Mettā: What It Is, What It Isn’t

An Interview with Shaila Catherine

This interview was conducted by Insight Journal in preparation for a course she taught at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies February 2016 on Liberating Mind and Heart: Practice and Study of Lovingkindness. Other interesting articles, interviews, and programs of study and reflection lead by leading Buddhist scholars and meditation teachers can be found at https://www.bcbsdharma.org.

Insight Journal: How has your relationship to mettā changed over the years?

Shaila Catherine: When I was first introduced to meditation in the 1980s, the classic model was a 10-day meditation retreat emphasizing mindfulness. At some point during each retreat there would be a guided mettā meditation. And I have to admit that at first I hated it.

IJ: Why did you hate it?

SC: I really liked the silence of mindfulness practice, and all the phrases felt disruptive. It was hard enough for me to just be mindful of the breath and body. Juggling mettā and mindfulness didn’t feel like something I wanted to do.

As my practice developed, I grew more appreciative of the subtle attitudes we bring to our experience. When is our perspective on something or our attitude toward something constricted? And when is it open? I started to appreciate how lovingkindness and the brahmavihāras could support an open, kind, gentle response to life.

Then in the mid 1990’s, a friend of mine was doing a lot of intensive lovingkindness practice, and I really liked what I saw in him. The change in his character was so noticeable and beautiful, and I thought, “Intensive mettā – that’s the way to go.”

A few years later I found an opportunity to do a four-month self retreat – just mettā for the first two months, and then compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity for the remainder of the retreat. I timed it so that I could attend a five-day lovingkindness retreat led by Sharon Salzberg and then go directly from there into my personal retreat to deepen the practice.

IJ: Were there any specific moments during that retreat when your understanding of mettā really opened or shifted?

SC: My usual dinner during that retreat was rice cakes with tahini, jam, and raisins. This was late summer/early fall. I would usually sit outside to eat, but there were a lot of flies. I’d be holding my rice cake with one hand and using the other to wave away the flies.

Not too long into the retreat, I decided put a bit of jam on one finger and hold it out at arm’s length. The flies ate the jam off my finger without bothering my rice cake.

When we get into conflict, it’s often because we haven’t seen an alternative. We haven’t widened our perspective enough to notice a simple shift that would take the conflict out of the situation. I think about that jam on my finger as a reminder that sometimes the mind can narrow in on what it wants or what it’s doing or how it wants things to be. With a slight shift in attitude, the mind might find a way of dealing with the situation that recognizes the needs of other beings, even if it’s as simple as offering a bit of berry jam to some hungry flies.

IJ: Was there a particular moment when you became fully convinced of the value of mettā, or did it happen gradually?

SC: The best part about that long mettā retreat was that I wasn’t in any rush. I had four months, and I had no other purpose than cultivating kindness. I didn’t have the goal to get to x, y, or z jhāna, to go through various stages of insight, to attain or accomplish anything. When I was walking, eating, sitting in the garden, doing my yogi job, sitting in the hall – every perception and every experience was an opportunity to engage with whatever was happening with a mind imbued with mettā.

I worked systematically through the formal instructions using the phrases and the categories: benefactor, dear friend, neutral person, difficult person, and all beings through all the directions. Little by little, the boundaries between the categories gradually dissolved. Eventually, mettā didn’t diminish when I brought to mind someone who had hurt me, and it continued to increase I brought to mind a difficult person, a dear friend, and someone who had been kind to me. That’s when I really gained confidence in lovingkindness as a powerful wholesome force.

Up until then, I think it all felt a little sentimental. But during that intensive retreat I saw that mettā really was boundless. The mind did not waver when attention shifted from one type of being to another. When the mind is thoroughly imbued with mettā, it does not create a sense of division between self and other. The heart is open, expansive. It is as the suttas describe – an immeasurable deliverance of mind.

IJ: So it was really just a matter of getting a critical mass of intensive practice – so mettā could gain enough momentum to continue on its own.

SC: An intensive mettā retreat isn’t necessary for everyone. Some people find mettā easily available in both meditation and their daily lives. But during my retreat a shift occurred, and I could no longer see it as just a nice, virtuous thing to do.

IJ: That seems to be one of the biggest misconceptions – the idea that mettā is about liking everyone or being happy all the time. Could you talk a little about what mettā really is and what mettā really isn’t?

SC: Mettā is not sentimentality. And mettā is not affection. It’s not about turning somebody we don’t like into somebody we do like – or pretending to like everybody. Mettā is an attitude of benevolence, of good will toward all beings. Now, “good will toward all” kind of reminds me of a Christmas card. But think about what it would be like to actually pervade the world with good will toward all – no enmity, no hostility, no fear. It’s an extraordinary quality to bring into the world.

IJ: What does your daily mettā practice look like these days? Do you spend a certain amount of time on just mettā, or is it more free-form than that?

SC: These days my practice of mettā is quite free-form. But I’ve been through a number of different phases in the development of mettā. When I was living in the monasteries in Thailand, some people were meditating and some were cooking and engaged in service work. But we were all asked to practice lovingkindness before we got out of our mosquito nets each morning. It was a very simple thing that everybody could do, and I continued that commitment for many years after returning home.

IJ: Were you using the traditional phrases for that morning mettā practice?

