Focusing: the full Story
Meditation involves the development of three skills, namely relaxation, focusing and awareness. Of these, focusing or paying attention, is by far the most important. It defines what meditation is and it steers the whole process. Even the physical relaxation and mental clarity are completely reliant on the act of focusing. We relax through the mechanism of focusing on the body, and we raise awareness by paying attention to our present moment experience.
All meditations use what we can call a 'meditation object' as the anchor of attention. The most common meditation objects are the breath or the body, a repeated word or phrase, a visual object or visualisation, or an activity. People also focus on concepts such as peace, emptiness or God. Others focus on personal goals or even a desired mood, but it is impossible to meditate without directing our attention in some way. Every activity we choose to devote time and energy to is purposeful, and meditation is no exception to this.
In all cases, the success or failure of any meditation depends on the quality of focus and the ability to avoid distractions. We can't just relax, let go and hope to be still. Awake or asleep, the mind is always active. Even if we try to think of nothing, the mind will automatically default to its usual thoughts in the absence of any activity to engage it.
In reality, the underlying object for every meditation is the body. The fastest way to relax is to focus on the body, and a quiet body is the essential basis for mental stillness and control. The Buddha said that a deep awareness of the body is the foundation for anything else we choose to focus on, and he was right. Even people who focus on a concept or an ultimate goal will also be focusing on the body to some degree. They effectively focus on the body + a mantra, or the body + a concept.
We can't underestimate the importance of being able to focus. It is crucial for the sophisticated thought that distinguishes humans from animals, and adults from children. Paying attention is the starting point for all the so-called executive functions, such as memory, learning, judgement and planning. This is what enables us to act consciously rather than impulsively – to stop, look and decide before we act.
Everything we do – from picking up a spoon to driving a car to raising a child – needs a certain amount of attention to be done well. Conversely our failures big and small are often due to scattered or insufficient attention. Meditation, by cultivating moment-by- moment attention, has the potential to help with everything we do. Even people who only meditate to relax will notice the trickle-down effect of improved performance and mental clarity during the day.
Unfortunately, traditional meditation is severely constrained by its emphasis on detachment and withdrawal. Buddhism and Yoga develop attention to a high degree but for a narrow purpose. They regard a stillness of body and mind, and disengagement from the world, as ultimate goals in themselves. This means that they are rarely as useful as it could be in supporting clear thought and action within the complexities of an ordinary life. Even now in the secular West, we rarely think to use meditation for anything more than relaxation and mental stillness.
Because of its limited goals, traditional meditation can only tell us so much about attention and the mind. Western science, psychology and philosophy are infinitely more informative and practical than Buddhism and Yoga. However, meditation is still unique in one respect.
Meditation discourages our usual goal-directed thought. It inhibits our compulsive tendency to think. It emphasises inactivity and 'just watching'. This means it particularly examines the mind in its 'idling' state. It looks at what the mind is doing when it is apparently doing nothing. In fact it is still doing a lot. By careful watching, we start to see the hidden mechanism of thought, the underground drivers of our behaviour.
A person on retreat may examine the mind like this for days at a time, and when the distractions fade away, what he or she learns may be nothing short of revelatory. It certainly changed my life. Introspection in search of self-understanding is nothing new in world history, but only meditation develops this kind of quiet, sustained self- observation as a trainable skill.
Focusing for the traditional goal of mental stillness is actually different from focusing for other purposes. Our attentional skills are always specific to a particular task. A person who focuses brilliantly on his breath doesn't necessarily focus well on his work or his relationships or his sport. By giving priority to mental stillness, these could even suffer from neglect.
If we understand how attention works, however, we can gradually learn to focus better on any daily activity that demands it. In this article, I will mostly talk about attention as a global mental function of enormous value. At other times, I will talk about it in the more limited context of meditation where it means 'focusing on the body for relaxation and mental stillness'.
AUTOMATIC AND CONSCIOUS ATTENTION
Attention is about how we distribute our mental resources. All day long we pay attention to one thing after another according to what seems most important at the time. We typically give most of our attention to what we are doing, whether it be work or a conversation or an activity. Otherwise, we focus on whatever thought or sensation seems most rewarding or troublesome in the moment. A further small portion of our attention constantly monitors the changing state of our bodies and the environment, and will alert us if anything goes wrong.
This is our normal, automatic, reactive style of attention. It is based on a colossal repertoire of learnt behaviours called 'action schemas' that no longer require much conscious thought. We can get dressed, drive, work, shop, talk to colleagues and family, answer the phone, all on automatic pilot, thus conserving energy and freeing up the mind to do other things. In fact, success in life largely depends on developing ever more sophisticated action schemas, routines, habits, sequences and see-do responses, so we don't waste time over-thinking what we already know how to do.
Automatic attention works very well indeed. It governs most of what we do each day. We don't need to supervise every little step we make, and it would be silly to try. Even people who are intoxicated, exhausted, sleepwalking or mad can still manage to drive home safely most of the time.
