Seclusion Through Mindfulness

The description of the first jhāna says that it begins after you’ve been secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskilled mental qualities. The question is: What does the secluding, how do you get secluded? That’s the work of right mindfulness.

We’re sometimes told that mindfulness is a broad, accepting state of mind that doesn’t judge anything at all, as opposed to a narrow, restricted range for concentration. But the way mindfulness and concentration are described it in the Canon, it’s just the other way around: Concentration is a full-body awareness. With mindfulness, you’re very focused. You establish a territory and you don’t go outside that territory.

Think of the image of the quail: It’s safe as long as it doesn’t go outside its field where it can hide behind stones turned up by the plow. Or of the monkeys who stay away from the areas where human beings can go. In both cases, the image is symbolic of how you don’t go out into the area of desires for sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. You stay focused on the body in and of itself—i.e., the breath right now—or feelings, mind states, mental qualities, all in and of themselves right here, right now.

Another image the Buddha gives is of your hair or your turban being on fire. He says you put forth extra mindfulness to get that fire out. So mindfulness is not accepting. You’re not accepting the fact that there are beautiful flames coming out of your head. You’re focused on one thing, which is putting out the fire.

In the course of that, you’re going to be running into the hindrances. This is one of the jobs of right mindfulness: to get past the hindrances, noticing when they come. To notice when they come, you have to stand outside of them, be separate from them. Then you notice when they go away.

You also notice, when they come, why they come. Which means you’re trying to figure out how you can keep them from coming back again. That’s the job of right mindfulness.

Now, you do that as you’re trying to stay focused on the breath. The way the four frames of reference are listed, sometimes it sounds as if you can either be focused on the body or feelings or the mind or mental qualities, as separate exercises. But the only time the Buddha talks about keeping watch over feelings, mind states, or mental qualities is in the context of breath meditation. In other words, you try to get the mind centered here on the breath, and then you observe the mind as you’re trying to get it centered here. You’re observing feelings, you’re observing mental qualities in relation to the act of focusing on the breath. The breath gives you a focal point.

Or in Ajaan Thate’s image, you’ve got a movie projector. You could project the movie out into the night, but you’re not going to see anything. You need a screen to reflect the light of the projector, and here the breath is your screen. There you can see the mind reflected.

So, as you’re staying focused right here, doing the work of clearing away the hindrances, trying to develop the factors for awakening, you’re secluding your mind.

When the Buddha talks about seclusion, it’s not just a matter of physical seclusion. There’s a sutta where a monk spends all his time alone. He eats alone, he lives alone, sleeps alone, meditates alone. And even though the Buddha praised not getting entangled with other people, he calls the monk in and says, “This is not what I meant by seclusion.” By seclusion he meant abandoning the past, relinquishing the future, and subduing passion and desire for whatever arises in the present.

In other words, you do your best to put aside thoughts of the past, remembering that the past is gone now. Whatever good things you had in the past, whatever other things you remember from the past, you’re not going to go there to dwell. Put them aside. You do remember lessons you learned from the past—that’s part of mindfulness—but everything else gets abandoned.

As for the future, whatever claims you may have about what you would like to do in the future in the world, you’re willing to relinquish them, willing to put them aside. You’re not pinning your hopes there. Say, “I’ve got other work that needs to be done here, focusing on the mind right here, right now.”

Then you get into the present. And whatever state that comes up in the present moment, you resist the tendency to identify with it, in the sense of going with the thought world, getting into the thought world, or just being your awareness here in the present moment. We’re not here to be the awareness, or to be the knowing—that’s a state of identification.

You keep track of these things, which again means a certain amount of separation. After all, what is “the knowing” in the present moment? It’s the aggregate of consciousness. It’s one of the khandhas. It’s a useful tool in the path, but ideally you don’t want to be the knowing—you want to keep track of the knowing.

This is how you get secluded: putting aside thoughts of the past, not laying claim to anything in the future, and learning to step back a little bit from the present moment.