SC: “May I be safe from danger and harm. May you be safe from danger and harm. May I be happy, free from mental distress. May you be happy, free from mental distress. May I be free from illness and pain. May you be free from illness and pain. May I live with ease in the world. May you live with ease in the world.”

IJ: What effect did that practice have?

SC: I’d earlier noticed that my worst thoughts of the day – the nasty, unconscious, uncontrolled, habitual stories – arose between the time I woke up and the time I ate breakfast. The quality of my mind during that first half hour of the day was really dreadful – sarcastic comments, worries about what I would be doing during the day, or lingering resentment over what somebody did the day before.

After I had established this practice of morning lovingkindness, those nasty thoughts vanished. They genuinely stopped arising. It is so much nicer to start the day with the attitude of lovingkindness than with worry, impatience, and agitation.

IJ: Are there any other times or places in particular that work well for mettā?

SC: I travel a lot, so I find myself doing mettā in the airport when everyone’s waiting. It’s a nice reminder that we’re all in this boat together.

When there’s mettā, we naturally notice the needs of other people. When we’re busy, it’s easy to forget that the woman in line in front of us at the supermarket or the man who serves us coffee – they also have their issues and struggles. There are small and big ways in which we can be rude and inconsiderate, but when we practice lovingkindness the humanity of other people naturally becomes more visible. We see others – and that seeing often naturally includes the wish for others to be happy. This is most apparent for those we relate to as neutral people – people we might see and interact with all the time, but very often don’t really see.

I have an Israeli student in Jerusalem. It doesn’t snow in Jerusalem very often, but when it does everything slows down. This student didn’t get her newspaper delivered that morning because of the snowstorm, but she wanted to know when the paper would come, so she called the company to find out. The person who answered said that she was the first person she’d spoken with that day who wasn’t angry. This meditation student told the woman at the newspaper that she had made a commitment not to add any more hate to the world – there was already more than enough. I think that’s a beautiful way of putting it.

IJ: Was it difficult beginning and maintaining that morning mettā practice you started at the monastery in Thailand? Did it sometimes feel like, “I don’t care about all beings being happy. I don’t want to say all this stuff.”

SC: It was easy because I gave myself the freedom to do it quickly. Some days it was just, “May all beings be happy,” and then darting off to the bathroom. Some days I would continue the phrases through my shower and the rest of the morning. Other days I would just lie in bed for an hour or so contemplating mettā. I didn’t put many constraints on it.

IJ: The course you’ll be teaching at BCBS this February is on mettā. But many know you for your samādhi practice and the books you’ve written about samādhi and jhāna.

SC: Well, aside from the mettā retreat we already talked about, I have also done a number of multi-month retreats at IMS’s Forest Refuge, using mettā – as well as compassion, joy, and equanimity – as the objects to go into jhāna.

When I was training with Pa Auk Sayadaw, the brahmavihāras were among the many meditation objects that we used to develop jhāna. They’re very conducive to concentration, perhaps especially for meditators who have a disposition toward aversive states. The cultivation of lovingkindness, for example, brings with it rapture and happiness. When joy arises, it is natural for the mind to stay close to the meditation object because the experience is so tranquil and pleasant. If the mind is caught in aversion, negativity, ill will, or the habit of being excessively judgmental, practices that dissolve those qualities will bring the mind closer to concentration.

Lovingkindness, compassion, and joy can establish the first three jhānas, and the fourth jhāna is attained through equanimity. When I teach jhāna, however, I usually emphasize the breath as the primary object. This is the approach that I shared in my first book, Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity. I personally enjoy using the breath as a primary meditation object. Meditating on the breath develops a mental sign (nimitta) and clearly demonstrates how the perception of the object becomes refined along with the refinement of the mind.

Mettā functions differently as a concentration subject. Mettā does not progress via the development of the nimitta, and sometimes it is difficult for beginners to distinguish the qualities of mettā from the qualities of the concentrated mind. But mettā has many other benefits that make it an attractive and worthy meditation object. Mettā naturally dispels the hindrances, aversion in particular, long before the deep states of concentration arise. It soothes, calms, invigorates, and strengthens the mind of the meditator. And mettā is naturally accompanied by joy and pleasure. These benefits are available with or without the attainment of jhāna. So, if I see a student struggling to establish concentration and discouraged with their practice, I might encourage mettā. Mettā nurtures the right attitude, supports the gradual deepening of concentration, and if a meditator is so inclined, it can be developed for jhāna.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter very much which object people begin with. To develop mastery in concentration the meditator will become skilled in the absorption attainment, the perception of the object, and the discernment of the mental factors. Any practice that strengthens right concentration (sammā samādhi) is worth developing, and mettā is certainly an excellent meditation object that can bring deep concentration and jhāna.

IJ: The suttas don’t mention the phrases, but instead talk about radiating the brahmavihāras in all directions.

SC: I first learned mettā practice using the structure of the categories of the types of beings (benefactor, dear friend, neutral, etc.), and from there going to a directional radiation of mettā. Sometimes I use phrases to stimulate the arising of mettā; sometimes I develop it systematically using the categories of types of beings; and at other times I’ll simply radiate mettā in all directions.

