Access Concentration

“Completely withdrawn from unwholesome qualities, withdrawn from desire for sensoury experience” The Buddha MN119. 

Marker 12 arises as an expression of unified stable attention free from desire for sensoury experience, free from all meditative hindrances with piti & sukha born of seclusion. 

The structure of your daily mindfulness of breathing is the same except that you add one more additional Experiential Marker.

YOUR MEDITATION SO FAR

TIER 2

• Create your meditation posture.
• Addition 1: Establish a Posture of Mindfulness & Curiosity.

• MARKER 4: Awareness Grounded Within Body
• Addition 2: Bring the Joy of Letting Go Into Your Mind. 
• Addition 3: Access the Pleasure of Letting Go in Breathing.

• MARKER 7: Knowing the Length of Each Breath.
• Addition 4: Access Meditative Joy by Calming Effort 'to do'.

• MARKER 8: Knowing Sensation Within Each Breath.
• MARKER 9: Knowing One Point of Breath Sensation.
• Addition 5: Establish Joy & Tranquility as Factors of Attention.

TIER 3

• MARKER 10: Subtle Sensations of Whole-Body Breathing.
• MARKER 11: Completely Sustained Attention and Awareness.

Insert Here:

• MARKER 12: Unified Stable Attention, Free from Hindrances

INSERT MARKER 12 AS ABOVE 

As in Marker 11, you continue to increase your intimacy with the pleasurable sensation of the piti, allowing awareness to experience it from within and do this until peripheral awareness enters into an autonomous flow with the pleasantness of the experience.

Once awareness of the piti is unified and stable for a period of time, without any effort or distraction, free from all Meditative Hindrances, you are said to have developed access concentration (upacara samadhi). 

Access concentration is a preparatory step for both jhana and methodical insight into anatta (not-self) and sankhara (formations).

Once you have experienced access concentration you should develop your skill in establishing it in these ways:

1. Pay attention to and clarify the steps used in mindfulness of breathing to establish access concentration. Learn to recognise this path as clearly as you know your way around your home.
2. Learn to stabilise and abide in access concentration for longer periods of time without coming in and out of it.
3. Clarify the mental factors present within access concentration so that you can bring to the forefront of your attention any of these factors.
4. Develop your skill in establishing access concentration faster, with practice you will be able to reach it in 5-10 minutes. 

Meditation example: 

1. Soften into your body to establish first four Enlightenment Factors (up to joy). 
2. Sustain attention on breath sensation at the tip of the nose.
3. Sustain peripheral awareness on body breath sensation.
4. Establish access concentration.

In the next section on this page there is Indepth discussion on access concentration to help you to recognise the conditions for it to arise.

Read the below article so that you can recognise and master access concentration.

• Read Instructions: What is Access Concentration

“Completely withdrawn from unwholesome qualities, withdrawn from desire for sensoury experience” The Buddha MN119.

Once you develop stable attention on one point of breath sensation for a period of time, without any effort or distraction, free from all Meditative Hindrances, you are said to have developed access concentration (upacara samadhi). 

Access concentration is a preparatory step for both jhana and methodical insight into anatta (not-self) and sankhara (formations).

Your mind must incline in daily life away from sensoury pleasure.

If you continue to indulge in extracting pleasure from your six senses, you cannot expect your mind to give them up to experience the pleasure that comes from their very abandoning. 

I am not talking about giving up seeing, hearing etc in daily life, but rather giving up interest in feeding your minds addiction towards them. this is the purpose of cultivating nibbida, disenchantment in regard to these things. See their disturbance, their unsatisfying nature. 

How many times is enough?

Your mind must incline in daily life towards sila: harmony.

If your life is not inclined towards bringing harmony to your relationship to yourself, your family, friends, community, the world, the ripples of this disharmony will travel through your mind and collapse your tranquility and samadhi. 

This is the purpose of living a harmonious life, one inclined towards morality. 

While perfect morality is not possible in this samsara, conditioned world, the more refined you are in living a life of sila, the greater the joy and tranquility factors will be within your mind and such the easier it is to develop upacara samadhi: access concentration.

Your mind must incline towards cultivating the Enlightenment Factors.

