This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Insight into the Three Characteristics (2 of 5): Samadhi - Mei Elliott. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Mei Elliott at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Alright, let’s get started then. Hello, my name is Mei Elliot, and this week we’re focusing on the theme of insight. One of the conditions for insight is Samadhi1, it’s the Pali2 also known as concentration. So today during the meditation, we’ll do a samatha practice, a practice that helps calm and steady the mind. And the intention of doing it is that it supports the cultivation of Samadhi; it supports the mind to collect and gather. So this will be a practice that’s probably familiar to a lot of you, because we’ll just pay attention to the breath, just a really simple breath meditation.
And today we’ll do this by employing two of the Jhanic factors, Vitakka3 and Vicāra4. Sometimes these are translated as “aim and sustain” or “place and rub.” So Vitakka is referring to placing the attention, connecting the attention with the object. So it’s kind of that moment of making contact with the breath, becoming mindful of the felt sense of breathing. So that’s Vitakka. And then Vicāra is sustaining that contact, you know, maintaining the contact, almost like rubbing the breath with our attention.
So when we do this with the breath, it’s like we’re attending to the moment the breath starts and then really being with it for the full inhale and full exhale. I remember one retreat where I was really struggling to stay with the breath. It was like I would touch the attention on the breath and then just immediately slide off into thought. And during that retreat, I heard this teaching on Vitakka and Vicāra, and what it illuminated for me was that I was just making contact with the breath. I was just practicing Vitakka, but I wasn’t making any effort to sustain that contact, to maintain the contact with the breath. So it was almost like stepping on a banana peel, you know, just sliding right off the breath as soon as I touched it.
So hopefully, as we do this practice this morning, it will invite the mind just to bring some continuity to your experience of breathing, to help you stay in contact. One of the commentarial teachings talks about Vitakka and Vicāra as being a little bit like a bird in flight. You know, a bird needs to exert a bit of effort to flap its wings before it coasts in the air. So that flap is like making contact, that’s like the Vitakka. We make a little effort to be here, to make contact with the breath, and then we coast, right? And then the bird’s coasting in the air, that’s the Vicāra. We coast on the breath. So today we’ll do some flapping and coasting as we stay with the breath, making that initial effort and then gliding for the length of the inhale and exhale.
So that’ll be our primary practice for the meditation. But before we go there, we’ll start by cultivating a little contentment. And this is because contentment is a condition for Samadhi. Contentment can help the mind naturally settle. So go ahead and find your meditation posture, a posture that helps you feel both upright—there’s some energy in the body—also allows you to be relaxed without falling asleep.
Softening the body, relaxing the face and the shoulders, releasing the belly. And begin by connecting with the attitude now. Can you touch into even a slight bit of contentment as we get started? Maybe connecting with a sense of “this moment is enough as it is.” No matter how pleasant or unpleasant this moment is, can it be enough? Can it be okay?
Even if there’s a challenging mood present, or emotion, any discomfort in the mind or body, can there be an okayness with it? And even if there’s a sense of discontent, can you be content with discontentment? So this contentment can be so subtle, just a little okayness with things as they are.
When the mind is content, it’s less likely to chase the future. It’s less likely to try to change the past. So when the mind’s content, it can naturally settle. So touching into any sense that life is okay, and allowing whatever you can touch into here, allowing it to settle and soothe the system, to soothe the mind and body.
And from this place of contentment, no matter how slight, we’ll connect with our anchor, with our home base, whether that’s the breath or the body, whatever works for you today. I’ll be offering instruction on the breath, but if you use a different anchor, a different home base, you can translate the instruction for yourself. So landing now, sensing the breath, sensing your home base.
And you might begin by noticing the moment each breath starts, almost like catching the moment the sun comes over the horizon at dawn. Seeing if you can notice that moment, that first moment the breath begins.
