Developing mental quiescence - Pabonkha Rinpoche

From 'Liberation In The Palm Of your Hand',  by Pabonkha Rinpoche (from the section on developing mental quiescence) (edited and slightly modified in some places for personal use)

Laziness has four antidotes: (1) faith due to seeing the good qualities of single-pointed concentration; (2) yearning and wishing for single-pointed concentration; (3) perseverance in seeking single-pointed concentration;

and, (4) seeking the result of single-pointed concentration- meditative suppleness.

(Note: single-pointed concentration is applicable to any object of meditation.)

The faith that comes form seeing the good qualities of single-pointed concentration develops as follows:

(first think about the disadvantages of not having single-pointed concentration:)

Engaging in the Deeds of Bodhisattvas says:

   You may persevere a long while

   at recitation, and all types of asceticism,

   with a mind that is distracted by other things,

   but that is said to be meaningless.

In other words, think about the damage a distracted mind does to you.

(next think about the advantages of having developed mental stabilization:)

If you develop mental quiescence you will be able to focus your attention on a subject quite firmly whenever you perform some virtuous practice.  Because of this firmness, you will soon achieve the common clairvoyances and so forth; your sleep will become single-pointed concentration; your delusions will become very slight indeed. 

More importantly, it will be easier for you to quickly develop [realization] into the path, from devotion to your spiritual guide all the way up to the generation and completion stages.

Think about these good qualities.  They all result from having faith due to seeing the good qualities of single-pointed concentration.  With this faith you will achieve the wish and perseverance to seek single-pointed concentration.

With these you will wish to have meditative suppleness.

This is how these four antidotes act as causes and effects- the latter ones developing from the earlier in an orderly fashion.

Very strong memory (mindfulness) is necessary to maintain the continuity of your meditation device, rather like a hand holding a rosary.  An individual's memory (mindfulness) may be strong or weak, and this will make it easy or difficult for him to achieve mental quiescence.

[Asanga's] Compendium of Metaphysics says on the subject of memory:

     What is memory?  Something that functions so as not to

     allow the mind to forget a thing with which it has been

     made familiar.

Memory must distinguish the object (clarity), and memory necessarily has the property of retention.

Do not become distracted- retain a tight hold on the visualization.  You must imagine it and nothing else.

You will fall prey to excitement and dullness during your actual meditation period while recalling your meditation device.

Mental fog can be either non-virtuous or neutral.  It obscures the consciousness, weighing down both mind and body as when you want to go to sleep. 

There are two types of dullness: subtle and coarse.  When you recall your meditation device, its image may be steady but unclear.  This is coarse dullness. 

Subtle dullness is as follows: you have not lost the retained features of the visualization (or the meditation object), you even have steadiness and clarity of image, but the force of your retention has slakened, and its clarity is not intense.  Subtle dullness is the main obstruction to meditation.  What do I mean by 'not being intense'?  I mean that there is clarity, but the mind has become somewhat slack.  At such a time, though the images's stability is quite firm, this slackness has acted as a cause for subtle dullness.  If the image has intense clarity, the mind is sharp, fresh, vital, and still on the meditation device.

(he is speaking about acuity of perception)

I can illustrate the fact that you can have both clarity and stability but that the clarity may or may not be intense.  Suppose you are holding your rosary and bowl in your hands.  You may hold them differently, one tightly and one loosely.

Or, more generally, we can always have faith in a guru, but this may or may not be particularly strong.  From time to time we may develop more or stronger faith in him; the way we retain our faith is then more acute than before.  That is the difference between the two situations,  They say this will become very clear in the light of experience in contemplation.

(Note: Clarity and brightness are not due to the object.  Whether or not there is any clarity or brightness is necessarily a function of subjective consciousness.  When there is no clarity it is as if a veil has been drawn over the image.)

Regarding excitement:

A compendium of Metaphyisics says this about excitement:

  What is excitement?  A disturbed aspect of mind,

  a form of attachment led astray by beautiful signs.

  It functions by inturrupting mental quiescence.

