Your Goal: Joy & tranquility with sustained attention.
"The Seven Factors of Enlightenment, when developed & pursued, bring clear knowing & release to their culmination." MN118 the Buddha.
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Your ninth step as an insight meditator is to introduce the meditative skill of cultivating joy and tranquility by developing a momentum of the pleasure of letting go. As letting go deepens, your attention will naturally rest on one point of breath sensation.
Meditative Joy: (Piti): means meditative 'joy' or 'happiness' of letting go.
Meditative joy is developed by tuning into the pleasure & contentment of letting go experienced when you relax physical & mental effort.
Meditative joy calms restlessness, dissolves dullness, and creates the conditions for samadhi (unification of your attention).
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Tranquility: (Passaddhi): means 'calm' or 'absence of movement.'
Tranquility develops by tuning in the pleasure of growing calm as intellectual functions of the mind and biological functions of the body slow down.
What are the benefits of joy & tranquility?
Meditative joy and tranquility bring a feeling of safety and contentment to the mind, thereby calming all meditative hindrances.
When joy & tranquility develop through letting go rather than effort, they set up a reward system for letting go within the mind that weakens defensive habits and inclines it toward letting go.
This momentum of letting go causes the meditative wheel of panna, sila, and samadhi (calm, insight, letting go) to turn in the insight meditator's mind during seated meditation and daily life.
It is important to define the difference between sensual pleasure & meditative pleasure.
Sensual Pleasure
Sensual pleasure arises when your mind finds an experience that is present within your six sense fields desirable. (Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch-sensation, and mind).
Attraction arises when the mind releases a pleasurable feeling within our body and desires that pleasant feeling.
Attraction toward the pleasantness of sensual pleasure has excitement and urgency with a fear of missing out because all pleasure generated through sensory contact is impermanent.
Because of impermanence, sensual pleasure always leaves a feeling of being unsatisfied, not quite enough: Just one more time!".
The mind needs to experience sensual pleasure again and again to produce pleasant feelings.
It is this repeated need to experience something again and again to experience pleasant feelings that develop patterns of addiction within the mind.
Meditative Pleasure
Meditative joy arises by tuning into the subtle pleasure of letting go and is both energising and calming in its nature.
Meditative joy is neither stimulated nor addictive since the pleasure of it is accessed by letting go of the sensory experience, not experiencing it.
Any grasping onto the pleasure of meditative joy will cause it to collapse. Because of this, addiction to the pleasure of meditative joy is not possible.
The condition for its arising is the letting go of the desire for pleasure itself.
For your attention to rest on your meditation object without effort, there must be glue, and the glue that will aid your mind in sticking is the pleasure of letting go.
Meditating must be pleasurable for samma samadhi (right unification) to develop.
The foundation for meditative pleasure that the Buddha recommended is the subtle pleasure of letting go of effort.
The pleasure of releasing all concerns, putting down burdens, going on a holiday, and letting go of all 'doing' within the body, breathing, and mind.
To access this pleasure requires the initial development of your perception of it just in the same way you would intentionally develop your perception of words when learning a new language.
While your mind may understand the pleasure of wanting sensory stimulation, it may not yet recognise the subtle pleasure available whenever that desire is let go.
The pleasure of sensory stimulation is impermanent.
The pleasure of letting go is permanent and always available as long as your mind is letting go.
It is always available, always accessible, and always present.
The pleasure of letting go is satisfying, joyous yet tranquil, and always available with any abandoning of effort within your body, mind, and heart.
Now we can clearly see the meditative path. Both the goal and the path are the same.
A momentum of letting go that leads to complete letting go.
The perception of the subtle pleasure of letting go has to be developed because the mind does not always naturally know how to perceive it.
While the mind living in the sensory world already knows the pleasure of sensory stimulation, it does not recognise the subtle pleasure of letting go of that desire.
Softening is a doorway to the subtle pleasure of letting go.
To access this subtle pleasure, tune into how nice it feels to relax effort in both your body & mind.
The easiest way to access this is to bring awareness to the relaxation of any part of your body and let it slowly relax, tuning into how nice it feels.
Once you have developed a perception of the pleasure of letting go of effort in your body, you can allow it to enter the mind by gently smiling with your eyes into that pleasure.
This smile is like the smile you give to a loved one to let them know you care.
Once this pleasure of letting go has entered your mind, you will find it everything.
The joy, happiness, and contentment of letting go brings harmony to the balance of attention and allows deep tranquility to develop.
What if meditative pleasure doesn't arise?