All this is the work of mindfulness. Its purpose is to separate you out from the things that you’re normally entangled with in your mind—past, present, and future—so that you can be ready to do the concentration.

Now, it may sound like you’re starving yourself, which is why the Buddha emphasizes the fact that when you really master the present moment, there will be a sense of ease, pleasure, and rapture that comes from being secluded. You want to develop a taste for that. This is called delight in seclusion. It’s one of the six objects of delight that the Buddha recommends. So, you have to develop the attitude that this is a good place to be. And, of course, this attitude is strengthened as you get deeper into the concentration, and the sense of rapture and ease gets stronger. But the work of getting there—the work of secluding—is going to succeed only when you have that sense of delight in the prospect of settling down.

In Ajaan Lee’s books, especially the two that are most heavily influenced by Ajaan Mun—The Craft of the Heart and Frames of Reference—when he talks about the topics of concentration, the breath is saved for last. First he has you contemplate the body. He has you contemplate the elements. He has you contemplate inconstancy. These are ways of giving rise to a sense of saṁvega with regard to anything that you might want to get entangled with: past, present, future. This requires some active thinking, which is why Ajaan Maha Boowa, after training with Ajaan Mun, wrote his book on how discernment fosters concentration.

You see where the mind is entangled, and you don’t just tell it to go away or blot it out. You give yourself reasons for not wanting to go there. You think about the parts of the body and realize how much of your life is spent being a slave to this body which is made out of—what? Liver, stomach, intestines, contents of the intestines, lungs, all these things you wouldn’t want to look at if you could avoid it. Yet these are the things you’re a slave to. This reflection is meant to give rise to a sense of dispassion and saṁvega.

Or the fact that the body is made out of the elements: When the Buddha talks about that, he has you reflect on how many dangers you’re exposed to by the fact that you’ve got this physical body which is open to being a target to physical objects like knives and stones. It gives you ears that you can hear what people say about you, good or bad. Do you really want to lay claim to these elements? Do you really want to lay claim to this body and its issues?

When you contemplate these things, then when you finally do come into the present moment, it’s with a sense of dispassion, a sense of maturity. You’re not just here to rest and relax. You’re looking for a better form of happiness.

Of course, when you get into the present moment, you have to be very careful about whatever states coming up in the present moment that you might identify with. You learn to keep a skeptical eye even here.

This is what it means to be secluded. But, as the Buddha says, there is a sense of pleasure and rapture that come from this seclusion. You want to learn how to develop a taste for that. When you do, then you’re ready to settle down in the present moment and do the work that needs to be done here: resting when you need rest; allowing yourself to enjoy the sense of well-being when you’re feeling frazzled and tired; but then ready for work—realizing that when you leave here, if you haven’t gotten rid of your defilements, you’re going to go back to those same things that you just contemplated just now as being not worthy of the devotion you’ve given to them so far.

So seclusion involves both concentration and discernment. And this is what mindfulness does.

In the lists of qualities that lead to concentration—say, in the noble eightfold path—discernment does come first, and mindfulness comes before concentration, but you need some concentration to get the mind willing to do the practices that mindfulness requires. So, they help one another along.

So learn to delight in this aspect of mindfulness. It’s not open and accepting. Delight in the work that needs to be done, because you realize that you’re saving yourself from a lot of grief when you do. The people in the Buddha’s time who, on hearing the Dhamma, really appreciated it, had a sense that it cleared things up, helped them escape from the things that were tying them down. Of course, what was tying them down? Their own attitudes.

So to seclude yourself from the things that tie you down: That’s the work of mindfulness—getting you ready for the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being, freed from a lot of the things that used to weigh it down, even though it’s temporary, and will require that you do more work with discernment.

Learn to enjoy this aspect of mindfulness—that it lifts a lot of these burdens from you. It takes work, but it’s liberating work. It’s work for your own true well-being. Take delight in that, and you’ll have the energy to see it through.