There are a variety of ways to cultivate lovingkindness. But whether I am using a general or systematic method, for me lovingkindness is always relational – it is an attitude that relates to beings. Even when mettā is simply offered and radiated in all directions, there’s a sense of beings there. It’s like sitting in a lush garden or a grassy field with a symphony of different insect, bird, and animal sounds. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to distinguish one insect sound from another, or one bird sound from another, or the sound of one animal walking by from another. Nevertheless, all of those sounds are expressions of life – of beings. So for me, the concept of beings is an integral part of how I understand lovingkindness practice – it is an attitude toward all living beings, all life.

IJ: There’s some disagreement over what role the brahmavihāras play with respect to insight and liberation.

SC: The experience of nibbāna will not be based on the thought, “May all beings be happy.” Awakening is not going to occur just by resting the mind in an attitude of all-pervading lovingkindness. The liberating experience comes out of seeing that there’s nothing to cling to. From the limitless pervasiveness of mettā, we simply shift the attention to look at the quality of mind that’s generating mettā. You’ll see that the mind that knows mettā is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not self. The body may be comfortable, and the mind may be filled with joy and mettā. The mind might be quite pure, containing nothing unwholesome. Nevertheless, the experience of mettā is impermanent. Clearly seeing impermanence is what leads to the cessation of craving, the ending of attachment, and the depth of release that allows us to realize nibbāna.

Mettā creates fabulously wholesome conditions. But we also must look into the mind and know that there’s nothing there to grasp or cling to. Then we will realize not just the peace of a mind filled with benevolence, but the peace of release – the peace of nibbāna.

We can use mettā as a skillful approach to relationships in life; to deepen samādhi and create wholesome mental conditions; and to liberate the mind from attachment and the causes of suffering.

IJ: So it seems like mettā is good for a lot of different things. And it’s just a matter of cultivating and playing with it to see what it can do and what it can’t.

SC: The most important thing is that we actually do develop mettā. It’s a beautiful and wholesome state. Lovingkindness is an intention. It’s an attitude. It doesn’t necessarily require an intensive retreat to develop. It’s a mistake to think of it as something that we can only cultivate with our eyes closed, meditating.

IJ: Do you want to say anything else about your course at BCBS this February or what the main take away will be for people?

SC: The course is appropriate for all levels – anyone who has done a lot of lovingkindness practice, and anyone who is just curious about different ways of incorporating lovingkindness into their practice. We’ll have some sutta study time, and we’ll have some practice time, which will include some guided meditations. In the mornings we will look at what the Buddha taught, and then practice those teachings during the afternoon.

The sutta study component will examine the contexts in which we find mettā taught in the early discourses. For example, on some occasions the Buddha introduced mettā as a means of meeting abuse or overcoming fear. On other occasions mettā was a vehicle for deepening concentration and liberating the mind.

The intention is not only to develop an intellectual or conceptual understanding about what mettā is and is not, but also to gain a genuine meditative taste of this profound quality and an integrated experience of its value in our lives.

Jhāna Practice and True Happiness

In this article, Shaila Catherine is interviewed by Insight Journal, a publication of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. The discussion explores sutta study, jhana practice, and happiness. This article preceded a study course that Shaila taught in 2014 on how happiness is presented in the early discourses of the Buddha. Insight Journal asked her to talk about how she arrived at this point in her practice, and her plans for the course.

Insight Journal: How did you first come to the Dhamma?

Shaila Catherine: I started meditating when I was still in high school. I attended my first retreat when I was in college. Retreat practice touched me very deeply. I was yearning for a depth of understanding in life. In Buddhism I found practical methods to explore the mind and tools for understanding myself. For the first eight or nine years of my practice I only meditated; I didn’t study. When I started to read the discourses in the early nineties, I was very inspired by the clarity of the goal and the practical instructions on how to reach that goal.

The Buddha gave us a brilliant map of the path, with practical instructions on how to cultivate deep peace in our own lives. The discourses are often simple conversations between the Buddha and a disciple. I find these ancient instructions are usually just as relevant in today’s world. They speak to my own life. Sometimes the suttas point to something that’s beyond what I understand–this is exciting. Reading that gives me clues to the possibility of true liberation. That combination of practical skills and inspiration for awakening kept me riveted to the discourses. To this day I love to read the suttas. I just keep reading and rereading them; they inspire my practice.

IJ: One of the analogies I like to use is that it’s like learning to play an instrument or learning a sport, and you’ve got this master teacher, you’ve got a master class, like Ithzak Perlman explaining to violin players how to be a concert violinist. So you have these little things pointing beyond, but little things that are so practical, pragmatic: “Hold the bow just like this, it will be so much better.”

SC: Yes. I’ve been teaching courses in my sangha and meditation group at home, and also online for many years now. We’re slowly working our way through the suttas. We’ve read the Middle Length Discourses, the Udāna, the Sutta Nipata, Bhikkhu Bodhi’s In the Buddha’s Words, the anthology of the Numerical Discourses–we’re now in our third year with the Samyutta Nikāya. So we’re really going through the texts. It’s an incredible joy for me to read these in community, and to discuss them with friends and students.

I am not a Pāli scholar or an academic. I’m a practitioner who uses the suttas in my practice, with an aim for liberation. So when we discuss them in our groups every month, we look at the text, try to understand what it meant at the time of the Buddha, and get some sense of the historical context. But we’re also very interested in what it could mean for us. What is the liberating teaching here? How can this be applied? What is relevant, and what is irrelevant to us?

