Meditation Skill 11

Your eleventh step as an insight meditator is to introduce the meditative skill of offering exclusive awareness to an experience, such as your whole-body as it breathes, in a gentle and caring way, to withdraw that awareness from sensory input within the six sense fields. This skill develops the conditions for both attention and awareness to completely sustain in preparation for establishing access concentration (unified, stable attention free from the meditative hindrances).

As you become more aware of the experience of breathing throughout your whole body, you will find that your awareness begins to develop an intimacy with it. Intimacy of awareness refers to the exclusivity of attention you give to someone you care about to let them know how much you care, free from any external distraction. As the intimacy of your awareness of your whole-body breathing increases, the borders of your body and sensations within your body will fade. This is not a sign of dullness as your mind at this stage is beyond this, but rather an observation of the gradual shutting down of the body sense door because your mind no longer is giving importance to it. 

This same process is happening to your other senses, but because of your exclusive awareness of your body, it will not be as obvious. Most importantly, your mind sense is also going through a calming process because it is no longer being stimulated, and as this happens, it will gradually enter the pleasure of seclusion. This pleasure cannot be understood in terms of worldly pleasure which seeks and wants more, but rather the pleasure of letting go, putting down, releasing. As your mind enters the pleasure of seclusion your mind will feel the joy of relief and the sensations within your body will be replaced by pleasurable feeling reflecting this letting go.

Your meditation is the same as Meditation Skill 10, except you now bring to the foreground of awareness the growing pleasurable feeling of piti in your body and the joyful happiness of sukha in your mind.

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• Meditation Length: 60 min. To give your mind time to absorb into pleasure.
• Attention and Awareness: Allow your awareness and attention to unify in the foreground on the pleasure of your whole-body breathing (piti) and for sensory experience to fade into the background, peripheral awareness.
• Progression: When you become aware of an increased feeling of steadiness of awareness accompanied by fading of the sense fields and the sensations in your body fade, leaving an increasingly pleasurable blissful feeling (piti) and a joyful-happiness (sukha) that fills the experience of your awareness.

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Simple Instructions:

1. Prepare: Sit for meditation, one thumb resting on the other, reflect gratefully >
2. Sustained Attention: Develop sustained attention as in Skills 01-09 >
3. Whole-Body Breathing: Bring the experience of your whole-body breathing to the foreground and develop intimacy with its pleasant sensate experience as in Skill 10 >
4. Intimacy: When sensations in your body fade due to calming of your senses, develop intimacy with the remaining pleasurable feeling of piti throughout your breath-body. 
5. Sustain awareness: Allow awareness to sustain the experience of piti.

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Detailed Explanation:

Step 1: Prepare your body & mind for meditation.

• Sit for meditation, gently close your eyes, and place one hand in the other, resting in your lap, one thumb resting on the other as a grounding point for attention.
• Always begin your meditation by sweetening your mind by reflecting on simple things in your life for which you can be grateful, including this opportunity to meditate.

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Step 2: Develop sustained attention on one point of breath sensation, as in Skills 01-09.

• Allow your attention to sustain in the foreground on one point of breath sensation while keeping a background, peripheral awareness of your whole-body breathing.

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Step 3: Bring awareness of your whole-body breathing to the foreground, as in Skill 10.

• Once the focus of your attention has been sustained on one point of breath sensation, slowly open your peripheral awareness to the subtle experience of your whole body as it naturally breathes.
• Bring your awareness of the experience of your whole-body breathing to the foreground and allow your focus on the breath sensation to rest in the background.
• Gradually increase your experience of your whole body as it breathes until you experience breathing throughout your entire body. This increased intimacy will withdraw your awareness from the stimulation of your senses.

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Meditation 11 Additions:

Step 4: Develop intimacy with the pleasurable feeling of piti in the breath-body.

• As your experience of your sense fields fades, so will your experience of sensations within your breath-body. What will remain is the pleasurable blissful feeling of piti throughout your breath-body and the joyful happiness of sukha within your mind and heart. The mind-created experience of piti is now your meditation object.

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Step 5: Allow your awareness to begin to sustain in the feeling of piti.

• Continue to increase your intimacy with the pleasurable, blissful feeling of piti, allowing awareness to experience it from within. Do this until awareness enters into an autonomous flow with the feeling of blissful pleasantness. This is experienced as the transition between effort and effortlessness. 
• At this stage, awareness has begun to sustain with the pleasurable blissful sensation (piti). Your awareness will begin to feel steady, stable and unmoving. Remain with this pleasurable blissful feeling and offer it your complete undivided attention. As you do, your strength and clarity will increase.
• Allow your awareness and attention to unify in the foreground on the pleasure of your whole-body breathing (piti) and for sensory experience to fade into the background, peripheral awareness.

