comfortable. Instead, he harnessed the potency of the unified mind to transform concentration into a catalyst for spiritual awakening. The Buddhist approach to the development of mind describes how to use concentration to uproot the deep and subtle causes of suffering.

The Pali term, samadhi, is usually translated into English as “concentration.” Yet samadhi describes something more than the narrow focus of attention that is implied by an instruction to “concentrate your attention on an object.” Samadhi refers to a calm unification that occurs when the mind is profoundly undistracted; it is characterized by a profound stillness and stability. The early discourses of the Buddha describe samadhi as “internally steadied, composed, unified, and concentrated.”

There are different types of samadhi. The concentration that develops through a continuity of mindfulness with changing objects is called “momentary concentration” or khanika samadhi. Momentary concentration can be very strong during insight meditation practice. With this strong samadhi focused on changing perceptions, the mind will be radiant and experience insight through clearly seeing the rapid arising and perishing of phenomena.

Since 2004, I have emphasized the cultivation of concentration with a fixed focus—appana samadhi. Concentration with a fixed focus has the potential to lead to four sublime absorptions called the four jhanas.

Jhana practice develops efficient skills for setting aside habitual distractions, stabilizing attention, and immersing attention in a single coherent focus that brings enduring joy and ease. Jhanas are states of profound tranquility that are imbued with a depth of happiness and peace that surpasses any conceivable sensory pleasure. But most importantly, the stability of the concentrated mind is an effective platform for liberating insights.

Blissful states may arise with either practice, but dwelling in blissful states is not the purpose for meditation. The central aim of Buddhist practice is to realize liberating wisdom, which teaches us to let go of the causes of suffering. Without samadhi, we may have a certain degree of insight, but a distracted mind will primarily have insights into the ways it is distracted; our insights remain at a superficial level and usually focus around our personal tendencies. It is very useful to see these tendencies, but deep samadhi as a platform for insight helps us to see reality so much more clearly than is possible for an unstable mind.

Generally I teach mindfulness with breathing as the initial and primary object for concentration. We observe the basic occurrence of breath, rather than the dynamic flow of changing sensations. As concentration deepens, the physicality of changing sensations becomes less dominant and the breath is known as a mental sign, such as a luminous field of perception, called a nimitta. When the nimitta is stable, jhana becomes readily accessible.

Several conditions must come together for absorption to occur. The mind must be calm and virtually thought-free. Defilements and hindrances such as aversion, desire, restlessness, and doubt will have ceased arising. The wholesome faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom will be strong. And the five jhana factors must be well developed and refined — initial application of the mind, sustained attention, rapture, happiness, and one-pointedness. As concentration develops, the mind gradually withdraws from its preoccupation with the sensory world, all thought ceases except the singular concern with the meditation subject (such as the breath nimitta), and the mind grows increasingly bright and settled. When conditions ripen, the mind may release into a stable experience of absorption.

In jhana, attention is occupied with its meditation object. Jhana can be sustained for very long periods of time, because sounds, sensations, hindrances, or pain will not disrupt the one-pointed attention. Although this depth of detachment is often challenging to attain, once seclusion is established, the sequential development through the four stages of jhana unfolds rather effortlessly. The hard part is establishing the conditions for the first jhana — after that it is clear sailing.

Having taught jhana practice now for over eight years, I have found that the single most important technique for students to learn is skillful effort. Jhana requires a nuanced application of effort — the integrity of complete resolve combined with total ease. It is a state of deep relaxation and letting go — it is as though the mind rests into its meditation object — and simultaneously it requires clear determination and intention.

Some meditators come to a retreat well prepared and even a retreat as short as ten days is enough to open to these states. Most people, however, need more time to cultivate the conditions and the skills required for a genuine taste of absorption. It does not matter whether students attain jhana on a ten day retreat. I teach these practices because I know that it is important to develop concentration. By cultivating concentration we clarify our aim, develop skillful effort, learn to overcome restlessness and obstructions, nurture letting go and relinquishment, and intensify a host of wholesome states. It is a worthy training that has great value whether or not the student sustains it long enough to experience the particular four jhanas. I recommend that students let go of the expectation for certain experiences, and simply cultivate concentration as a means of developing the mind. See what there is to learn through enhancing focused attention—jhana may be accessible, or it may not in the conditions of a particular retreat.

Traditionally jhana practice was not reserved for special people, or restricted to the monastic order. During the Buddha’s day, lay disciples and busy merchants would, from time to time, enjoy the benefits and joys of jhanic abiding.

In an effort to encourage the cultivation of concentration in daily life, and help make the traditional practices of jhana as a basis for insight accessible to western meditators, I wrote two books — Focused and Fearless and Wisdom Wide and Deep — and I lead retreats that emphasize concentration (and jhana) in the context of insight. If you’d like to strengthen your concentration, don’t wait until you are in retreat. A daily meditation practice, of any length, can bring great fruits in concentration and wisdom.