Nonetheless, automatic attention has its limitations. It is reactive and shallow, driven by inner or outer stimuli. It travels within ruts of heavily rehearsed patterns and is highly resistant to change. We do little to control it and it is easily distracted by competing stimuli. It typically follows whatever thought or action seems most promising or critical at the time, and it lacks self-awareness. It doesn't reflect on what is happening until things go badly wrong. Scientists call this passive, stimuli-directed, involuntary, 'bottom-up' attention.
Conscious attention, or focusing, on the other hand can do things that automatic attention can't. Focusing is defined as 'selective attention'. William James back in 1890, said that 'Attention is the taking possession in clear and vivid form of one of several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought." Attention is the ability to selectively focus on a salient thought or action at the expense of all other incoming data. It usually needs high motivation and some effort. We only focus well when the object seems particularly valuable or important or is inherently satisfying.
Automatic and conscious attention are on a continuum, and we oscillate between them as the situation demands. We pay little attention to walking while we walk along a street, but we become more conscious and alert when we have to cross the road. In general we operate automatically until something demands a higher quality of attention. The mind has a hidden radar function that continually watches out for problems, conflicts, opportunities, dangers and changing circumstances. This radar function alerts us when any of these situations arise, and bumps attention up into full consciousness to deal with it.
We can make some clear distinctions between automatic and conscious attention. Focusing is fully conscious and controlled. It is flexible and is the basis for all imaginative thought, but it takes effort and is hard to maintain. It involves screening out distractions, and it operates in a linear fashion. It can only do one thing well at any time. This is what scientists call active, goal-directed, controlled, top-down attention.
Automatic attention on the other hand is uncontrolled and passive. It takes little effort. It is stimulus-led rather than goal-directed. It is inflexible, driven by habit, but it can do many things at once. Whereas focusing is linear, doing one thing after another, automatic attention can operates serially, maintaining an array of activities simultaneously.
Strong, conscious, sustained focus on what seems important is very satisfying. It feels like a pinnacle of mental life, and it is, and yet it can still go wrong. Our attempts to focus usually suffer from distractibility and a failure to 'stay on track', leading to disappointment.
On the other hand, focus that is too strong can result in obsessive thought and rumination, as when we just can't let go of a problem. Too much focus is a hallmark of compulsive, repetitive behaviour and addictions, and a singleminded fixation on the bad is typical of depression. Focusing is hard to attain but it not always good, just as automatic behaviour is not always bad. Good focus also involves the ability to let go focus and switch to something else when we need to. We've now looked at attention in general. Let's now look at it in the context of meditation.
SELECTIVE ATTENTION
Meditation develops attention as a conscious, controlled, goal-directed skill. This involves choosing what to focus on, staying focused as well as possible, and resisting the impulse to follow thoughts or activities irrelevant to this task. This is all implied in the basic instructions: 'Focus on the breath or the body while noticing your thoughts with detachment.'
Focusing is defined as 'selective attention'. This means giving priority to one thought or sensation or activity, and making everything else secondary. Focusing tries to hold the object in the foreground of the mind, and put everything else into the background. The object becomes central and everything else becomes peripheral. To use anothermetaphor, the object occupies the stage of consciousness, and everything else is in the wings.
Focusing, no matter how skillful, can never entirely exclude the unattended data, which is invariably being processed to some degree in the background. Focusing weakens its grip, but doesn't exclude it completely. The peripheral data just becomes weaker and less intrusive. Although we focus on the object as well as we can, the background always remains a small, but vital and dynamic, part of the total field of attention.
This means that when we focus on the breath, we are still periodically conscious of other body sensations, sounds and thoughts. William James called this the 'stream of consciousness' with the various stimuli being comparable to objects floating downstream. This is also the zone of our automatic responses and inclinations. This peripheral activity never stops, even in sleep. Focusing always takes place against the backdrop of the stream of consciousness.
At first, focusing seems like a simple concept: we focus on the object and let everything else go. In fact, focusing still has to relate to the 'everything else'. To focus at all requires splitting our attention between foreground and background. It means giving high quality, continuous attention to the object, and low quality, as-required attention to the periphery.
Nonetheless, trying to focus sets the ground for conflict. It splits the world into two. We have the object, and then we have a host of potential distractions that are trying to muscle it off stage. We all know how difficult it is to concentrate on any train of thought when we want to. We can control our behaviour reasonably well but no one controls their attention perfectly. This means that despite our best intentions, we get mentally sidetracked far more than we would like to.
Intense focus can occasionally exclude the background entirely, but this is a rare event. Focusing acts more like a transparent screen or filter than a firewall. By highlighting the object in the foreground, it makes the background dim. It filters out the weaker stimuli, while still noticing those few things that could be important.