Beautiful objects- the objects of your attachment- unfocus the mind.  Thus they are the beautiful signs referred to here.  Suppose you watch an opera one day and that night you vividly recall the scene: this is an example of realling an attractive object of your attachment.

There is a big difference between lack of focus (scattering) and excitement.  You can become unfocused through an unpleasant object, such as your enemy.  At such a time, you undergo mental distress.  Or while meditating on mental quiescence you can become unfocused by some virtuous object, such as generosity, ethics, and so on. 

These may be forms of lack of focus, but they are not excitement.  Nevertheless, both lack of focus and excitement may inturrupt your mental quiescence.

Why then is only excitement assumed to be the thing that inturrupts mental quiescence?  Lack of focus is slighter and of shorter duration when its object is either theobject of your hostility or when your attention is being directed to something virtuous.  And as the lineage of this type of presentation has it, lack of focus is much greater when the object is something to which you are attached. 

So lack of focus is usually of the latter type [i.e. excitement] because it is easier to develop than the other forms.  It has been given pride of place and we shall discuss excitement alone.  But note: when you meditate on mental quiescence, your mental state will be interrupted by the two other types of lack of focus: unfocusing due to either pleasant or unpleasant objects; and lack of focus due to, for example, recalling some generosity you may have performed, prostrations you may have made, etc.  When you meditate for mental quiescence you have to put a stop to these forms of unfocusing whenever they occur.

We may lose track of the meditation device such that it is no longer our mental object.  For example, when meditating on the form of a diety, we may forget about our visualization for a while.  Coarse excitement is just such a loss of the meditation device.

Subtle excitement is as follows: the mind does not lose track of the device, but something subliminal with a pleasant aspect arises in a portion of the mind below the level of conceptual thought.  This form of excietment is different from coarse exctement, and it is illustrated by water flowing under a sheet of ice.

Though the actual antidote to both of these unfortunate conditions is not vigilance, vigilance is still a component of the antidote, just as the army hasits scouts.  You must cultivate vigilance in order to detect whether you have any excitement or dullness.

If you apply vigilance continuously it becomes a hinderance to your meditative state, but if you do not apply vigilance regularly you may develop some serious faults in your single-pointed concentration and not be aware of it.

It says in The Gelugpa Mahamudra: 'Turn off vigilance when this seems right.'  In other words, keep your vigilance in check.  You must apply it only from time to time to see if you have any excitement or dullness.

This is like holding a bowl of tea in your hand: you both hold it firmly and look to see if the bowl has tilted.  Similarly, you hold the meditation through memory (mindfulness) while retaining its image firmly, and maintain the visualization while using vigilance to check whether or not you have any excitement or dullness.  By the way, vigilance is an ally of wisdom.

If your vigilance has detected any dullness or excitement- whether in coarse or subtle form- you must apply the antidotes without further ado.

Adjustment is actually the antidote to equanimity [also known as non-adjustment].  Adjustment has to be mentally applied against non-adjustment.  These twoare like enemy scouts: as soon as one sees the other, he tries to stop him.

So, how should the (first stage, direct) antidote be applied? 

(For dullness:)

Subtle dullness is a state of depressed mental activity.  Thus both depression and dullness have much the same consequences.  With subtle dullness you have clarity and stability of image, but the quality of its retention has dropped and the clarity, therefore, is notas intense.  Whenever you develop this form of dullness there is no need to break off visualizing since it is sufficient to tighten up your retention of the image. 

However, when your hold becomes too tight, you develop excitement, and you should then loosen your hold.

As the Bhagavan said:

  If the vina's string is too taught, loosen it;

  tighten or loosen it as needed

  making sure that it does not get too slack. 

  In the end the sound will be sweet.

You should do the same thing: loosen a little when you feel you will develop excitement, and tighten when your hold a little when you feel that dullness will ensue if you loosen any more.  Experience dictates the border-line between these two.

If you do not analyze intelligently through your vigilance it will be very hard for you to put your finger on it.

Acharya Chandragomin said:

  Apply effort and you get excited;

  Abandon it and you develop depression.