When you notice this moment, this moment the breath begins, you’re making contact with the breath. This is Vitakka, aiming, connecting the attention. And at any point, if you lose track, if you become lost in thought, this is fine. Just begin again, connecting with that moment of breath arising, the beginning of the inhale.
Now we’ll add the step of Vicāra, of sustaining contact. So connecting with that first arising of the inhale and then coasting for the length of the breath, sensing, feeling the sensations of breathing with that full inhale and exhale.
Like a bird flapping its wings and coasting, making that little bit of effort to connect at the beginning of each inhale, and then coasting. Flap and coast.
Very little effort to sustain contact, just receiving sensations. For a bird to glide, they just need to allow the air to keep them aloft, just keeping their wings out. Just keep your wings out, keep your lungs receiving air, receiving sensation, and connecting again at the beginning of the inhale.
If you find that you’re frequently getting lost during the breath cycle, you might try adding another moment of contact, another moment of Vitakka. In addition to noticing the moment an inhale begins, you might see if you can notice the moment the exhale begins. So connecting at the beginning of the breath, coasting for the inhale, and connecting at the beginning of the exhale, and coasting for the exhale. Adding this extra contact point increases the engagement, sometimes just enough to be here, just enough to support greater continuity.
Sensing and feeling the breath, knowing you’re breathing as you breathe. Flap and coast, gliding on the breath.
Welcome back, everyone. For those just arriving, my name is Mei Elliot, and today we will be talking about Samadhi, or concentration, as a condition for insight. And I’d like to start by acknowledging that there are many misconceptions about Samadhi. When I first started meditating, I thought that the way to get concentrated was to turn the mind into a narrow laser beam, kind of straining and focusing and bearing down to try to bring the mind into a unified point. And many people have these sorts of associations. Even if it’s on a much more subtle level, concentration doesn’t usually elicit a sense of easy, relaxed collecting. But turning the mind into a laser beam, this is not exactly what the Buddha had in mind when he talked about Samadhi.
So even though concentration is the most common translation for the word Samadhi, it really doesn’t do justice to the full meaning and nuance of the word. Fortunately for us, the Buddha offered a variety of descriptors for Samadhi that can help us have a more robust picture of what he was speaking about. So here’s a quote from the Majjhima Nikāya5: “My concentrated mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, and steady.”
So the Buddha is giving us a description of a concentrated mind. This is a mind that’s steady, that’s stable. We could say it’s obedient. You know, it’s responsive. If we tell it to sit, it sits. If we tell it to stay, it stays. So this is a mind that’s very responsive and it’s stable. So today I’ll be focusing specifically on the steadiness that Samadhi provides, this stability that it provides.
And the relevance of talking about Samadhi today is that this is what a lot of you are cultivating in your meditation practice already. You may not feel like you’re getting concentrated, but the practice you’re doing is training the mind to stabilize. So today, one of my intentions is to show you the link between what you’re already doing and how this unfolds into insight, how what you’re already doing can bear the fruit of insight in your practice.
And what I imagine is that most of you, or many of you, are already doing a breath-based practice, a breath-based meditation where your breath is your anchor, your home base. So during the meditation, maybe you would direct attention to the breath, and when the mind gets lost, you just reconnect with the breath. This is really standard instruction. It’s a common and skillful practice, and it’s also a samatha practice, a practice that cultivates Samadhi. And I should mention here that there are other ways to cultivate Samadhi too, besides focusing on the breath. You know, some use the body as a whole, or the soundscape. Metta phrases can be used to cultivate Samadhi. So there are many ways. I’m just focusing on the breath because this is one very common way.
So I wanted to talk about Samadhi because this is something you’re already cultivating, and also to clarify some of these misconceptions that frequently go along with concentration practice. And one of those misconceptions is that many people think that Samadhi is the goal of practice. That, you know, kind of like, “I’m sitting meditation, and I will have had a successful meditation if I get concentrated. If I don’t get concentrated, it’s not successful, and that’s the goal.” And a lot of people associate that with the thinking mind. You know, “If I can get rid of thoughts, then I have achieved the goal of meditation.” But that’s actually not how it goes. Thinking is actually an important function of the mind. I couldn’t be offering you these teachings without thinking. We wouldn’t have the Four Noble Truths if we couldn’t articulate them. So the purpose is not to get rid of thoughts, but to have a wise relationship with them, and sometimes that means being able to put them down for a little while.