Your mind will not always be able to access the pleasure of letting go.
The absence of pleasure in your meditation is a sign that your mind is grasping onto something.
Follow these general rules:
These changes will switch your mind from discontentment to contentment, creating the conditions for accessing the pleasure and joy of letting go.
Through continued momentum in the pleasure of letting go and maturity of joy & tranquility, your attention will gradually become stable and firm on one point of breath sensation by itself, all mind wandering and distraction coming to an end.
From Meditation 09, the GOSS formula changes from a way of letting go of meditative hindrances to a way of cultivating wholesome & skillful qualities.
New GOSS Formula:
*The Seven Enlightenment Factors:
These Seven Enlightenment Factors are the qualities of a completely balanced posture of meditative attention:
Your meditation is the same as Meditation 08, except you now focus on cultivating meditative joy & tranquility to sustain your attention on that one point of breath sensation.
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Summary:
Focus on learning how to develop mindfulness of breathing through letting go rather than effort.
Your focus is now on cultivating and establishing the Enlightenment Factors rather than developing insight into distraction.
One of the biggest challenges is the tendency towards subtle dullness that comes through over-calming.
You can avoid dullness by letting go with clear comprehension and intentionally tuning into the sensate experience of your body and breathing.
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Meditation Instruction:
Step 1: Establish a mindful presence in your body as in Meditations 04:
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Step 2: Become aware of the flow of breathing in your body as in Meditations 05-06:
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Step 3: Begin a process of relaxing effort in your body, breathing, and calming the effort 'to do' the meditation within your mind.
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Step 4: As your mind continues to calm, sensations of breathing at the tip of your nose will become clearer as in Meditation 07:
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Step 5: As tranquility grows, allow your attention to rest on one point of breath sensation as in Meditation 08:
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Step 6: Addition: Practice stabilising your attention as Meditation 08. Maintain meditative joy and tranquility within your mind until your attention sustains on that one point.
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Explanation:
As attention sustains (becomes fully stable), you will experience a shift from effort to effortlessness. This shift is very distinct.
Your main goal is to learn to move from intentional vitakka (intentional applying of attention) to autonomous vitakka (your mind now autonomously applies attention to the meditation object).
It is this shift that gives rise to the experience of effortlessness.
When this occurs, maintain silent, stable attention for a period of time on that point of breath sensation.
Let go of all doing within your mind and continue to experience the pleasure of that abandoning.
When the desire to do is let go of, and the intellectual functions of your mind calm, tranquility will begin to arise.
Breath sensation will become very subtle and may even disappear.
Keep your attention on that one point and perceive the beauty & pleasure in the experience of growing calm.
If breathing appears to stop, calm any fear associated with this with softening. Your awareness is so subtle that sensations in your body, including your breathing, have begun to fade.
Trust that breathing is still occurring and that your body knows what to do without your help.
Allow the experience of meditative joy and tranquility to merge as a posture of stable attention and for attention to rest on this beauty and joy.
Maintain present-moment awareness of the natural flow of sensations within your breathing to develop the precision and clarity of your attention necessary to cultivate samadhi.
Be careful of subtle dullness as body & breath sensations become subtle.
The ninth marker of mindfulness of breathing, attention effortlessly sustained on one point of breath sensation, arises due to the maturing of meditative joy, tranquility, and samadhi that have developed on a momentum of the pleasure of letting go.
Experiential Markers:
Support Article: 12 Experiential Markers
Meditative Hindrances are signs of an imbalance in either your effort or the structure of your attention. It is skillful to view them as an opportunity for insight into your mind rather than something to overcome.
Meditative Hindrances
Meditative Hindrance:
(12) Subtle Wandering, (13) Subtle Restlessness.
Antidote: Curiosity + developing your skill in accessing the pleasure of letting go within each of the Experiential Markers by taking your time relaxing and developing intimacy with each one.
It is important to note that the conditions for accessing meditative pleasure & joy are dependent on your mind letting go.
Everyday cycles of mental clinging based on feeling attracted or averse to things will affect your ability to access them.
Curious observation and refinement of sila (morality), plus taking it easy in daily life while lowering sensory stimulation/distraction, will make meditative joy more accessible during meditation.
Support Article: 16 Meditative Hindrances.
Congratulations, you have finished Cultivation 03.
You are ready to progress to Cultivation 04: Unification of Attention when:
Important Note:
You will still have sensory experience within your background peripheral awareness, included some fleeting thoughts, but your attention will no longer move out to them.