Focusing also weakens the peripheral data through starvation and inhibition. Attention is a limited resource, reliant on available glucose and oxygen. For any particular thought to be active, its individual network of brain cells needs to be stimulated and fed. If we devote the lion's share to those brain regions relating to the breath or the body, there is little fuel left over for anything else. If we feed X, we automatically starve Y and Z.
If we neglect even an important thought for just 10-15 seconds, its energy peters out and it subsides into its dormant resting mode. We may still be dimly aware of it but we're not actively processing it. We 'notice' it but we don't 'process' it, just as right now we are noticing peripheral sounds without thinking about them. This is how focusing weakens thoughts and disarms those that remain. It doesn't block thoughts out. By diverting attention elsewhere, it starves them of the metabolic resources they need to stay active.
Focusing also controls thoughts by inhibiting them. Under good conditions, it takes about a minute to clear the mental stage and establish good focus on any one thing. Once established, however, good focus activates the reward, or dopamine, circuitry of the brain, which effectively says to us: 'This is promising. Keep doing it. And ignore everything else for the moment.'
Focusing is a very left brain function. Its headquarters is the orbitofrontal cortex immediately above the eyes, just where we would imagine it to be. Focusing has a binocular, 'staring straight ahead' feeling about it. Furthermore, the orbitofrontal cortex actively inhibits competing signals from the emotional brain in the centre of our heads.
These means that competing thoughts lose much of their disruptive emotional drive, and so become easier to manage. We can notice their presence without reacting to them. Scientists speculate that meditation makes people happier because it enhances left-brain dominance and cognitive understanding. This in turn increases their ability to stop thoughts and down-regulate their emotions.
Focusing is very powerful but it is also a kind of tunnel-vision. It can easily get too close to the action and lose the bigger picture. In fact, while we focus, another part of the brain is monitoring this activity. Focusing, or 'selective attention', is itself controlled by a deeper function of the mind called 'supervisory attention'. This constantly operates in the background, monitoring not just the act of focusing, but also everything that goes on in the body and mind.
Supervisory attention is the brain's radar. It watches out in case something more rewarding or problematic or conflicting arises. Only then does it make its presence felt. It weighs up the options, and directs the flow of our attention to what it regards as most important. In doing so, it often overrules our conscious attempt to focus.
Supervisory attention is mostly automatic or below consciousness. It even regulates the state of the body and continuously makes subtle adjustments to maintain homeostatic balance. When its activity becomes obvious however, we call it awareness, or self- observation, or mindfulness.
Focusing highlights the object, but awareness notices peripheral thoughts and emotions and tells us what we feel. Awareness is what gives us the total body-mind-emotion picture of who we are in the moment. We relax by focusing, but without awareness we wouldn't know what it felt like.
Just as attention can be conscious or automatic, so can awareness. It is a deeper, wider and more complex function than focusing, but it can still be developed, and I'll describe it more fully in another chapter. As for now, there is much more to be said about focusing.
FOCUSING AND RE-FOCUSING
Firstly, 'focusing' is different from 'noticing'. We may notice that there are birds or traffic outside but this is not the same as focusing on them. We know that we're breathing, but we're not focused on it. We can notice hundreds of things simultaneously, but we can only focus on, or give priority to, one thing at a time. We constantly notice our surroundings to orient us in space, but in a light dismissive way. In fact, we evaluate nearly everything we notice as as unworthy of further attention, so the mind is free for more important matters.
Focusing takes effort and a certain amount of time. It involves letting go what we were doing or thinking about, and getting a good grip on just one thing. Nor can we do this instantly. No matter how resolutely we abandon a previous thought, it still takes a good 5-10 seconds for it to fade away and vacate the space. We can't really focus well on anything new until that disturbance goes.
We also have to mentally orient ourselves to what we are going to to focus on. The brain needs time to bring up the procedural files relating to even the slightest activity before it can act. Psychologists call this a 'preparatory set' or a 'set-up'. Even super-fast athletes still need at least a third of a second before they can initiate any response.
Good focus takes even longer. Psychologists have identified three separate stages. The first is to disengage from previous thoughts; the second is to shift to a new target; and the third is to engage, or lock attention onto, the new target. It is not surprising that it takes at least 5-10 seconds to do all this.
When we do make good contact with the object, it is like focusing a camera. Something clicks into position. We've got it and we know it. It is when we realise that the mental stage has become clear enough to actually feel the end of the out-breath. Or it is when we heard the twitter of the bird so exactly that we could mentally replay it from memory. Focusing is about making contact, or bringing the object into focus. As James said 'it is taking possession in clear and vivid form'. This is quite different from just knowing that we are breathing, or that there are birds outside.
Once we've 'made contact' with the breath, we can still lose it quite readily. This means that the next step is to 'sustain contact' over time. This is why people commonly count their breaths, or scan slowly through the body. They try to stay focused for 3 or 4 or 10 breaths in a row while resisting the temptation to get sidetracked.