While the Meditative Hindrances are a sign of imbalance in the structure and effort within attention, the Enlightenment Factors are signs of balance and harmony in the structure and effort within attention.

Your path from here on to developing and stabilising access concentration, is the development and stabilisation of the Enlightenment Factors. 

1. Mindfulness
2. Curiosity
3. Effort
4. Joy
5. Tranquility
6. Samadhi
7. Equanimity

If you continue to stabilise your attention in mindfulness of breathing by following the 12 Experiential Markers and cultivating the Enlightenment Factors in TIER 2, there will come a time where all the correct conditions come together for the unification of attention.

At some stage in TIER 2 Mindfulness of Breathing you may have experienced a meditation when everything came together in harmony. An athlete may describe this as entering a state of flow within the activity that they have been training in. 

All doing drops away, all thinking in regard to what they should do or not do is absent; they are in the zone. 

It is at this stage that the athlete needs to trust their training and get out of the way. It is also in this state of flow, of harmony, in which gold medal performances are observed. This same experience of flow, harmony, being in the zone is experienced by the meditator. 

They too need to abandon all control, trust their training, and get out of the way.

When this first happens, it will catch you unaware, suddenly awareness becomes clear, attention still, and all 16 Meditative Hindrances are clearly absent, and attention seems to rest on one point of breath sensation by itself. Attention becomes steady, firm, and unmoving. 

Complete effortlessness arises as applied attention eases, and attention sustains on one point of subtle breath sensation by itself. 

A gap has now been created in habitual delusion, and the mind is experienced as clear, still, and undisturbed.

This gap will remain, and the 16 Meditative Hindrances suppressed, as long as this structure of attention (samadhi) is sustained. Due to the absence of the Meditative Hindrances, a pleasant feeling (sukha) will arise within your mind, and also some mild pleasant physical sensations (piti). 

This is a very clear marker of access concentration.

As unification of your attention develops a light may appear in your visual field, like someone has opened the curtains and letting light into the room. You may even see flickering lights in front of your eyes. As exciting as these may seem, they are simply a sign of the development of concentration, and nothing to pay attention to. 

Read the below article so that you can recognise access concentration.

• Read Instructions: Recognising Access Concentration.

Once you can stabilise your attention on breath sensation, without any effort or distraction, free from all Meditative Hindrances, you are said to have reached access concentration.

It is access concentration because it creates an access doorway to jhana. 

You need to abandon all interest in experiencing things in the outside world. While this can be achieved through suppression, it is more skillful to observe the fleeting, and unsatisfactory nature of sensory experience, thoughts and fantasies. 

This does not mean, not enjoying them, just knowing that they can never satisfy.

 Unification, and stability of attention: for unification to be classed as access concentration, it must be effortless, stable, unmoving, and free from thoughts or wandering. 

When this occurs, there is a distinct dropping away of effort as attention sustains by itself. 

Absence of the five hindrances: if the five hindrances have not yet been deconditioned from your mind, then the level of unification must be enough to temporarily suppress them. 

The arising of thoughts, excitement or doubt, are a sign that unification of attention is not yet stable enough to suppress the five hindrances.

This refers to calming the effort to apply attention to your meditation object. Once calmed, attention becomes autonomous as the mind takes over application. 

In this way, attention is stable due to sustained attention being dominant. The experience of this is one of effortless, and stable attention. 

Absence of doing is experienced as effortlessness, desireless-ness. 

This arises by abandoning (through softening) any expectation or excitement towards pleasure, or fear of giving up control. 

Once the five hindrances are suppressed, and seclusion from the senses complete, initial piti will be experienced as subtle pleasant bodily sensation. It may arise around your face, chest or hands, anywhere. 

It is accompanied by sukha, as a joyful, happy, state of mind.

Though both are present, during access concentration, piti sensation is dominant to sukha feeling.

 Read the instructions below:

• Read Instruction: When Access Concentration Doesn't Arise

Sometimes the mind does not want to withdraw from the sensoury world or unwholesome qualities, it is scared to let go. 

There are a number of common imbalances that you can address habitual clinging.

Sometimes the mind does not want to withdraw from the sensoury world. There are a number of common imbalances that you can address.

If piti and sukha do not arise, it will be due to there still being some instability in your attention. This instability will create minute gaps as attention continues to apply, allowing the five hindrances to arise. You may notice this as background commentary, about the experience itself. 

