Rhythms of the Mind

Ajaan Fuang liked to say that the mind has its own rhythms, and you have to allow your practice to develop following the rhythms of your mind. This means several things. One is that each of us has a different rhythm. Another is that each person’s mind will have different rhythms at different times. Either way, we can’t force things if we don’t sense the rhythm.

This is maybe one of the reasons why he didn’t like to have his students read too much about the different levels of jhana. They were there in Ajaan Lee’s descriptions of steps of breath meditation, but he didn’t discuss them. He didn’t certify that so-and-so had reached this level or that level. There were times when people would ask questions about what would happen later on, and he’d say, “Don’t ask. Focus on what you’re doing right now.”

And that’s the whole point. For the mind to develop, you have to focus on what you’re doing right now, which is to get it quiet, to be with the breath.

The instructions are there in the definition of the establishing of mindfulness: keep focused on the body in and of itself—in this case, the breath—ardent, alert, mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Just do that again and again and again. And focus on two things. One, try to be as sensitive as you can to what you’re doing and the results you’re getting. And two, try to do it efficiently so that you can calm down with less and less effort.

When we get started with the meditation, we’re like young children learning how to walk. They don’t know which muscles are necessary and which ones aren’t. They end up using a lot of muscles they don’t have to, so walking is a lot more tiresome for them than it has to be. But as they get more used to what they’re doing, doing it again and again, they find that they get more efficient. Walking becomes easier.

Those are the two things to keep in mind: be sensitive and try to be efficient. If you see you’re doing something that’s not necessary for keeping your mind still, let it go. It’s an unnecessary burden.

The texts give some ideas about what you let go as you settle down. There’s that one passage in Majjhima 125 where, after you’ve settled down and gotten into the first jhana, you then focus on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—but do not think any thoughts concerning the body. In other words, you let go of your directed thought and evaluation, and you’re just there, using one perception, just breath. You’ve reached the point where the body feels comfortable enough to stay settled down. You can’t think of any way of improving how the breath is flowing through the body. So don’t try to think of those things. Just be there.

Now, you may find as you settle down and just be there, that you’re not quite ready. Okay, go back and see what the problem is. Bring back the thoughts. Bring back the evaluation. If there’s a knot of tension someplace but you try working through it and it doesn’t dissolve, okay, let it go. Don’t be concerned about it. Settle down in other parts of the body. But you keep doing this again and again, and you should get more sensitive to it.

It’s like having a bus route that you drive, following the same route every day, every day. If you’re observant, you’ll see little changes here and little changes there. You’ll notice things you wouldn’t have noticed if you just drove through once. In the same way, as you meditate, the fact that you’re doing this again and again allows you to see things from different angles, from different moods, and different levels of sensitivity.

That’s the important thing we’re trying to develop as we meditate: our sensitivity to what we’re doing, because that’s how discernment comes. You begin to see things that you’re doing that are unnecessary. Well, if they’re unnecessary, then it’s unnecessary stress. So whatever intention you had to do those things, you just let it go.

If you find that you let it go and the concentration falls apart, okay, that’s a sign that it’s too early. Go back. It wasn’t unnecessary yet. It was still a necessary part of keeping the mind in place. You don’t have to focus on pushing the mind in a certain direction or making it fall into line with what you’ve read in the texts.

Another ajaan in Thailand made the comment that it’s like having a mango. Your mango is green and unripe. It’s hard. Someone else tells you that a ripe mango—which is what you want—is yellow and it’s soft. So you get some yellow paint, you squeeze the mango until it’s soft, and then you paint it yellow. Well, you don’t get a ripe mango that way. You get a mess.

You have to let the mango hang in the tree right where it is, and you look after the roots. You make sure that the tree is well watered and that insects don’t burrow into the mango. In other words, you protect your concentration, but you’re not necessarily pushing it in any particular direction. You’re just seeing what kind of rhythm it has for today as you try to keep it still.

This requires patience. Patience is a virtue that we’re pretty weak in. And again, the fact that you’re willing to do this again and again opens the opportunity to see subtleties you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. As the territory becomes more familiar, you pick up things that you didn’t pick up the first time. So let the mind grow following its own rhythms. Your duty is simply to tend to it.

Here again, an agricultural metaphor: You’re growing rice plants. You know the rice won’t be ripe until the plants reach a certain height. Well, if you try to pull the plants up so that they’re that height, you uproot them. They die. So here again, you focus on the roots. You do your duty, and the plant will do its duty.

And as the Buddha points out, the stages that goes through for different people will be a little bit different. There are some passages that seem to indicate that between the first jhana and the second jhana there’s an intermediate stage. That gives you five jhanas. That’s how some people experience it. Between totally dropping directed thought and evaluation, there’s a period where you’ve dropped the directed thought. You don’t have to keep reminding yourself to stay but you’re still evaluating things. Notice that as a step ahead. And whether you have four jhanas or fourteen jhanas before the mind finally settles down, that’s not the issue. The issue is that you’re paying attention and you’re sensitive to what you’re doing.

There are other markers we hear about, as when, with the fourth jhana, the breath stops. Here again, you don’t stop the breath. It’s going to stop on its own as you’ve been connecting the different breath energies in the body. The sense of fullness grows. Then it fades away. You’re left with a sense of ease. The ease gets so easeful that everything gets more and more gentle, and there comes a point where you realize, “Oh, I wasn’t breathing.” Your first reaction can be, “I’ve got to breathe.” But remind yourself: The body will breathe if it has to. If you need oxygen, the body will breathe. We’re not stifling it. So we take that as a marker, but we don’t take it as instructions. It’s important that you make that distinction.

The four jhanas, as they’re defined in right concentration, are markers. The instructions are there in the description of right mindfulness: Keep track of the breath in and of itself—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Allow bodily fabrication to grow calm. Allow mental fabrication to grow calm.

It’s a matter of allowing, and the allowing comes if you simply keep track of the breath in and of itself, and are sensitive to what you’re doing, trying to do it as efficiently as you can without preconceived notions about how many steps there are going to be.

That’s how you get the most progress in the concentration. And that’s how you get the most opportunities for discernment to come out of the concentration, as you’re focusing directly on your experience of your body and your mind, sensitive in what you’re noticing and efficient in what you’re doing. That’s what this is all about.