Of course, we frequently lose that mental control and do get distracted. This happens to everyone. I've been meditating for forty years now and I still get distracted. We are distracted when we engage with a peripheral thought rather than just noticing it. Once we have given more than 10-20 seconds to a thought, we are effectively focusing on it. That thought has taken priority over the breath, which has now slipped into the background.
This means that another aspect to the skill of focusing is re-focusing. A good meditator can notice a distraction quickly, evaluate it, give it no more attention than it deserves and then refocus. When we consciously evaluate a thought, we see it in perspective and usually realise that it is less important than it first appeared to be. We then let it go and refocus on the object, but even this doesn't happen instantly. It still take 5-10 seconds to abandon a thought after you've decided to do so, and refocus on an object. The longer you've been distracted, the longer it takes to refocus.
Refocusing on the breath or the body is quite an art. People typically lose focus in the first place because the breath seemed less interesting than the distraction. This means that when they refocus, they often do so in a shallow and half-hearted way. They 'notice' the breath rather than committing to it, which makes them very vulnerable to the next temptation.
If this happens too frequently, re-focusing becomes increasingly difficult. They forget why they are doing it. At a visceral level, it seems pointless and the repeated distractions prime them to revert to the satisfactions of automatic, random thought. This doesn't mean to say that they won't relax. Just sitting down while trying to do nothing will achieve that, but their minds will not become calm.
FOCUSED OR WANDERING?
People often wonder if they're meditating or just relaxing. There is a simple way to check. You just have to ask "Am I focused or distracted? Am I doing what I intended to do, or am I drifting off?" You're meditating when you're focused on the breath or the body and you know it. (Alternatively, you're meditating if you're fully aware of what is happening in the moment and can describe it.)
If you're no longer focused, and you've lost awareness, you're not meditating. You may be in a nice mental space, but that's just relaxation and you are probably slipping back into a quiet version of your usual thoughts. When you lose focus the mind doesn't become still. It defaults to the stream of consciousness. Mental stillness only comes from focusing on one thing and restraining the impulse to follow thoughts at random.
To focus at all means that everything else becomes a potential distraction. Noticing a thought however is not the same as being distracted by it. If we notice the presence of a thought without reacting to it, it is only a potential, not an actual, distraction. We can even investigate an individual thought for a second or two and then let it go, without losing our primary focus on the breath.
A thought only becomes a distraction when we give it so much attention that it bumps the meditation object off stage. If we hold onto a peripheral thought for more than 10-20 seconds, it takes over that No.1 position. It is no longer peripheral. We are now giving our primary attention to it.
To notice passing thoughts without reacting to them is not a distraction in itself. It is a skill as fundamental as focusing. This is what the basic instructions imply: 'Focus on the body and notice thoughts with detachment.'
So focusing involves making good contact with the breath or the body; knowing what it feels like to be focused; noticing when you get distracted and refocusing. It is about making contact and then sustaining contact. This is what keeps you on track in any meditation. It is just as basic as keeping your hands on the steering wheel and your eyes on the road when you drive.
DEEP AND SHALLOW ATTENTION
We are meditating when we are focused and we know it, but now another question arises: how well are we focused? The quality of focus can vary enormously from moment to moment or day to day. Our attention can be deep or shallow, intermittent or sustained, clear or dull, alert or sleepy. It often fluctuates according to events in our bodies and minds that are beyond our conscious awareness or control.
The body and mind become still when we meditate, but this only is a relative stillness. There is always some movement within the calmest body – breathing, circulation, muscle tone, digestion and metabolism. Similarly, even when the mind feels still, it remains active at a subtle level.
The mind is always dynamic, day and night. That cerebral glucose and oxygen has to be used for something. At any time we can say the mind is going more deeply into the meditation object or moving away from it. This is what psychologists call 'approach or withdrawal' behaviour, and it even happens moment by moment in the brain.
This means that even sustained focus can be deep or shallow. This is particularly a problem for experienced meditators. They appear to be focused because they are still capable of counting the breaths for 20 minutes or an hour. However their attention could be quite shallow, ticking over on automatic pilot. This gives the mind plenty of opportunity to wander while still appearing to be focused. In fact, long meditations can become quite unhealthy if one's focus is poor, and aimless, low-level rumination takes over.
It is good to recognise the difference between deep and shallow focus. There are three hallmarks of deep focus. The first is that you notice detail. The second is that time seems to slows down, and the third is that you are interested in what you are doing. Strong focus also gives us a sense of mental control, and relaxes the body rapidly.
Detail is the most obvious sign of deep focus. The longer you focus on something, the more the detail appears. As the Buddha said, you now notice whether you are breathing in or out. You notice how long or short, or how smooth or rough, each individual breath is. If someone interrupted you, you could say "I'm halfway through the out-breath. It's a short breath and a bit tight." If you were listening to music, you would catch the exact beginning and end of a phrase, and feel each nuance of the orchestral colour. This is far more detail than you would normally be aware of.
