Analysis of Qualities

There’s a passage where the Buddha says that getting the mind into strong concentration requires both tranquility and insight. We tend to think of insight as something that comes after the concentration, but the Buddha’s making an important point: If you’re going to get the mind to settle down, you have to understand what you’re doing.

At the very least, you have to understand which qualities of the mind are skillful—helpful for the concentration—and which ones are not. That’s the duty of the factor for awakening called “analysis of qualities.” The qualities we’re talking about here are qualities in your mind—events in the mind.

As you try to focus on the breath, there will be other thoughts coming into the mind. Now, some of them are actually useful, such as the thoughts that say, “Is the breath comfortable? Could it be made more comfortable?” You’re not just lulling yourself to sleep. You’re trying to figure things out.

But then, of course, there are the thoughts that would pull you away. So you have to learn how to recognize them. That’s the role of discernment and insight in getting the mind into concentration.

So, as you’re sitting here, which kind of questions are worth asking?

Putting the mind and the breath together, you’re trying to use pleasure as the glue to stick them together. So how do you deal with the breath in a way that’s pleasant? How do you deal with your mind so that it feels willing to settle down, finds pleasure in settling down? After all, the mind is a traveler; it’s a wanderer. That’s what samsara is all about.

We tend to think of samsara as a place, but actually it’s an activity that we do. We create states of becoming in the mind and then we move into them. As they fall apart, we create some more and move into those to keep on going, going, going.

Here, though, we’re trying to settle down and stay, and some of the lessons you learn from creating states of becoming will be useful here. You need to have something in mind that’s your main focus. Then you ask yourself, “What is the world of this focus?” The world is your body as you feel it from within. And then you as the meditator—the part of the mind that’s directing things: That’s the identity you take in that world. So you actually are creating a state of becoming here, but this is one that’s designed, for the time being at least, for you to settle in.

It’s like a house where you’re conscious of how the house is put together. This is helpful because becoming is the big problem in the mind, and the best way to understand it is to create some good becomings, transparent becomings.

So when you think about the world that you’re in, the world here is going to be the breath in the body. Where do you feel the breath in the body? We know that the air comes in and out through the nose and goes into the lungs, but for it to do that requires the movement of energy in different parts of the body. Some of the most obvious parts are in the face, the neck, the chest, the shoulders, the abdomen. There’s no clear line that says, “This part of the body is involved in the breath process and that part of the body is not,” unless you create tension that blocks the breath.

So, one of the things you might want to do to explore this world is to go through the body and ask yourself, “Where do you feel any patterns of tension as you breathe in, as you breathe out? Can you dissolve those patterns of tension away?” Think of them relaxing, because the breath can flow smoothly where there’s no tension.

That’s what you do in analysis of qualities in terms of what’s going on in the body.

Then, what’s going on in the mind? Is your mind ready to settle down? Sometimes, as you start meditating, you really do want to settle down and rest. Other times, the mind would still like to think about things. It’s got some issues from the day, issues from the week, and it tells you, “Here’s a whole meditation period with nothing else you have to do. Now you can think about this. Now you can think about that.” But if you think about this or that, it’s going to waste your time. So you have to make sure the mind is in the right mood to settle down.

This is why we have those other meditation topics—like recollection of death, recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, recollection of your own generosity and virtue—to incline the mind to see the importance of getting trained, settling down, developing some concentration.

That’s one thing you have to watch out for in the mind.

The other thing you have to watch out for is: How do you conceive the breath? What mental pictures do you have? How do you talk to yourself about the breath? When you’re spreading good breath energy around, are you pushing it? Good energy, if you start pushing it, turns into energy that’s not so good, so you have to be careful.

In dealing with the mind, it’s both an issue of what attitudes you’re bringing in from your daily life and of how you picture to yourself the whole process of breathing and being with the breath right here and now. So you want to make adjustments there. This requires a fair amount of thinking and understanding, which is why the Buddha said that good, strong concentration has to depend on some insight as well as tranquility.

Now, there are some people who can get their minds to settle down without too much thought. They’re not very entangled in the world to begin with. They find it easy just to put things down, and the mind naturally rests. For them, though, the problem is going to come on days when they do have issues in daily life. They haven’t had experience in taking them apart, they haven’t had experience in wrestling the mind down, and at that point, they’re lost.

So the ideal meditation is one in which you combine tranquility and insight. The insight here is not so much in terms of what you’ve read about in books. It’s more a matter of just getting to know what’s going on, sorting out what’s happening in your body, sorting out what’s happening in your mind, to see what’s skillful, what’s not skillful, what should be developed, and what should be abandoned. After all, meditation is all about what you’re doing.

Sometimes you hear people say, “We meditate so that we can see things as they are.” Well, “as they are” will often depend on the perceptions you bring to begin with, so how can you trust that your perceptions haven’t colored things? It’s better to have the attitude you’re going to see things as they work, as they function. In other words, you do this, and those are the results you get. You do that, and these are the results you get. That’s something you can really see in meditation, especially when you measure the results in terms of the sense of ease or lack of ease. That’s something you can see right away.

As I’ve said, the best things you know are the things you do. So here, be very clear about the fact that you’re doing concentration, you’re doing the insight, you’re doing the tranquility. Then you want to see what your results are in terms of a sense of ease, a sense of fullness, refreshment. That’s the kind of insight that can get the mind into deeper and deeper concentration. And as the concentration settles in, you begin to see things more clearly.

Subtle levels of stress that were covered up by your other activities: Now, as those activities settle down, these things become more and more clear. There may be some very subtle stress going on even in the concentration. So you figure out, “What am I doing that’s creating that stress?” It’s usually a perception you hold in mind that’s not allowing you to let go of certain things in the body or the mind. So experiment with different perceptions and see which ones are the most calming.

This is in line with the Buddha’s instructions where he says you want to be sensitive to mental fabrication, i.e., feelings and perceptions, and then to calm them. Which perceptions are most calming? One that I find very calming is, instead of thinking of the breath coming in from outside, thinking that there’s breath energy originating in the body, and it’s originating in every cell. As you hold that perception in mind, the breath becomes very easy, and the mind settles down with a broad sense of being solidly here. No one spot in the body is getting too much pressure. So, see if that perception is calming for you. If it is, then you’ve learned a lesson about how things function in the mind. It gets you more and more interested in asking more questions, useful questions, because you really are very clear about what is skillful and what’s not.

When the Buddha talks about the seven factors for awakening, there are times when he pairs them with the five hindrances, and analysis of qualities is paired with its opposite, the hindrance of doubt—the one where you’re not really clear about what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. Analysis of qualities is what overcomes the doubt.

You don’t overcome the doubt by simply saying, “I believe, believe, believe in the Buddha.” You look into your own mind, you look into your own body, and you see what is skillful in giving rise to a sense of well-being inside, what is unskillful, what creates a sense of tension or stress, what relieves that tension or stress. When you see that directly, that cuts through the doubt.

So doubt is not cleared up by belief. Doubt is cleared up by investigation—investigating right here.