So what I want to clarify here is that concentration is not an end in and of itself. We’re not cultivating concentration just to get concentrated, but rather we’re developing concentration so that we can see clearly, so that we can see the three characteristics. And when we see the three characteristics—impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self—when we see these, insight is born. And insight is how wisdom develops. In other words, it’s wisdom that liberates us. It’s wisdom that frees us from suffering, and it’s wisdom that does the waking up. So we’re not just getting concentrated to have a pleasant meditation state, though that’s very nice and nourishing. We’re not getting concentrated to get rid of thinking, but rather the far-reaching potential of the practice is that we can become completely free of suffering, we can become free of discontent.
So this uprooting of greed, hatred, and delusion is really powerful. Like, think of what a different world this would be if everyone purified their heart and mind in this way. That would be a really beautiful thing. If everyone took the time to free themselves of greed and hatred, this is a powerful practice to transform our own heart and mind, and a practice that benefits those around us. So this is where our journey is taking us.
So knowing that Samadhi is supportive to our development on the path, how does that work? You know, how does Samadhi function to support insight? Why is it a supportive condition for insight? So I’ll use the analogy of a snow globe to explain how this works. Let’s say we have a snow globe. If we shake it, there’s going to be a little blizzard in there, and you can’t see anything but falling snow. But if you let that snow globe stabilize, the snow begins to settle, and over time, the liquid in the snow globe becomes crystal clear.
When we’re lost in our mental movies, it’s a little bit like we’re always shaking the snow globe. And I’m sure you know what I mean when I mention mental movies, right? This is when we’re lost in our inner dramas. Maybe we’re playing an adventure film, or a romance, or a suspense thriller. You know, the inner movies that we play, these inner dramas that are so compelling for us that we get so lost in. So when we’re lost in these narratives, in these stories of the thinking mind, it’s a little bit like we’re always lost in a blizzard. And what’s pretty amazing is that the vast majority of humans spend an entire lifetime never allowing the blizzard to settle. You know, they’ve never stopped shaking the snow globe. And when that blizzard is flurrying, we can’t see clearly.
So when we do this practice of settling the mind, of being with the breath, it’s like we put our little snow globe on a cushion or a chair and we let it stabilize. It actually has the opportunity to settle. And every time we come back to the present in our meditation, it’s a little bit like one snowflake settles in the snow globe. And eventually, after we return to the present enough times, one by one, all of the snowflakes land. The mind settles. And it’s a little bit like all of those snowflakes in the snow globe finally rest on the bottom. The blizzard has settled, and we can see clearly.
I learned a term recently for that particular type of silence in a landscape after a snowstorm. The term is “snow quiet.” And you might sense that feeling of what it’s like to step outside after a snowstorm, you know, stepping out into maybe a freshly fallen field of snow. There’s a certain magnitude of silence, kind of like the whole world is hushed. I like to think it is a soft paw of snow. So this stillness, this quiet, settled quality of this sort of snow-blanketed landscape, this can be a flavor of Samadhi.
By practicing mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of body, letting go of your mental movies, you cultivate enough stability for the blizzard to settle. You cultivate enough Samadhi for the blizzard to rest. And when all the snowflakes settle, what’s hiding within the snow globe is revealed. So some snow globes, they might have a quaint village on the inside, or maybe there’s like a cheesy Christmas tree or something. But your snow globe is a miraculous snow globe because as your blizzard settles, three wise sages are revealed. One is the sage of impermanence. One is the sage of unsatisfactoriness or suffering. And one is not-self. If the blizzard continued, you would never see them. But because of your stability, because of your Samadhi, you could see them clearly enough. You know, you could see clearly enough that the three characteristics could come into view.