Focusing induces a zoom lens effect. As the object takes up more of the attentional space it appear to get bigger. Alternatively, you seem to be moving closer to the object. Focusing is 'approach' behaviour that often results in a sense of absorption or oneness with the object. If you are focused on an activity rather than on the breath, deep focus induces a sense of harmonious movement, or 'flow'.
Focusing acts like a spot-light illuminating whatever you focus on, be it a sensation or a thought or an activity. The longer you focus, the more mental resources and associated memories are brought to that task. The associated brain cells become activated and connections proliferate. Deep focus brings a pleasurable sense of whole-hearted, uninterrupted engagement with your object. You feel intimate with it and that you know it better than ever.
Deep focus is the basis of what Buddhists call 'penetrative insight' and self understanding. It enables us to go beyond the surface and examine any thought, sensation or emotion in far more depth than usual. This also explains why paying good attention to any activity, or being 'mindful', invariably improves how you do it.
Focusing seems to make time slow down and expand. You feel every ripple of the out- breath, and the space before the new in-breath starts seems to last forever. Of course this is an illusion. Time moves at the same speed as it always does. Focusing however does slow down the speed at which our minds jump from one thing to another. We leave behind the speediness of thought and contact the slower rhythms of the non-verbal, sensory world.
When we stay longer than usual with any one thing, the mental scatter stops and this produces the illusion of timelessness and space. If we happening to be focusing on an activity, we move at the optimal rhythm and tempo for that task. This induces a sense of stillness and control that athletes call 'dynamic balance'. When athletes are 'in the zone' they typically say that everything moves in slow motion.
Focusing also gives a satisfying sense of mental control. To focus on one thing means inhibiting the impulse to follow competing thoughts. This restraint is what psychologists call 'thought-control' or 'emotional regulation'. Focusing enables us to stop thoughts on the spot, to control our emotional responses and to choose where to direct our attention.
Finally focusing relaxes the body. Although it takes a little effort, focusing has this unexpected side-effect. Because it stops the mind scattering, you find that you relax rapidly. The agitation and conflicting emotions go from the body. In fact the fastest way to relax at any time is not to let the mind drift, but to focus.
To summarise, the signs of good focus are that you notice more detail than usual, through the zoom lens or spot-light effect; time seems to slow down to the tempo of what you are doing; you feel you know or see your object far more accurately than usual; you feel mentally in control and are interested what you are doing; and your body relaxes rapidly. As you become familiar with these effects, you gradually build up a mental image that acts as a guide in future meditations.
AROUSAL: SHARP FOCUS OR SOFT FOCUS
Even when we are well focused, our attention is likely to fluctuate on a bright-dim continuum. We could be more or less alert, or more or less sleepy. We may notice the object in detail and know exactly what is happening in the moment: this is sharp focus. Or we may be closer to sleep in a timeless zone with little peripheral awareness: this is soft focus. So long as we remain focused, both extremes are good and both commonly occur in a single meditation.
There is a simple biological reason for this fluctuation. Alertness usually correlates with sympathetic arousal, with high muscle tone and high energy consumption. High arousal during the day gives sharp focus and makes the mind edgy. Relaxation, on the other hand, is a state of low arousal, so the quality of attention tends to be softer.
The term 'arousal' describes a global state of the brain, ranging on a continuum from deep sleep to hyper alertness. While awake, arousal levels can be high, medium or low and 'medium' is not necessarily the best. The ideal state is to have the optimal level of arousal, high or low, for whatever you are doing. That is what feels best. This is why marathon runners can feel relaxed and 'in the zone' even in a high arousal state.
Nonetheless, we are more likely to lose focus at the extremes. When arousal is too low, it correlates with a state of mind that is drowsy, rambling, dull, uncontrolled, aimless, vulnerable to any troublesome thought, and somewhat depressed. If we're not tired enough to fall asleep, it is a kind of pointless, low level chaos. Although low arousal is also a state of physical relaxation, it is not automatically pleasant. It lacks that sense of direction – doing something or thinking about something pleasing – that is essential for a good mood.
Conversely, when arousal is too high, it correlates with a state of mind that is 'hyper', speedy, scattered, panicky and too revved up to focus well on anything. It is like being over-caffeinated. It burns energy at a tremendous rate, while achieving very little. It is forgetful and error-prone. Unlike sleepiness, it is a highly emotional state, running on automatic reflexes and going too fast for rational thought or reflection. Over-arousal or 'hyper-vigilance' is common when we are stressed, anxious or frustrated.
We can easily recognise that the extremes are bad, but to focus well on anything means optimising the level of arousal for what we are doing. There is no point in being more alert and focused than a particular task requires. We would soon get bored and rightly so.
Mindfulness teachers often suggest 'Do what you are doing. When doing the dishes, just do the dishes.' Of course this is silly, and I doubt if anyone does it as more than an occasional exercise. It is just not interesting enough. It is much better to do routine tasks with low arousal, giving them no more attention than they require. This enables the surplus metabolic resources to be directed into more useful thought, or back into homeostatic rest and repair work.