I don’t think that the human mind has changed so much in two-and-half thousand years; the teachings are, for the most part, very relevant to how we live, what we struggle with, how we can work with the problems, the obstacles in our lives and in our minds, and how we can clear the path.

IJ: It’s not so much that the human mind has changed, but the language has changed a lot, and most of those metaphors–we don’t have a lot of farmers any more.

SC: We may not all be farmers, but we do work. We don’t have chariots, but we use vehicles for travel. We send emails and text messages rather than messengers. Our nation is not ruled by a king, and our religious leaders generally don’t sleep in public parks. But we can draw out equivalent social and personal situations that help to relate the teachings to our lives.

IJ: I was going through your book. I’m always interested in what people choose as epigrams, quotes at the beginnings of chapters. Not surprisingly, you use quotes from the suttas, but I noticed that in the beginning half of the book , you seem to be very partial to the earliest texts, the Sutta Nipata, the Udāna, the Itivuttaka–the ones that scholars believe to be the very earliest texts. Is there a reason for that?

SC: It was the content that touched me, not the time period. I am perfectly happy with later texts as well as earlier texts–it’s the practical application that interests me the most. The suttas themselves are so rich and they’re so beautiful that it’s very easy to find good quotes.

It was valuable to me to try to ground the instructions and the practices that I was doing for concentration and vipassanā by finding their sources in the ancient texts. It was actually quite interesting, in writing both Wisdom Wide and Deep, my second book, and Focused and Fearless, my first book, to consider the source material–to consider each practice and each instruction and to see where it was derived from in the Buddha’s discourses. Did it come from the discourses, or did it come from the Visuddhimagga, the commentarial discourses, later teachings?

I’m perfectly happy to practice methods based on early discourses or derived from later elaborations and commentaries. I think a great deal of wisdom developed after the Buddha as well. I appreciate learning from the generations of serious practitioners who have practiced what the Buddha taught and contributed their understanding on how to apply the instructions and realize the goals.

IJ: And in the oldest texts you do find a lot about the jhānas and concentration.

SC: Yes, They’re thoroughly integrated into the Buddha’s teaching. The very definition of concentration as “right concentration,” samma samādhi, the Noble Eightfold Path, includes the four jhānas. So it makes a lot of sense to me, now that Buddhism in the West is starting to put down roots and settling a bit, now that there’s some growing maturity and wisdom in the practitioners, to turn again to concentration practices and to try to deepen our understanding of the mind–to really sharpen the tool of the mind–by exploring these practices.

IJ: What do you mean by jhāna and what is its role in practice?

SC: When I first wrote Focused and Fearless, the term jhāna was not very widely used in our insight meditation circles. I think that’s changed quite a bit in the last few years. But unless somebody actually practices it you don’t really know what it means. It can be translated as “meditation,” but it’s used in a very specific context in the Buddhist tradition, which is to refer to four deeply absorbed states of concentration, where the mind is unified, steady, and there’s profound stability of concentration that is unified with a single object.

So jhāna practice is about training the mind. It doesn’t interest me for someone to just slip into a certain mind-state once in a while. It’s about developing meditative skills and the ability to hold an object for profound contemplation. In the jhāna practice you train your mind to stay steadily focused on your meditation subject. Maybe it’s the breath, maybe it’s a color, maybe it’s a body part, maybe it is a being that you’re developing loving kindness towards–whatever it is you’re working with as your meditation subject, you hold that until the mind is absorbed. There’s a continuity of mindfulness to the point that the mind becomes so steady on that object that it’s as though the mind is unified and absorbed with the object. And you can maintain an immersion for very long periods of time–jhāna is a deeply steady state.

The mind learns both how to skillfully hold an object for contemplation, and how to release. To enter into absorption, one has to relax, one has to release. To steadily give attention to your meditation object, you must turn away from all the business of life. Holding attention steady on your meditation object is not clinging to the object; you’re steadying the mind by letting go of every other potential distraction.

Therefore, jhāna practice is a training that steadies the mind by letting go. When you emerge from concentration, and you do vipassanā practice–contemplating the impermanent, unsatisfactory or empty nature of mind and body–the mind is stable, and can perceive things clearly. Say you want to see the impermanence of matter. You can focus on the body, and the mind will penetrate it and see it clearly. If you want to see the subtle workings of perception, you can focus on that and discover the way perception functions. You can start to see things very deeply, because of the qualities of mind that were developed during the jhāna practice.

IJ: I think a lot of people, possibly because we went through this period in the West where the jhānas weren’t really taught that much, and there was even some suspicion that people would develop blissful states that they would get caught in, don’t realize that the Buddha taught this to a lot of people and did not at all portray it in that way. It was something that anyone who was sincere and wanting to learn, could do.

SC: Yes. It’s quite accessible. It requires supportive conditions, but it is something that is very doable for committed lay practitioners. It does not require any particular birthright, robe or adherence to any kind of beliefs. It’s a mental training.

But it is important that concentration practice be undertaken as an integral part of the Noble Eightfold Path–that means it is informed by Right View. That means that in the very way that we develop concentration, the very way that we develop jhāna, we are using it as a basis for liberating insight.