The Buddha said, “When my concentration is limited, then my vision is limited.” In other words, when I’m caught in a blizzard, when I shake the snow globe, I can’t see clearly. When I’m lost in thought all the time, I can’t see clearly. My vision is limited. And then the Buddha went on to say, “The purpose and benefit of concentration is to see things as they really are.” He’s saying this is what concentration is all about. It’s to see things the way they really are. And what’s the way things really are? Things are impermanent, unable to provide lasting satisfaction, and without a fixed, abiding self. Or as one teacher phrased the three marks, the three characteristics: nothing is permanent, nothing is perfect, and nothing is personal. So this is what we’re seeing clearly.
And so now that you know the purpose and benefit of concentration, it could be really tempting to strain and strive to make it happen. But as you already know, that doesn’t work. Wholesome Samadhi does not come about through straining and striving. So rather than thinking of Samadhi as something that you huff and puff to get or make happen, instead you might think of it as a visitor that arrives on its own time when we’ve put the appropriate conditions in place. And there are many conditions for concentration, as I already mentioned, but one of these, one condition for concentration, is contentment. So this is why we started our meditation practice to see if we could connect with a little contentment.
And as I share about this, remember that we’re cultivating the Dharma to grow in our heart. And when we do that, we can’t demand that it grows faster, right? We can’t force growth. And so in the same way that we can’t force insight, we can’t force Samadhi either. But we can provide these supportive conditions. So contentment, it’s how I’m translating the word Sukha6. Sukha is often translated as happiness. And I mention contentment as a condition for Samadhi because so often we sit down to meditate and we think we need to get concentrated in order to be happy, in order to be content. But here’s what’s radical: it’s also the other way around. It’s contentment that conditions concentration.
So contentment is a condition for concentration, and this makes so much sense because the mind that’s happy, the mind that’s content, it’s not worried about the future. It’s not spiraling and planning because it’s so anxious. It’s not ruminating about the past and regretting and filled with shame and guilt. You know, it’s not seeking sense pleasures. A mind that’s content, it can naturally collect. It can naturally settle. You know, it doesn’t have any reason to be flying around like a pinball. It’s content.
So what’s the relevance for you? What’s the relevance of knowing that contentment is a condition for concentration? So let’s say you’re interested in cultivating Samadhi. What would it be like to sit down to meditate and instead of trying to get concentrated, to start by cultivating contentment? To see if you can connect with a sense of contentment with whatever is happening for you, even if there’s a difficult mood or emotion or a painful sensation in the body. Can there be just like a thread of contentment there, a simple okayness with things as they are? And like I said in the meditation, even if there’s discontent, can you be content with discontentment?
So this is one condition for Samadhi: contentment. And then our Samadhi becomes a condition for insight. So tomorrow, we’ll begin our three-day exploration of the three core insights of the Buddha, starting with Anicca7, or impermanence. So I will see you tomorrow for an exploration of the changing nature of phenomena. Very glad to have you here. Take care.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of meditative concentration or absorption. It refers to the stability and collectedness of the mind. ↩
Pali: An ancient Indo-Aryan language, the liturgical language of the Theravada Buddhist canon. ↩
Vitakka: A Pali term, one of the initial factors of Jhana (meditative absorption), often translated as “initial application of thought” or “aiming” the mind onto an object. ↩
Vicāra: A Pali term, one of the initial factors of Jhana, often translated as “sustained application of thought” or “sustaining” the mind on an object. ↩
Majjhima Nikāya: The “Middle-length Discourses,” one of the five major collections of suttas (discourses) in the Sutta Pitaka of the Pali Canon. ↩
Sukha: A Pali word often translated as “happiness,” “pleasure,” “ease,” or “contentment.” ↩
Anicca: A Pali word for “impermanence,” one of the three marks of existence in Buddhism. It signifies that all conditioned things are in a constant state of flux. ↩