e conditions, we affect the product:
our mind. Meditation should be a skillful method of doing just
this, applying particular conditions to our minds in order to
bring about the desired effect, a more virtuous mind."
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The definition of shamatha is: the ability to hold
our minds on the object of meditation with clarity and stability
for as long as we wish, conjoined with mental and physical pliancy.
It is also called single pointed concentration.
With shamatha, the mind becomes extremely flexible and drastically
reduces the power of disturbing attitudes, gross anger, attachment,
jealousy etc. do not arise.
"People learning the way should first empty
and quiet their minds. This is because the mind must be empty
before it can mystically understand the subtle principle. If the
mind is not emptied, it is like a lamp in the wind, or like turbulent
water, how can it reflect the myriad forms?"
Yuan-hsien (1618-1697) - Excerpted from "The Teaching
of Zen" edited by Thomas Cleary
Prerequisites to achieve full-blown calm abiding:
1. Agreeable place: easy to obtain food without
wrong livelihood, powerful place (blessed by holy persons) and
quiet, not disease-ridden, proper companions and one should have
heard and studied the teachings.
2. Have few desires in terms of food, clothes etc.
3. Knowing satisfaction: acceptance of what you haven and who
4. Pure ethics: try to prevent any negative actions.
5. Forsaking commotion/excitement: few purposes outside meditation,
reduce any other activities
6. Abandoning thoughts of desire and lust: contemplating faults
of desire and impermanence.
As you may understand from the above, the achievement
of shamatha is not a small task. It is said that if one is completely
focused on the practice in solitary retreat, some people can achieve
it in 6 months. There are not many people around who can claim to
have mastered shamatha. To seriously engage in this practice, the
advice of a teacher should be sought, and several good books have
appeared on the subject.
A warning from
Venerable Ajahn Chah (Pra Bhodinyana Thera):
"Samadhi is capable of bringing much harm
or much benefit to the meditator, you can't say it brings only
one or the other. For one who has no wisdom it is harmful, but
for one who has wisdom it can bring real benefit, it can lead
him to Insight.
That which can be most harmful to the meditator is Absorption
Samadhi (Jhana), the samadhi with deep, sustained calm. This samadhi
brings great peace. Where there is peace, there is happiness.
When there is happiness, attachment and clinging to that happiness
arise. The meditator doesn't want to contemplate anything else,
he just wants to indulge in that pleasant feeling. When we have
been practicing for a long time we may become adept at entering
this samadhi very quickly. As soon as we start to note our meditation
object, the mind enters calm, and we don't want to come out to
investigate anything. We just get stuck on that happiness. This
is a danger to one who is practicing meditation.
We must use Upacara Samadhi. Here, we enter calm
and then, when the mind is sufficiently calm, we come out and
look at outer activity. Looking at the outside with a calm mind
gives rise to wisdom. This is hard to understand, because it's
almost like ordinary thinking and imagining. When thinking is
there, we may think the mind isn't peaceful, but actually that
thinking is taking place within the calm. There is contemplation
but it doesn't disturb the calm. We may bring thinking up in order
to contemplate it. Here we take up the thinking to investigate
it, it's not that we are aimlessly thinking to investigate it,
it's not that we are aimlessly thinking or guessing away; it's
something that arises from a peaceful mind. This is called "awareness
within calm and calm within awareness." If it's simply ordinary
thinking and imagining, the mind won't be peaceful, it will be
disturbed. But I am not talking about ordinary thinking, this
is a feeling that arises from the peaceful mind. It's called "contemplation."
Wisdom is born right here."
Tai Situ Rinpoche