The Buddha gave us a comprehensive teaching that leads to complete awakening. If there are any aspects of the path that we are individually or collectively shying away from, it would be worthwhile to examine them. It’s not to say that we should believe everything that the Buddha said. He lived within a distinct social and historical context, but concentration and jhāna represent such a significant part of the Eightfold Path that they cannot be ignored.

In the earliest discourses, the Buddha encouraged lay people to, “from time to time,” enjoy the bliss of seclusion, that is, to develop the concentration states of jhāna. He recognized that lay people have many worldly duties–they cannot just take their food in the morning, go sit under a tree, and spend every afternoon abiding in jhāna. Even so, he taught lay people this practice.

I think the jhāna practice is definitely accessible for lay people “from time to time.” Strengthening the factor of concentration is important.

IJ: Even more so in this day and age, when there’s so much in our environment that tends to make us distracted, compared with the time of the Buddha.

SC: Yes, the challenges we face now are insidious, because we carry them around in our pockets. Our identities are bound up with our communications. But the first instruction is, “a bhikkhu, having gone to the forest or to the foot of a tree.” In a way, the first step is to be willing to set down all the many things that are on our to-do list and to go to our meditation seat. Then, what do we do when we get to our meditation seat? Do we bring all that stuff along? Or are we able to set it down, whether our meditation seat is a retreat, a day-long, or just an hour or two at home. We start to establish the seclusion by seeing what we carry, what we’re attached to, and learn to let the distractions go.

Of course, we have to see the restlessness of the mind and any hindrances that might arise. We don’t just plunk ourselves down on the meditation cushion and find “Wow! Instant samādhi!” Most people first need to see the unskillful patterns that have been conditioned by how they live.

So the development of concentration includes a skillful encounter with, understanding, and overcoming of the hindrances. We have to face them, work with them, and see how they are conditioning our minds. Then we can make more skillful choices in how we’re going to relate to life.

IJ: One of the things that we try to focus on here at BCBS, perhaps in some contrast to other centers, is the balance between study and practice. Which is not to say other groups don’t have study at all, but we tend to balance more in that direction. How do you hold that balance between study and practice?

SC: I like to see this balance over the long term and trust people’s interests. So if a student is in a phase of their practice where they’re really keen on just meditating, then I would encourage them to give most of their time to meditation, with just a smaller component to the study–understanding that people will swing around at another point and want to spend more time studying.

I’m finding that my own practice is quite balanced in terms of study and practice. I work with what I read through my meditation. I turn to the suttas for instruction, for further inspiration. For example, on a recent retreat I worked primarily with the Ānāpānasati Sutta, a classic meditator’s discourse. I took it step by step, working with that meditation model. On many other retreats, I’ll take just one paragraph that inspires me. It could be a paragraph that I find beautiful or one I find incomprehensible. I just don’t understand it; I’m bewildered by it. So I take it into the meditation to let it touch me in some non-intellectual way.

Each month I have my students at our study group in California memorize a verse. People can pick short verses or they can pick the entire discourse–some people do! Then we recite what we’ve memorized at the beginning of our session each month. I find that by committing something to memory, even if it’s just four or five lines, it’s easier to meditate on it, because to memorize something you have to recite it and turn it over in the mind. Then it pops up sometimes–sometimes at just the right time. It’s the perfect reminder to bring wisdom into action.

IJ: So you have people who have memorized entire suttas?

SC: Entire suttas, yes. There are only a couple of people who have the mental agility and interest to do that on a regular basis, but yes, we do. It’s quite rewarding for them, and it’s very supportive of their meditation practice. The teachings inform the meditative development. In the refinement of the meditation practice, we see how the mind is working. We witness the path that the Buddha articulated manifesting in our lives.

I’m really not interested in memorizing a whole bunch of sounds, or chants, or words. It has to be something that we’re working with in our lives.

IJ: In addition to being interested in the jhānas as a particular subject, you’re also interested in Abhidhamma. BCBS is one of the few places you can actually take a course in Abhidhamma. Different people have different feelings about what Abhidhamma’s place is in the bigger scheme of things. People agree that it came after the suttas themselves. What is it, from your experience, that’s unique to the Abhidhamma, as opposed to the suttas?

SC: The Abhidhamma interest has come very late in my practice, only fairly recently. For many years I practiced in the Western insight meditation scene, and then spent most of the 90s in Asia. When I returned to practice and teach in the West, my inspiration came mostly from the various teachings I picked up from Western teachers, combined with sutta readings.

When the Insight Meditation Society invited Pa Auk Sayadaw to teach at the Forest Refuge in 2006, I attended his course. Some of the practices that he taught me were exercises preserved in the Visuddhimagga and based on Abhidhamma thought. Since I didn’t have a background comprehension of basic Abhidhamma concepts, I first experienced the training from a strictly meditative perspective.

But upon emerging from the retreat it is natural to want to understand “What was that!” I wanted to understand how the system worked, how it developed, what views it relies upon. I wanted to see how it might fit with the way that I see things in my life and how it would inform my life at home. Since he asked me to write the book that ended up becoming Wisdom Wide and Deep, I needed to do a lot more study in order to understand the source material for each of the practices that he had taught during the retreat and that I was sharing in the book.

One of the most pleasant ways that I studied the Abhidhamma was to attend the five day course that BCBS offers. Andy O

Understanding Deep Meditative States: Developing Jhana and Liberating Insight

An interview with Shaila Catherine.