In this simple map you can observe that when practicing Meditation 09 (blue line) the main hindrances to your meditation will be Subtle Wandering & Subtle Restlessness.
The Experiential Marker: Sustained Attention, developed by Meditation 09 is the method you should use to calm/weaken the present hindrance.
Your understanding of accessing meditative joy can be brought into your daily life as a way of observing attraction and aversion due to the fading of joy when they are present.
Since the factors of softness, meditative joy, and tranquility are cultivated by tuning into the pleasure of letting go, any habitual grasping of your mind throughout the day will cause this pleasure to collapse.
Metaphor
Just as a canary can be used in a coalmine as an early warning system due to its sensitivity to air quality, the qualities of softness, joy, and tranquility within your meditative samadhi can be used as an early warning system due to their sensitivity to habitual clinging.
Meditation 09 in Daily Life:
Questions can be submitted at: MIDL Community Reddit Forums.
Question: When you refer to "one point of breath sensation", what exactly do you mean?
Stephen: When we are truly present with the changing sensations within the length of each breath at the tip of the nose, the memory of what just happened within the mind drops away.
With this fades the idea of time, of in and out-breaths, and all that we perceive is one point of changing breath sensation at the tip of the nose.
Question: Should I focus on the sensation of one nostril only?
Stephen: Be aware of wherever the experience of breathing is most clear to you.
Question: Could I move between nostrils?
Stephen: There is no need to observe that closely that you need to swap from one nostril to the other. Loosen your attention a bit to take in the whole experience as one.
If the sensation then swaps from one nostril to the other fine, the important part is being aware of the changing sensations and allowing all intellectual activity to calm, such as concepts like left nostril, right nostril and so on so that attention becomes stable and no longer wanders.
Question: Or could one point simply be (paradoxically) both nostrils at the same time? Or should it be something even smaller than any of these options?
Stephen: Yes, one point isn't a minute point of accuracy, it is much more relaxed then that. It is not about the one point, but rather about creating an object for attention to become intimate that is stable and steady over time.
Question: Do I maintain attention on this one point in-between breaths, or can I use this gap to soften/relax any tension which has arisen elsewhere in the body?
Stephen: Yes, attention rests on this one point even when the sensations disappear. Do not concern yourself with relaxing tension in your body, but rather relaxing effort within your body and mind.
It is effort that is gradually abandoned through the process of mindfulness of breathing, not tension. Tension will sort itself out when effort is relaxed in your mind and body.
Question: When I soften/relax, I feel a warm sensation (often in my throat) coupled with a feeling of subtle contentment. Is this what you mean by meditative joy? If so, I feel like "joy" might be overselling it somewhat! :D
Stephen: What you are experiencing is a reflection in your body of the growing contentment within your mind. Our body always reflects our stating of mind by changing how it feels.
When I talk of joy, I am not referring to the excited joy of a child at Christmas, but rather the happiness and contentment of a mind that has let go of concerns with experiencing the world.
Joy is experienced as a growing smile of happiness within the mind, awareness becomes clear, energetic yet calm. It contains the pleasure of putting down a heavy burden, of being on a holiday, of relief, of not having to do this anymore.
Question: During some sessions, my mind is heavily distracted and my ability to rest attention at the nose is severely diminished. In these circumstances, would it be ok to revert back to the previous GOSS process (ie. where you observe the autonomous nature of mind, rather than the enlightenment factors)?
Stephen: When samatha (calm, tranquility) is developed during mindfulness of breathing, based on the pleasure of letting go, the mind naturally cycles through three phases:
This is a natural cycle that you will experience if you are letting go:
Calm --> Insight --> Letting go --> Calm --> Insight --> Letting go -->
When your mind becomes heavily distracted you are no longer in the samatha: calm phase, your mind has shifted into a vipassana: insight phase. this may happen because of disturbances in your daily life related to sila: morality, or because your mind has clearly seen anicca (impermanence, and anatta (not-self), so it has become disenchanted with your samatha object.
When disenchanted your mind will find fault with all experiencing and push everything away.
During a vipassana: insight phase you should not cling to your samatha object: breath at the tip of the nose, but rather align with the grounding skills you learnt in Meditations 01-04.
From mindfulness of body developed through relaxing effort, allow your mind to wander and go wild. Your only task is observing your minds autonomous nature and soften back into your body through relaxing effort, as in the GOSS Formula, until your mind lets go and enters a sila phase.
When your mind is ready it will naturally calm and incline towards samatha: calm and you then return to developing stable attention in mindfulness of breathing.
