Factors for Awakening

The forest tradition recognizes two kinds of meditators, what Ajaan Fuang would call those who think too much and those who don’t think enough. Other ajaans call them those in whom discernment has to foster concentration and those in whom concentration fosters discernment.

The first type are the people who tend to think a lot about things, want to understand things. Their minds don’t quiet down easily because they’re constantly thinking, analyzing.

The second type are those who are happy to settle down, find it easy to settle down, but then find it hard to analyze things. Once the mind has settled down, they just want to stay there.

Of these two types, people of the first type are described in a set of dhammas in the Canon, the seven factors for awakening. The factors start with mindfulness and end up with concentration. In the meantime, they use discernment to get you from mindfulness practice to concentration practice.

They show that fact in two ways.

The first way is shown in the fact that right after the first factor, mindfulness, comes analysis of qualities, which is the discernment factor. You analyze the qualities present in the mind as skillful or unskillful, gross or refined. The remaining factors develop from that act of discernment.

The second way in which the role of discernment is shown is in the fact that, with all the factors for awakening, you find the basis for that factor and then you develop it with appropriate attention.

Now, appropriate attention is another way of saying you apply the framework of the four noble truths, trying to figure out what has to be developed, what has to be abandoned. And because most of us in the West tend to fall into the type of discernment fostering concentration, or those who think too much, it’s good to go through these seven factors and see how they actually play out in the practice.

The first factor is mindfulness. The foundation for mindfulness is purified virtue and views made straight. You establish mindfulness by focusing on staying with, say, the breath, the body in and of itself, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. You’re going to need right views in order to remind yourself of why you should be putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world right now. As the Buddha points out, what makes the mind suffer is not so much events out there in the world, it’s how the mind processes them. It’s in the functioning of the mind where the real problem lies. So this is where your full attention should be.

Mindfulness is founded on good virtue. As you take the precepts and make up your mind to follow them and find that you can begin to follow them, you make it easier to look at unskillful thoughts in the mind and not get blown away by them. You note that they’re there, but you don’t take it as a sign that you’re a bad person. That would be inappropriate attention. Appropriate attention says, “Okay, there’s something unskillful in the mind. I don’t want to go into it. I don’t want to take it up. What can I do to let it go?” Well, you develop skillful qualities. That’s how you develop mindfulness.

Remember, mindfulness is not just a broad acceptance of whatever comes up. Mindfulness means keeping something in mind. Your ability to keep things in mind is a lot easier, a lot stronger, if you haven’t been behaving in unskillful ways. There are not that many walls put up in the mind around your past behavior. If there have been some things you’ve been doing that are unskillful, your right view comes in and reminds you not to dwell on what you’ve done. You recognize that it was a mistake, you resolve not to repeat it, and then realize that’s the best a human being can do. Follow through with that resolve. That’s all you have to do with regard to your past mistakes. Learn from them and then actually move on.

The basis for the next quality, analysis of qualities, is the fact that there are going to be skillful and unskillful things coming up in the mind. You want to apply appropriate attention to them. If something is unskillful, it’s something to be dropped. You don’t say, “Well, this is one of my favorite defilements.” Or, “This is something I habitually thin about, or it’s my habitual way of thinking or feeling.” You learn to look at it more objectively and then you don’t undermine your attempts to develop skillful qualities. You realize that if this is a new habit for you, new habits take time.

Once you’re able to make the distinction between skillful and unskillful qualities, building on that is the next factor for awakening, which is persistence. This is where you put energy into doing the actual developing of what’s skillful and the abandoning of what’s not.

Now, here you have to find your resources inside. The Buddha says there is the potential for effort, the potential for energy. Where is that potential in you right now? Sometimes we ignore it; sometimes we deny it. Denying it would not be appropriate attention. You want to find it and learn how to motivate yourself. Remember, a large part of right effort is finding ways of motivating yourself to stick with something that may not be immediately easy.

So if you’re the type who likes to be thinking a lot and your mind keeps wandering off, well, just keep coming back, coming back, coming back. Learn how not to get discouraged. Learn how not to give in to the voices that say, “This is hopeless.” Nothing is hopeless. Some things will take time, and you have to be prepared for the fact that they’ll take time. But you want to find resources for energy inside, ways of thinking that lift your spirits rather than depressing them.