In this interview, Shaila Catherine was interviewed by dedicated meditation practitioner, Hedwig Kren. This interview was originally published in German after Shaila led a series of retreats in Netherlands and Germany. Below is the English version. 

Q: Nowadays people seem to be increasingly distracted compared to the Buddha`s time. How do you feel about this, Shaila? 

Shaila Catherine: Yes, very true. Our contemporary world is filled with many distractions. We don’t need to look very far for a stimulating distraction; most people carry a device in their pockets that can stimulate almost endless distraction from what is actually happening in present moment. Disconnected from the natural world, many people live lost in their own thoughts. But even without cell phones, TVs, and the pace of modern life, the human mind is prone to distraction. Long before the development of the cell phone, the Buddha taught ways to overcome distractions and habitual thought patterns. 

Of course, we have to see the restlessness of the mind and any hindrances that might arise. We don’t just plunk ourselves down on the meditation cushion and find “Wow! Instant samādhi!” Most people first need to see the unskillful patterns that have been conditioned by how they live. 

So the development of concentration includes a skillful encounter with, understanding, and overcoming of the hindrances. We have to face them, work with them, and see how they are conditioning our minds. Then we can make more skillful choices in how we’re going to relate to life. 

Q: So you see the value in developing concentration not only for meditation, but also for daily life. 

Shaila Catherine: There are many worldly applications and benefits for concentration. And whatever concentration we develop in our meditation practice is going to spill over into our lives. It will enrich and inform the ways we make decisions and undertake actions. It will enable us to stay focused and committed on our projects, relationships, and activities. A concentrated mind is not pushed and pulled between desires or aversions; it is free from procrastination and reactivity, it is steady. 

The concentration that we develop in our meditation practice most definitely will improve how we engage with our daily lives, but the reason that the Buddha taught concentration, in fact the aim of the practice, is liberation. The Buddha said that “one who is concentrated understands things as they really are.” If we are not concentrated, how can we see the nature of things clearly? We won’t be able to know the causes and end of suffering if we remain entangled with our habitual distractions.  

Q: That`s the reason why as a Dharma teacher you teach insight meditation and concentration meditation? 

Shaila: I’m really glad you mention that. I don’t want to be limited to teaching concentration and jhana. Concentration is embedded in the path to awakening. That path includes both vipassanā and samādhi. Liberating insight is our aim, not the concentration or jhāna states. Although I specialized in jhāna and value it, and I teach several retreats each year on concentration and jhāna, overall I primarily teach insight and mindfulness meditation. 

Q: You mentioned vipassanā and samādhi. Could you please explain these two words? 

Shaila: Mindfulness based meditation practices develop both the calming qualities that we might associate with tranquil concentrated (samādhi) states, and also the qualities of wisdom, interest, and clear seeing that we might associate with insight (vipassanā). Although we might emphasize either concentration or insight, and we might strive to enhance a mode of knowing our meditation subject that is characterized by investigation or stability, samādhi and vipassanā practices are not as separate as the language might seem to imply. To intensify our concentration we sustain mindfulness, and to directly know a radical perception of impermanence, we need a stable and concentrated mind. So really, I don’t think that we can separate samādhi from vipassanā. But I do think that we can emphasize one or the other at different times in our practice. 

I often advise meditators who have already practiced insight meditation for a long time, have seen their hindrances again and again, and comprehend impermanence to give more time to the deepening of samādhi. The joy, equanimity, and stability that come with concentration practice are a tremendous support for uprooting sensual desire and enhancing our potential to see clearly. 

And I often advise meditators who find concentration quite easy to investigate the nature of body, feelings, mind, and causality. It is especially important to recognize the impermanence of our perceptions. 

The purpose of right concentration is to produce conditions conducive to liberating insight. Right view must inform our meditation practice. And so concentration and insight are always intertwined. 

Q: You also used another word for concentration called “jhāna”. Many people may have never heard the words “jhāna” and “absorption”. Could you please explain? 

Shaila: When I teach a concentration-oriented retreat, we develop samādhi by enhancing the qualities of tranquility, joy, equanimity, while focusing on a suitable meditation subject. As concentration develops we’ll experience the clarity of a mind free from the hindrances. Almost everyone who attends my retreats describes experiencing deeper samādhi than they have previously known. Once samādhi is established, students can choose to enhance the perception of impermanence for an insight-oriented direction of practice, or focus on a fixed meditative perception which enables a sequence of absorption states known as the four jhānas. The jhānas are concentrated states in which the attention is secluded from the variety of sensory inputs, and inclines toward absorption through a consistent and sustained knowing of the chosen meditation subject. Each of the four jhānas are characterized by specific mental qualities, and can develop as a training sequence that results in deep and transformative experiences of joy, equanimity, and calm. 

Q: So it is a deepening of the concentration when one proceeds from the first jhāna to the second jhāna and so on. It this correct? And how does one know the difference between the different stages of jhāna? 

Shaila: It isn’t always clear what someone means by depth in meditation. It is quite possible for a meditator to have stable and secluded experiences of the first jhana; and some people can be very concentrated even with access concentration. The stages of four jhanas do not necessarily imply increasing intensity. The sequence develops by relinquishing the courser mental factors that are present in the preceding state. For example, one can shift from first to second jhana when the stability of the mind is strong enough to enable unification of mind without the courser mental functions of applied and sustained thought. And the progression from the third jhana to the fourth jhana occurs when attention is capable of remaining steadily focused in equanimity, without the support of happiness. Each successive jhana state is characterized by the presence or absence of various feeling tones and mental factors that have come to be called “jhana factors”. 