What is most important is not to fight these cycles, but rather to recognise and take advantage of them.
You can find a talk I gave on this cycling of the mind on you tube between the three sections of the Noble Eightfold Path https://youtu.be/yqGlkmrzL7k
Stephen: The meditative path in MIDL is made up of three parts: calm, insight, letting go. These three cultivations interact with each other in a cyclic fashion:
calm > insight > letting go >calm > insight > letting go > etc.
Samadhi > Panna > Sila.
Your development of samatha-based samadhi founded on the pleasure of relaxation & calm during mindfulness of breathing has developed well. This is working as intended.
Question: I was in that spot for what felt like a few minutes. Then on my next out breath, with more focus on letting go, it felt like all sense of me vanished, like going into a vast tunnel, with my senses going offline. In this space, there was a lot of fear, almost existential terror starting to wash over this vast openness.
Stephen:As relaxation & calm develop so does the momentum of letting go. As momentum of letting go increases: "I am not in control", any fear within your mind of giving up control will be revealed.
This is one of the purposes of developing samatha based on letting go.
Then on my next out breath, with more focus on letting go, it felt like all sense of me vanished, like going into a vast tunnel, with my senses going offline. In this space, there was a lot of fear, almost existential terror starting to wash over this vast openness.
Your mind switched from samatha to vipassana-insight and saw the autonomous, anatta nature of itself.
This is part of the insight part of the path that occurs as calm develops and also working as intended.
When the anatta (autonomous nature) of experiencing is revealed to the mind, the mind becomes scared of not being in control and creates a foundation to rest on. This foundation, that makes your mind feel like it is in control is the fear/anxious response.
Like a child on a sliding down too fast on a slide in a playground, grasping onto the sides to slow down their decent, the mind quickly grasps onto the sensual world when it clearly views its own autonomy.
This is a normal part of the insight path and is a doorway to be passed through rather than to be avoided.
with more focus on letting go, it felt like all sense of me vanished, like going into a vast tunnel, with my senses going offline.
Question: A few minutes after ending the session, I experienced what felt like anxious tremors up and down my body for about 30 minutes while lying in bed
Stephen: Our mind does not know the difference between meditative experience and daily life. What you experienced was a meditative insight that revealed to your mind that it was not in control.
The momentum of letting go was deeper than your mind was ready to experience.
The anxiety response you experienced was ordinary and mundane, the unpleasantness you experienced that drove the fear however was meditative and insight based.
Also worth noting, I have a long history of intense anxiety.
Now this is an important part of insight meditation based on letting go: we can't escape from ourselves.
How your mind responds to things in daily life when they arise, it will also respond to things when they arise during your meditation.
Anxiety is a defense mechanism of the mind that is produced when the mind is scared that it is unsafe and importantly, feels out of control.
It is now time to use the softening skills that you have developed in MIDL to gradually dismantle this habitual stress/anxiety.
This means in calm > insight > letting go to focus on deepening your skill of letting go of fear-based control during both seated meditation and in daily life.
How to approach this.
In seated meditation spend more time resting in the pleasure of letting go in each of the experiential markers.
01: Body relaxation.
02: Mind relaxation.
03: Mindful presence.
04: Joyful presence.
05: Natural breathing.
06: Whole of each breath.
07: Sensations in breathing.
08: One point of sensation.
09: Sustained attention.
10: Whole-body breathing.
11: Sustained awareness.
12: Access concentration.
Gradually exposing your mind to momentum of letting go and the pleasure found within it. Resting in the growing stillness and teaching your mind that letting go of control is safe.
With gradual training in this way and slowly exposing your mind to what it fears, while softening/relaxing the effort of resistance, gradually, without strain, your mind will become comfortable with the above experience.
The willingness of letting go of control during these samadhi states, is significantly enhanced by focusing on the sila aspect of the path and increasing your devotion by reflecting on and offering your heart & trust towards the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha (suddha).
It is perfectly safe to rest in these samadhi states, and many people have followed this same path over the last 2600 years including other meditators within the MIDL and Buddhist communities around you.
This type of reflection is powerful for building trust and letting go within the mind.
In daily life the experience of anxiety needs to become your meditative path. No longer using meditation to try to get beyond it but rather to develop insight into it by dismantling it in a skillful way.
There are three steps to deconditioning this anxious response in daily life:
https://midlmeditation.com/meditation-for-anxiety
This will desensitise your stress response and bring anxiety to an end. you are welcome to continue this conversation with guidance in doing this here, or with questions in my weekly online classes.
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