Alertness usually correlates with arousal, but meditation is an exception to this rule. We try to keep the mind alert while the body drops down towards sleep, which is quite an art. Once beginners have learnt to relax at will, their next step is to stay alert at the edge of sleep. This doesn't come naturally. It actually clashes with our natural tendency to keep going down. It takes practice but it is worth it.
Since we can't entirely control our biology, this means that meditators frequently flirt with the edge of sleep. We go commonly go through a sleepy state, usually 5-10 minutes into the meditation, before our minds stabilise and become clear. With practice, we can still remain focused in this state. We dip in and out of consciousness, without quite losing it. We may not be getting distracted, but the mental quality is more sleepy than alert.
This is soft focus rather than sharp focus, holding on to the object but only just. In fact, this sleepy, dark, inward-looking and almost unconscious state is very restful if we can remain on track. It allows the homeostatic processes of the body to restore balance in much the same way that sleep does. The theta brainwaves and fragmentary dream images that occur in Stage One Sleep are often present in this threshhold state. This is traditionally called 'tranquillity' or 'trance' meditation, and it can be quite blissful.
We can't entirely control our level of alertness, but we can still turn it up or down to some degree. The Buddha used the metaphor of tuning a lyre. The music sounds best when the strings are neither too tight and nor too loose. This means that we should recognise when our attention is too brittle and edgy – when we are trying too hard – and deliberately soften it. More commonly, we should recognise when we are become too vague and dreamy and wake ourselves us.
CHECKING QUESTIONS
Because meditation is such a do-it-yourself activity, we need to have ways of checking how we are doing. After all, no one else is going to tell us. I'd like to suggest that you periodically ask yourself the following four questions as a way of improving your practice.
The first question is: 'Am I focused or distracted?' Alternatively, you could ask similar questions such as 'Am I on track or am I lost? Or am I just thinking or falling asleep?'
The second question is: 'How well am I focused?' You can refine that by asking 'Am I making contact and sustaining contact? Am I noticing detail? Do I feel in control?'
The third question is: 'How well am I managing the distractions?' Or, 'Can I let the distractions go quickly?' 'Can I refocus quickly?'
The fourth question is an obvious one, and the deeper part of your mind will ask it anyway. You ask: 'Is the meditation working? Is this worth doing?' You can refine this question by asking: 'Is my body relaxing? Is my mind becoming still? Am I becoming more clear-minded and observant?'
Don't expect your answers to always be positive and encouraging. Our state of mind can vary enormously from day to day. It is quite enough to ask and answer these questions frequently and honestly. This alone will be enough to develop the kind of awareness that is bound to improve what you do. Meditators who know what is happening, even when it seems to goes wrong, do so much better than those who just sit and hope.
THE PATH TOWARDS THE GOAL
Meditation seems to happen in an eternal present, but it also progresses through time. This makes it easy to think of the meditation object as a path towards a goal. Focusing on one breath after another is like proceeding step by step along a path. If we stay on the path – focused on the breath – we get there quickly. If we get sidetracked frequently, it will take longer. If we get totally lost, we won't get there at all. This also makes checking our meditation easy. We just ask: "Am I on track or not? Am I focused on my object or am I distracted?"
Usually we can tell if we're distracted just by asking the question, but not always. Sometimes the object is like a broad highway leading straight towards an obvious goal. At other times, it is like a small path winding through forest with the goal nowhere in sight.
It can also be like the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam during the war. This was a winding network of interconnecting roads, big and small, that all led roughly from north to south carrying supplies. Meditation is like the Ho Chi Minh Trail when we are no longer focused on the breath, but are attending to something else that is equally good. We may not be on our original track but we're on a parallel track that will do just as well.
We don't have to always focus on the breath. To focus on the pulse or on pain or on the global sense of the body is just as relaxing, and it can be very helpful to switch around between them. If we notice muscle tension, focusing on it will help it release. If we notice emotional resistance, we can usually disarm it giving it some attention.
Bringing these blockages and niggles into consciousness will help us relax even faster than dutifully plodding along with the breath. In fact, focusing on anything in the sensory world – even a sneeze or an itch, a sudden noise or visual stimuli – will take us away from the thoughts that keep us tense. The act of focusing itself is actually more important that what we focus on.
The real issue is not "Am I focused on the breath?" but "Is what I'm focused on working for me in the context of my goal?" This means that an important part of focusing is knowing when to switch focus from one thing to another. The breath may be our default meditation object, but the goals of relaxation and mental clarity should ultimately determine what to pay attention to any moment.
Meditation instructions such as 'Focus on the breath and let everything else go' are typically too simple to be anything more than a good starting point. In practice, meditators usually find they can profitably focus on two or three things at once: the breath plus a mantra or a image, or the body plus the soundscape or a mood. They can shift focus to create a more inclusive picture of the body, or split their focus at will. They can even can allocate their attention as appropriate between the body and the stream of consciousness, for example.