Q: Not a lot of Dharma teachers make the effort to teach jhāna. Why did you decide to teach jhāna? 

Shaila: I had been practicing mindfulness, insight meditation, and a variety of satipaṭṭhāna practices for about 20 years before I had the intention and opportunity to develop the jhānas. I became interested in the jhānas because I believed that deeper concentration would strengthen my insight. Once I had sustained deep experiences of the four jhānas I understood the value of these powerful states. The non-sensual joy that they produce has the effect of weakening the defilement of sensual desire. The deep equanimity that accompanies jhānas brings balance to ones practice and life. The meditation skills that are developed in the process of abandoning the hindrances and sustaining absorption can be applied toward insight as well as other activities. And the exquisite balance of energy and ease refines right effort. In short, the undertaking of a jhāna oriented practice is a great training, whether or not the meditator takes it far enough to master the jhānas. 

Q: Can anybody learn jhānas? Is it valuable for everybody? 

Shaila: You asked if anyone can develop the jhānas, well, jhānas are available to anyone who has conducive conditions. Jhānas are not reserved for particular social groups—men and women, young and old, monastic and lay, Asian and Western can all develop the conditions of deep and stable concentration. 

But effective jhāna practice requires some conditions. Right concentration is based upon virtue, so keeping the precepts is a basic requirement. Since the precondition for any jhāna attainment is the absence of the hindrances, meditators need skills to overcome the common meditative obstacles. This can’t be done by force of will. 

Success in jhāna practice also depends upon psychological health and mental stability. Jhana practice shouldn’t be undertaken by meditators who struggle with mental illnesses, who are currently working through grief or trauma, or who are going through difficult life transitions. 

Q: How does one prepare the mind for absorption states? 

Shaila: The best preparation for jhāna practice is to maintain impeccable virtue and diligent mindfulness. We need to work wisely with any hindrances that might corrupt the clarity of our attention, and then notice the joy and strength of mind that is available when the hindrances are absent. Jhana practice can begin only when the hindrances are absent. 

Q: What are the biggest obstacles to successful cultivation of jhāna? 

Shaila: The most common obstacles that I see among students involve either establishing right effort, or developing clarity regarding the object that we are being mindful of. Practitioners need to be able to relax without dulling the mind, and to enliven the mind without producing agitation. And since some meditation objects incline toward the perception of impermanence, and other meditation objects incline toward absorption, meditators need to choose the object that aligns with their aim. Contemporary practitioners are often confused regarding the role of the chosen object. On almost every retreat that I teach, some students arrive telling that they are already practicing jhānas, but are not working with meditation objects that are capable of producing jhāna. 

Q: You have mentioned right effort now and before right concentration. Could you please explain what „right“ in this context means? 

Shaila: Right implies that it is informed by right view and that it leads to the liberating aim of the Buddhist path. So when I speak of right effort, I am not suggesting that the effort needs to be especially strong effort; but I am suggesting that effort be applied for the abandoning of the unwholesome, the cultivating of the wholesome, and be directed toward liberation. Similarly, I don’t think that right concentration refers exclusively to jhanas. Right concentration is informed by right view, and is aimed at the goal of liberation. One concentrats the mind to support liberating insight. 

Q: How do you teach jhāna practice exactly? And why? 

Shaila: I like to use mindfulness with breathing as the initial meditation subject. My book, Focused and Fearless, introduces mindfulness with breathing. By working with the breath we can vividly see the transformation of the meditation subject from the physical experience of the body breathing, into a refined mental sign (nimitta) that is subtle enough to enable absorption. In my own practice, I most frequently do mindfulness with breathing. Mindfulness with breathing is a versatile and valuable approach to meditation. It is an object that anyone who is breathing can try. And also, I really enjoy it! 

After a student has mastered the jhānas with the breath as their primary object, I teach students to use other objects such as color kasiṇa, element kasiṇa, Brahma Viharas, anatomical parts, meditation on the corpse, and the immaterial perceptions such as infinite space, infinite consciousness, emptiness etc. for jhāna absorption. Sometimes I’ll introduce those practices to meditators who struggle to stabilize their concentration by working with breath, but generally I start everyone with the breath and strategically shift to other object as appropriate. 

For the last eight or ten years, I’ve structured my jhāna retreats around the sixteen steps of the Ānāpānasati Sutta (Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing). These 16 steps offer a systematic path for both jhāna and insight practices. Although the 16 steps of mindfulness with breathing can certainly be developed without the inclination toward jhāna, and jhāna using the breath can certainly be developed without training in the 16 steps, I like to work with this method. In the morning instructions of jhāna retreats I offer a way of interpreting each of the 16 steps that strongly inclines the mind toward absorption. It is a simple, clear, and logical progression that nurtures the conditions for absorption, produces profoundly concentrated states, highlights the various conditions for concentration as they mature, and integrates jhāna into a progression of development that leads directly to liberation. I developed my interpretation of the ānāpānasati sequence gradually, over many years of practice—it is influenced by some of my teachers, but is not exactly the same as the approaches to jhāna that I learned from any of my teachers.  