When things go well, then the next factor, the Buddha says, is rapture: a sense of refreshment that goes through the body. One of the skillful qualities you’re trying to develop right now is concentration, getting the mind to settle down and be at home in the body right now wherever there’s a sense of energy and ease. Where are you going to find that? Breathe in ways that give rise to more energy. Long in and out short may help. Heavy breathing for a while may help. See what kind of energy movement in the body, as you breathe in, breathe out, feels gratifying.

If you find that your energy level drops as you’re sitting here, that’s a bad sign. You’ll notice that these first three of the factors that follow on mindfulness are energizing factors: analysis of qualities, persistence, rapture/refreshment. This follows the pattern in the different steps of breath meditation, as in the second and third tetrads in the Buddha’s sixteen steps. They start out by energizing your body and mind. You breathe in a way that gives rise to rapture. Then you breathe in a way that gives rise to pleasure, that calms things down. But the rapture comes first. Or in the tetrad about the mind: You breathe in ways that gladden the mind. Give it energy. Make it happy to be here. Then you calm things down but getting the mind steadier and more centered.

This is an important part of getting the mind into concentration if you’re the type of person who thinks a lot: Find some joy in settling down. Get energy out of settling down, realizing that you’ve been using your brain a lot, so it’s frazzled and tired. If you’re just trying to make it calm, you go to sleep. So give it some energy first.

Then you can think of the factors for awakening that calm things down, which are calm, concentration, equanimity. Whatever parts of the body feel calmer than others, focus there after you’ve been energized. When a sense of rapture seems to have done its job to give you energy and now is beginning to feel tiresome, you can tune in to a level of energy that’s more calm.

It’s like tuning the radio in. You’ve been listening to hard rock. Now you want something calmer, more soothing. Those radio waves are already there. It’s just a matter of tuning in to them. So where in the mind right now, where in the body right now, is a sense of calm? Focus there. Then get your mind to gather all around it. That’s the one object of all your thinking, all of your attention, all of your intentions.

The definition of concentration in Pali is cittass’ekaggatā, singleness of mind. Ekagga is sometimes translated as “one-pointed,” but agga doesn’t mean point. It either means the top of something or else a gathering place. “Gathering place” seems to be the meaning that’s applied right here, because the Buddha talks about entering and dwelling in a state of concentration. That concentration is your dwelling place. So you want the mind to be dwelling in one place. Everything—all your thoughts and acts of evaluation—is gathered around that one place. Then you can calm things down to a sense of equanimity.

This is the equanimity that comes from feeding the mind well with a sense of well-being. This is the kind of equanimity you want as a basis for your insights. You’ve done some thinking, you’ve energized the mind, you’ve energized the body. Now you’re giving it a chance to rest.

When it’s rested, you don’t just stop with rest. Use that stillness to figure things out even more deeply. You look at the state of concentration you have and you can start analyzing that in terms of appropriate attention.

Where are the five aggregates right now? They’re right here in your concentration. Breath is the body. Feelings of the pleasure are feelings. Perceptions, the images you hold in mind, are perceptions. The way you talk to yourself, the intention to stay here, is fabrication. And then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. So you’ve got all five aggregates where you need them: where you can look at them clearly in a state of well-being. When you have a state of well-being like this, then subtler levels of tension or stress you may have missed before become more apparent. Those are the ones you want to look for.

So once you’ve got the mind into concentration, use the concentration to foster further discernment. As the Buddha says, “Virtue and discernment”—and virtue here includes concentration—“are like two hands that wash each other. The left hand washes the right hand; the right hand washes the left hand.” The emphasis of the practice will swing in one direction and then in another, back and forth, but ideally they work together.

So this is how you use appropriate attention to help get the mind to settle down, use your discernment to get the mind to settle down. If you’re the type of person who thinks too much, you can use your thinking to energize the body, energize the mind, so that it’s ready to settle down. It’s in this way that you use your discernment and your concentration together to provide a basis for even better things in the practice.