Nonetheless, they should still be able to answer the question: 'Am I focused or distracted? Do I know what I'm doing or not?' Most meditation practices offer a one-size-fits-all approach, but we don't all have to drive down State Highway No 1. All good meditators personalise their own methods in time. Yet even though many paths lead to Rome, we shouldn't forget that most of them do not.
SIGNS OF PROGRESS
This metaphor of the path reminds us that meditation is a goal-directed activity. We do it in anticipation of some reward or benefit, or there would be no point in it at all. This sense of moving towards a desired goal is what motivates us to do anything, including meditation.
In any enterprise, it helps to remember why we are doing it and to look for confirmation of success. Clear goals and the achievement of subgoals encourage us to continue. If the goal is unclear or too distant, the activity becomes a chore and we're likely to give it up. Fuzzy goals means fuzzy motivation. Many people struggle with meditation because they actually forget why they are doing it. Focusing on the breath is important, but we also need a clear goal to inspire us.
This means that when we meditate, we actually have two objects to focus on: the body and our goal, whatever that happens to be. If the goal is relatively clear, and we can recognise the signs of progress towards it, then the meditation becomes satisfying. We don't even have to get there. We just need to know that we're moving in the right direction.
Goals need achievable subgoals to mobilise us. When we learn most skills, it is usually obvious whether we are succeeding or failing. The ball goes into the net or over the court, and this feedback helps us make corrections. This dynamic of error, which leads to adjustment, which leads to improvement, steers the learning of any skill. The satisfaction that comes from attaining these subgoals is crucial for attaining the big goals. It is rare for us to continue with any activity for more than 2-3 minutes unless we get encouraging feedback that it is worth doing.
Unfortunately, meditation suffers because its goals are usually too vague or too abstract or too spiritual. It also lacks clear sub-goals, the encouraging steps along the way. The moment by moment signs of progress are almost too subtle to notice. You sit down to meditate and 20 minutes later, you're still sitting. How can you tell if anything has happened or not?
Meditation also suffers from a huge explanatory gap between what we do and what we hope to achieve. How does focusing on the breath make us happy or enlightened, or even relaxed? Traditional meditation even discourages the very idea of achievement except in negative terms. Buddhism and Yoga regard inactivity, detachment and the abandonment of all worldly goals, as ultimate goals in themselves.
This explains the kind of defeatist instructions we find in spiritual texts, such as "Don't be try to achieve some ideal state. There is no right or wrong in meditation. Just sit, just be here. Forget the past and future. The present is all there is. One breath at a time. Be open and accept whatever arises. The path is the goal." This means that meditators often do little more than sit passively and hope for something nice to happen. In practice, it means they soon give up and find something more satisfying to do.
In fact, meditation as a skill can have quite specific goals: To relax quickly. To make the mind still. To make the mind clear and observant. To know what is happening in the moment. These standard goals include various subgoals: To enhance body-awareness. To be able to focus well on anything. To manage thoughts and emotions better. To discriminate what is and what is not worth paying attention to. Furthermore, we should be able to notice our progress, minute by minute, with at least some of these objectives. It so much easier to stay on track if we are led by a clear picture of what we are trying to achieve.
THE BODY SCHEMA
Let's take a simple example of this. Let's assume you feel stressed and you want to be able to relax more quickly. This is a good goal well worth striving for. So you may go to a class, where you are taught to focus on the breath or a visualisation or a mantra or a concept, or some combination thereof. These instructions are important but they don't on their own motivate you. You also need a 'why'. If you want to relax, you need to develop a clear inner picture and a gut-feeling of what is it like to be relaxed. This is your goal. This is why you focus on the breath or the mantra.
Most people have only a dim sense of relaxation, equating it with sleep, which is too fuzzy to be a useful goal. Relaxation changes the body chemistry very quickly, and you can notice this happening if you look for it. You should be able to feel yourself relaxing within a minute of getting started, and be able to read the physiological shifts as the process continues. The body tends to feel heavy, soft, warm, tired and so on as I've described in far more detail elsewhere. This kind of moment-to-moment positive feedback is satisfying in itself and it is what keeps you going. If you don't notice it, you are very likely to give up, or drift back into thought or fall asleep.
Over time, you can develop a highly refined awareness of the life in your body. You will know exactly how you feel when you are tense, how you feel when you are relaxing, and how you feel when you are fully relaxed. Furthermore, you will be able to read these signs in every part of your body. You will also know the subtle but delightful pleasure of the body at rest, and how to get there from whatever stressful state you started in.
Most good meditators develop an enhanced awareness of their bodies over time, but what does this mean exactly? We can never understand the vast complexity of our bodies in any direct way. Instead what we think of as our body is actually a much simpler mental construction. We know the body through our images of it.
