Developing Concentration During Meditation
Below is what I regard as one of my best postings to Mudita Forum, from May of last year. Thanks to Marshall for prompting me to post it here....
Andrew’s question, below, about giving up control in exchange for awareness, really gets at the heart of how to develop concentration during meditation. This is a topic that I struggled with for years, and it is only in recent months that I discovered a different way to skin the proverbial cat. Below I do my best to explain what I know on the subject.
I had written the following about my experiences with meditation:
By surrendering to what is present, and taking special care to allow whatever is there, I find myself confronted by a counter-intuitive truth: I obtain control by giving up all pretense at control. Or, to be more precise, I obtain a sense of calmness and stability — the basis from which true psychological effectiveness arises — by giving up the attempt to control: I give up control and get awareness in return (what a bargain for any awareness lover!).
And Andrew Schwartz responded:
Joshua, a question: Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say you “give up control”? I assume you’re not referring to allowing the monkey mind to do whatever it pleases; so what does giving up control mean more precisely?
You’re right; I don’t mean letting monkey-mind do whatever it pleases. The “monkey-mind” metaphor implies that you have become lost in thought — and, by implication, have become identified with your thinking processes rather than with awareness as such. The whole purpose of meditation is to experience relief from that state of consciousness.
Letting monkey-mind run wild is definitely giving up control in one sense: you hand control over to habituated patterns of thinking. I’m talking, though, about giving up control at a more fundamental level, a level where you give up even the habituated thought patterns, by placing your attention on the source of those patterns. I’ll explain...
In my own approach, the central act of meditation is: resting awareness on my experience. When I’m sitting in a quiet room by myself, and I’m avoiding thought — or any other activity besides simple awareness — the main experiences that I have to are the sensory experiences of my body: my breath coming in and out of my nose, my belly expanding and contracting, some tingling in my hands and legs, a subtle feeling of warmth throughout my body, etc.
To succeed in keeping my awareness on these subtle sensations for more than a few moments, I have to somehow stop the habitual thinking that characterizes day-to-day consciousness. For me, the most intuitive way of doing this was to exert a willful effort to prevent distraction, by “holding” my mind on the object of attention. Doing this feels like a physical effort; and before long I grow tired, relax my grip, and — before I realize what’s happening — I’m back to stream of consciousness. A minute or two later, I wake up and realize my mistake, but I’m back to almost square one.
This brute-force approach was a frustrating process for me, and any progress was usually hard-won. I did learn some other guerrilla concentration tactics along the way, which I can share sometime, but they’re not what I use today.
Today the key insight that I rely upon is this: Habitual thinking is fueled by resistance. In other words, the thoughts that continually interject themselves during meditation have a source, and through careful introspection, you can trace the “impulse to think” back to the source. For me, the source always lies in some kind of negative feelings, such as unease, tension, irritation, aversion, restlessness, impatience, etc. This is the resistance.
Resistance to what? To the present moment. They are my body’s response to the fact that some part of me doesn’t want to be here, doing this, right now. What I’m doing now is boring, or hard, or tedious, or unpleasant. Part of our mind doesn’t want to be doing what we’re doing; it would rather be doing something more exciting or rewarding or sexy. Even though we may be consciously committed to our meditation practice, there can still be parts of us that aren’t with the program; and this is where the resistance comes from.
The mere act of turning your attention to this feeling of resistance, to the source of our impulsiveness, can be helpful and instructive. Resting your awareness on it helps to calm the sense of urgency.
But there is a trap here, too, which is that we may begin to try and make the resistance go away — to resist our resistance, if you will. And so this is where we ultimately give up control: We put our awareness on our resistance, and give up any attempt to change, control, or reduce the resistance. You simply watch what is there, and actively surrender to what is present.
By “surrender,” I mean full, conscious surrender to what is present. You locate the tension in your body, and you consciously allow it to be there. Allowing it to be there is not the same as ignoring it; “allowing” implies awareness, and it is through the awareness that you allow it — whatever “it” is — to be exactly as it is.
Of course, placing your full, undivided awareness on the feeling of resistance causes it to dissolve, either partially or fully. But this is not your purpose; your purpose, in that moment, is to fully surrender to the experience.
So, to summarize, the process goes like this:
1. Begin by locating the resistance in your body
2. Rest your full attention on the feeling, allowing it to fill your awareness fully
3. Surrender completely to the experience
For me, it’s powerfully effective. Using the old way of building concentration, it used to take me thirty or more minutes before I could begin to achieve full inner stillness (or what is called “access concentration” if you are practicing for the Jhanas). And on difficult days, I would fail completely to achieve the stillness. Using this new approach, however, I can sometimes reach my destination in as little as five minutes.
That’s a long-winded response to your question, but it’s the best way I can explain what I mean when I say I “give up control and get awareness in return.” I hope that any of you who try it will let me know how it goes.