Progression in mindfulness of breathing can be accurately tracked by observing your ability to access the 12 Meditation Markers. This can be done by developing insight into and calming the conditions supporting the associated Meditative Hindrance.

Your eleventh step in meditation is to develop Marker 11: Sustained Awareness (right column) to calm Hindrance 11: Anticipation of Pleasure (left column).

Progression Map for Mindfulness of Breathing

Meditative Hindrances.                       Meditation Markers.

                                                               01: Body Relaxation.

                                                               02: Mind Relaxation.

                                                               03: Mindful Presence.

                                                               04: Joyful Presence.

                                                               05: Natural Breathing.

                                                               06: Length of Each Breath.

                                                               07: Breath Sensations.

                                                               08: One Point of Sensation.

                                                               09: Sustained Attention.

                                                               10: Whole-Body Breathing.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.    →   11: Sustained Awareness.

12: Fear of Letting Go.                       12: Access Concentration.

13: Unstable Samadhi.                       13: First Pleasure Jhana.

Other Hindrances: It is important to note that although your focus is on settling the Hindrance of Anticipation of Pleasure at this stage of meditation, all the other Hindrances listed above may also be present. It is essential to settle each Hindrance in the order presented in the above Map for Mindfulness of Breathing, as each Marker is the antidote for its associated Hindrance.

As you increase intimacy with the pleasure of your body-breath experience, your awareness will begin to withdraw from the six sense fields. As your body is one of the five physical senses, as its sensitivity fades, the borders of your body, and sensations within your body will also fade away. 

As sensation sensitivity fades all that will be left is a refined pleasurable feeling of piti replacing the body-breath with the joyful happiness of sukha in the background. This piti-sukha is now your meditation object to develop the final step before jhana, access concentration.

Progression: Once you understand how to withdraw awareness from the sense fields so that it only rests within the pleasure of your body as it breathes, you are ready to develop Marker 12: Access Concentration.

Meditative Hindrances are signs of an imbalance in either your effort or the structure of your attention and are seen as an opportunity for insight into your mind.

Meditative Hindrances.

01: Physical Restlessness.

02: Mental Restlessness.

03: Sleepiness & Drifting.

04: Habitual Forgetting.

05: Habitual Control.

06: Mind Wandering.

07: Gross Dullness.

08: Subtle Dullness.

09: Subtle Wandering.

10: Subtle Distraction.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.

12: Fear of Letting Go.

13. Unstable Samadhi.

Meditative Hindrance:

Anticipation of Pleasure (11).

Desire for pleasurable states. 

Anticipation of Pleasure refers to the subtle excitement that arises within the mind as it starts to glimpse and 'look forward to' the possibility of blissful pleasure.

Antidote:

Anticipation calms with repeated exposure to the pleasure that arises at access concentration until the mind is no longer excited by it. Anticipation is weakened by refining contentment in all aspects of your life and developing a heart connection (saddha) with the meditation path and practice.

You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 12: Access Concentration when:

• When you become aware of an increased feeling of steadiness of awareness accompanied by fading of the sense fields and the sensations in your body fade, leaving an increasingly subtle pleasurable, blissful feeling (piti) that fills the experience of your awareness.

• SoundCloud: Guided Meditation.
• Insight Timer: Guided Meditation.

Mindfulness in daily life is based on samadhi-gata sati.

New GOSS Formula:

1. Ground awareness within your meditative attention (samadhi).
2. Observe the Enlightenment Factors that are present, weak, absent.
3. Soften into those weak or absent to make them stronger.
4. Smile with your eyes into them to establish them in your samadhi.

Applying in Daily Life:

1. Structure your meditative samadhi by arousing mindfulness, curiosity, effort & softening, joy, tranquility.
2. Gently soften this samadhi into your body until it feels grounded, present, now.
3. Experience subtle movement of your whole body as it breathes.
4. Tune into the arising pleasure of this return to unification & letting go.
5. Use awareness of this samadhi to observe your citta (heart/mind) during the day.
6. When you notice a change, soften into your body-breathing to unify the samadhi again.

Meditative samadhi when not yet mature is highly sensitive to defensive habitual patterns and absence of sila (morality). This can be used to your advantage to develop insight by using changes in the structure of your samadhi as a viewing platform.