Some doubt may also be present:

“Is this it, am I doing this right, where is this pleasant feeling they talk about?”

Mental dryness, boredom or frustration can arise when unifying attention in samadhi. All these shows that the Meditative Hindrances are rearising due to the unification of attention (samadhi) not being stable enough to suppress them at this time. 

Use them as signs of instability rather than problems. 

Observe what Enlightenment Factors are absent within your mind. For a start if dryness, boredom or frustration is present I can guarantee that that the factor of joy is not present within your mind.

Since the Enlightenment Factors are balanced attention, observe:

• Is mindfulness in regard to the Enlightenment Factors present?
• Is curiosity in regard to attention structure and energy present?
• Is balance present in regard to attention structure and energy?
• Is the subtle pleasure of the joy of letting go present?
• Is tranquility as a calming of all 'doing' present?
• Is samadhi present and stable?

It is beneficial to check in reverse order.

Why in reverse order?

Because each factors creates the conditions for the next. If the previous factor is weak then the one that follow will fade.

Unstable samadhi is overcome in this final stage in three parts:

Progressive Clarity

By progressively increasing clarity of the 12 Experiential Markers during the development of samadhi. 

Not rushing through each marker, instead developing stable attention on it, relaxing effort, allowing each Marker to reveal itself naturally, as a direct reflection of development of mindfulness and concentration.  

Finding Joy

By finding joy in the simplicity experienced within each Marker. To do this it is important to create the correct mental attitude when you sit down to meditate. 

Not one based on striving, or expectation, but rather based on the pleasure found in not having to do, or be anywhere. 

This can be enhanced by gently smiling with your eyes. Another way to prepare your state of mind, is with gratitude, or loving kindness.

Softening Effort (letting go)

By learning to transition through the 12 Experiential Markers by softening physical and mental effort rather than by 'doing' the attending. 

While the Twelve Experiential Markers are presented as a linear progression, they do not necessarily unfold this way for everyone.

Natural Pleasure

For some meditators, there is a natural unfolding of these stages, as their mind inclines towards jhana. 

The development of samadhi for these meditators tends to be pleasant, with feelings of sukha and piti arising, even during their first meditation.

Absence of Pleasure

For other meditators pleasure is never present during meditation, their mind rebels against any attempt to structure attention. 

From their first meditation, restlessness, mind wandering, and unpleasant feelings arise. These may persist all the way to unification of attention. 

Even with unification, their mind can feel dry, with a background feeling of unpleasantness/unease filling their body. 

When training your attention to establish samadhi, what always needs to be taken into account is anatta (not-self): you are not in control of your mind. 

It is important to understand this. 

If you fall into the second group, don’t let this concern you. 

Many meditators attention develops in this way, as a series of progressions, and collapses. One day you will feel like you have got it, that you now understand the path to unification. And the next day your attention has collapsed, and you feel like you have no understanding of how to meditate. 

If this sounds like you, it is important to understand that all of this is normal, and all of this is how it should be.

How the path unfolds for you, is not necessarily how it will unfold for someone else; it is all based on previous conditioning. You have come to meditation with unique conditioned tendencies, it is these that govern how the meditative path unfolds for you. 

It is important not fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. Instead observe your mind and allow it to reveal to you what is the correct path of development to take.

What is important is not to try to control your mind, but rather develop understanding in regard to the conditions that make it the way that it is.

"When this is, that is.

When this is not, that is not.

With the arising of this, comes the arising of that.

With the ceasing of this, comes the ceasing of that."

If your samadhi is not developing and mind will not let go of the Meditative Hindrances, then it is this way because the conditions are right for it to be. 

There are Six Enlightenment Factors present in the mind at access concentration, look at the conditions they need to arise and establish:

1. Mindfulness
2. Curiosity
3. Balanced Effort
4. Meditative Joy
5. Tranquility
6. Samadhi

Do these six factors describe your meditative attention?

You are ready to progress to the cultivation of jhana when you are comfortable developing and establishing access concentration. You should also focus on developing the speed in which you can reach access concentration so that more time can be spent on insight and/or jhana.

• View the Progressive Menu to see your next step.