  - If this is true, and it is so hard to gain absorption,

  Why should I bother

  It will only disturb my mind!

Doing this sort of thing may be mentally fatiguing; but among all types of enemies, an enemy who is one of your family or household is the hardest to identify.  Because of this, they are the most dangerous.  Likewise, this type of dullness threatens to do the most damage to your single-pointed concentration; so you must seek this fine-tuned state.

In spite of having fine-tuned your mind, you may again lose the intensity of the image's clarity.  When thhis happens, the retention lapses and the image is no longer clear.   If this sill not go away, coarse dullness has returned.

It says in The Heart of the Middle Way:

'When meditation on lofty visualizations depresses you,

be expansive'.

That is, the fault is that your mind is in a great knot; so you should meditate a little, dispensing with the visualization.

If the problem does not then go away and your mind becomes depressed (dull) when you resume the visualization, is there some means of uplifting the mind?

(second stage, indirect adjustment)

One way is to cheer yourself up by contemplating how difficult it is to find the most beneficial optimum human rebirth.  Or you coul contemplate the good qualities of the Three Jewels, study the benefits of devoting yourself to a spiritual guide, contemplate the benefits fo bodhicitta, etc.  These will uplift your mind. 

You could imagine rays of light shining on you, or meditate on things like the giving visualization.

Our minds have not been familiar with this sort of thing in the past and it will be difficult to gain immediate benefit from these techniques.  But when we become familiar with them, the contemplation of things such as how hard it is to gain a human rebirth will be like splashing cold water on our faces.  The problem will disappear.

If still the problem will not go away, terminate your meditation session.  Mental fog is causing you to develop dullness.  Use some means to make the mental fog, sleepiness, or grogginess go away. 

Settle down in some cool spot, go for a walk on some high, open place, go for a visit, splash water on your face, and so on.  If these clear your mind, resume your visualization as before.

(For excitement:) (first stage, direct)

Subtle excitement is when you do not lose track of the meditation device but the mind is distracted. 

(It could be that the mind is not used to this, and that further mindfulness meditation, and practice calming the mind is needed.  Or:)

When this happens, the fault could be that the mind is too tight.  When this happens, slightly loosen your retention of the image.  If that does not help and your mind is still distracted, you now have a coarse form of excitement. 

This has developed perhaps because of your happy state of mind, (in which case) you should not increase your happiness any more.  Over-happiness is damaging, as shown by the story of King Shuddhodana [Buddha's father], who could not attain the state of a Stream-Enterer [because he was so elated by his son's return]. 

In this kind of situation, don't stop the meditation session, for, as it is said in The Heart of the Middle Way:

'Calm your excitement by thinking of impermanance and the like.'

(second stage, indirect)

In other words, contemplate things that cause mental depression, weariness, or renunciation.  Death and impermanance or the sufferings encountered in samsara and the lower realms are just such things.

If this does not clear up the problem, employ a more forceful method to rid yourself of excitement.  Because your conceptual thinking has increased you should do the following visualization when you breathe in or out:

When you breathe, think, 'I am breathing in', or,  'I am breathing out'.  Also think, 'That's the first time', and continue to count mentally the number or times you have been breathing in and out. 

At first you will only be able to manage up to three or four cycles.  Just resume counting from one again.

If doing this does not cut your excitement, take a break from the session.  Then meditate in shorter sessions, preceeding these by a firm resolve.

It is most important to break off your meditations at the right point: stop while it is still a pleasure to meditate.

Although our hope is for an image that remains stable for long periods of time, all we can do at present is to evoke the visualization; it will not persist.  Thus we should make each session quite short.  We are told to have eighteen sessions each day.  If after some time you do not lose your dullness or excitement, you should have a larger number of very short sessions.  These should be of the highest quality.  Do this, and the image will begin to persist of its own accord.  Only when this happens should you lengthen the sessions.

When you have put an end to your dullness or excitement, further adjustment then itself becomes a pitfall, although it is at times an antidote.  The antidote to this (further adjustment) is non-adjustment.  You must cultivate this equanimity.