Q: Twice you have mentioned “mastering the jhānas”. What does this imply? 

Shaila: Generally, mastery implies that the meditator can attain jhana at will without trouble or difficulty. There are several exercises that we practice to establish mastery of at each level of jhana. Those exercises develop skills in entering the absorption, emerging from it, and remaining absorbed for specific durations. For example, meditators enter the first jhana with the intention of remaining absorbed for 56 minutes. When they emerge, they look to see if it was approximately 56 minutes. If they emerged late, it may indicate that there is some indulgence or attachment to the state. If they fall out early, it may indicate that the faculties (faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom) are not yet mature enough to maintain the absorption. There are also exercises that highlight the quality of mind in each jhana. By practicing with the mastery exercises, the meditator will strengthen the stability of the states, develop the control in entering and exiting, and see how each jhana state functions. I like to guide students to develop mastery of the first jhana before progressing to the second jhana. And similarly to develop mastery of the second jhana before progressing to the third jhana, and so on. 

Q: What is the connection of mindfulness and concentration – as mindfulness precedes concentration in the noble eightfold path? How they work together? And what is their difference? 

Shaila: Right mindfulness, right concentration, and right effort are cultivated together—they are always intertwined. The Visuddhimagga includes an illustration of three friends who visit a park together and see a tree filled with flowers. They want to pick some flowers to make garlands. One of the friends gets down on his hands and knees creating a strong support and then invites his friend to stand on his back to pick the flowers. The third friend stands near, offering his shoulder to prevent him from wobbling. And so together, the three friends are able to collect the flowers. The friend on his hands and knees symbolizes the strength of right effort. The friend who reaches one-pointedly to grasp the flowers is likened to the one-pointed aim of the focused mind. And the friend who stands near is compared to mindfulness, which prevents the mind from wandering, wobbling and loosing track of the object. They are a team that works together to realize their aim. We need all three to develop tranquility and insight. 

Q: Could you explain briefly what the Visuddhimagga is? 

Shaila: The Visuddhimagga is meditation manual that is widely used throughout the Theravādan world.  The English title is “Path of Purification.” It was composed during the fifth century in Sri Lanka by Venerable Buddhaghosa. It presents a detailed approach to Buddhist practice that includes cultivating virtue and concentration, discerning the nature of body, mind, and consciousness, analyzing casual relations, and exploring refined approaches to insight meditation. The training propels the mind through a sequence of sixteen knowledges that culminate in the experience of nibbāna. In short, it is a comprehensive map or training guide for awakening. 

Perhaps it has served as a primary reference for generations of meditators because the early discourses rarely provide such detailed instructions. The four jhanas are mentioned frequently in the suttas, and their purpose and characteristics are defined by the suttas, but The Visuddhimagga offers pragmatic advice about how each meditation subject develops, tips for focusing attention, and step by step instructions for working with each meditation object, including the formless perceptions. It is indeed a comprehensive meditation manual. 

Q: What is the difference between insight and concentration meditation? Do we need both to experience Nibbāna? And how do the work together?  

Shaila: Meditation practices that emphasize concentration tend to encourage a stable, calm, and continuous perception of a chosen object. Meditation practices that emphasize insight tend to encourage the investigation, analysis, or direct observation of the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self characteristics of mind, body, and causes and effects.  

Wisdom certainly develops while nurturing concentration, but when we are absorbed in a jhāna state we are not discerning the changing characteristics of our experience. Tranquility certainly develops when we are observing the changing nature of body and mind or the contemplation of changing causes and effects, but changing perceptions prevent stable and sustained absorption. 

Practitioners often use the term jhāna rather casually to refer to any degree of calm or joy that might arise during meditation. But I distinguish between the arising of the five factors that intensify concentration (also called the jhāna factors) with the four jhāna states of meditative absorption. The presence of the jhāna factors—of initial and sustained attention, joy, pleasure, and one-pointed attention—do not define a jhāna absorption. Hindrances will be absent during both samādhi and vipassanā practices. The jhāna factors will be present during both samādhi and insight practice. A jhāna absorption involves more than the mere absence of hindrances and presence of the 5 intensifying factors. In the jhānas, the mind is secluded from all distractions, thoughts, and sensual impressions, and the attention is deeply absorbed with a mental object. 

Q: The Buddha talks about four stages of awakening. It is a progressive deeping of the experience of Nibbāna: stream-entry, once return, non return, and Arahantship. Is jhāna necessary to experience stream entry? 

Shaila: I don’t think jhāna is necessary to free the mind from the types of attachments and distortions of perception that dominate minds that have not yet known nibbāna. The concentrated mind that emerges from jhāna is energized, clear, balanced, free from obstruction, and strongly inclined toward letting go. But jhāna will weaken the obstacles, wear away clinging, and make the mind quick, flexible, and clear so that it can more effectively contemplate mind and body with insight. Let’s just say jhāna makes vipassanā easier. We all already know that things change, and yet we still cling to impermanent things. We know that experience is unsatisfactory, but we still crave for the things we like and push away what we don’t like. Perhaps we need to see these habits of craving and clinging with a steady, discerning, and concentrated mind before we can genuinely let go. Is jhāna necessary? Probably not, but it sure is helpful!