In fact, we have two distinct images. There is the body we can see and talk about with its narrative history and individual traits. This gives us our conceptual, language-based understanding of our bodies. But we also have another image of the body, which is the way we feel ourselves from the inside. This composite picture of the ever-changing network of bodily sensations is called a 'body schema', and this is what we tune into when we meditate.
The body schema is built up from sensors that read muscle tension and movement, balance, our location in space, respiration, heart-rate, the state of our digestion, arousal and mood. It constantly reads and adjusts to input from the five outer senses, from the muscles (the soma) and from the internal organs (the viscera). In other words, the body schema is our somatosensory-visceral body.
The body schema is our non-verbal gut-perception of who we are, as opposed to who we think we are. This is what gives us our embodied sense of being alive, and it changes constantly according to what we are doing and thinking. Above all it tells us whether we are stressed or relaxed, whether we are in good space or a bad one, and it guides us instinctively towards homeostatic balance. Moreover the mind naturally reverts to monitoring the body schema when it rests and when it has had enough of thinking and doing. In meditation we shift our priorities from thinking mode to sensing mode, from the conceptual body to the somatosensory body.
There are many ways to meditate, but a strong awareness of the body supports them all. Relaxation is obviously a bodily event, but so to a lesser degree are mental calm and awareness. Mental stillness can't be separated from its physical base in the body. Stillness only occurs when the muscular agitation fades away and the mind feels centred within a quiet body.
Even awareness, the ability to notice things with detachment, has a physical base. We objectify thoughts, sensations and emotions by seeing them from the standpoint of a calm, non-reactive body. Even people who focus on abstract ideas, images and transcendental states when they meditate still rely on their body schemas for stability, whether they realise it or not.
TOTAL FOCUS
Beginners often fantasise about a perfect state of total focus, no distractions at all, the mind switched off, a blissful blankness, but they soon realise that meditation doesn't usually inhabit that kind of zone. Nonetheless, as they learn how the mind works, they start to get glimpses of what a state of perfect uninterrupted focus is like.
Even the average meditator will occasionally have moments of exquisite stillness, silence and peace. The body becomes so still it all but disappears from consciousness. The mind goes silent. The inner talk dries up. It is profoundly peaceful. All conflict and all longing have temporarily vanished.
This is a quiet but fully grounded ecstasy. It is deep, subtle, expansive and warm. An inner radiance and contentment prevail. The body is suffused with a subtle bliss. All the systems in the body and mind become more harmonious and alive than ever before. It's quite strange. There's nothing in there and nothing is happening. It's the inner sky. Yet it's also one of the loveliest experiences possible. The Buddha called this 'the pleasure born of seclusion'.
The classical name for this state is 'samadhi' or 'jhana', which is the root of the word 'Zen'. This roughly translates as absorption or oneness or trance. It is synonymous with deep tranquillity and contentment. Samadhi literally means 'drawing together'. It implies wholeness and body-mind integration. It is related to other terms such as 'yoga' (union), one-pointedness and concentration. It is also defined negatively as a state in which all distractions have vanished.
This term is applied to a wide range of experiences, deep and shallow, ordinary and transcendental. There are breakthrough-to-enlightenment samadhis and stroke-the-cat samadhis. Absorption is described in inspirational poetic language and in nit-picking technical terms. It is even used to describe bad absorptions such as hatred and lust and other obsessions. Although it is usually a desirable state, recognisable in many contexts, the traditional texts can't agree on what it really is. It seems transcendent, since it is so unlike our usual fragmentary state of mind, but I suspect it always remains a highly personal experience.
None of this confusion in the literature really matters to a meditator. He knows when he's getting into that undistracted, absorbed state and when he's falling out of it. He knows how strong or weak it is and how he got there. Absorption has a obvious if indescribable feeling to it. It is also extremely attractive and blissful which is why it is so satisfying to pursue.
Absorptions can come and go in a flash. Fortunately to be in the pre- or post-samadhi state is also very lovely. While not as intense, it is far more durable. Pure samadhis will last for longer than a few seconds only with familiarity and skill, and when the circumstances are right. The mind needs to be calm but alert; the body neither sleepy nor over-aroused, and the daily preoccupations need to have completely vanished.
Meditator tend to get fleeting glimpses of absorption at first before they learn to sustain them. Just to recognise a state of absorption can be enough to split that unified state back into subject and object. Samadhis can't be forced or switched on at will. They are worth striving for but they take a very subtle kind of effort, since their characteristic is the end of all effort and striving.
The Buddha claims that only monks with their pure and simple lifestyle can perfect the eight absorption states called the jhanas, and he may be right. No matter how skilled or disciplined we are, the jhanas still depend on many external factors coming together in support. This is why you can't 'meditate deeper than a zen monk' if you're not actually leading the protected life of a monk. Nonetheless any good meditator is likely to experience the first two or three jhanas fairly frequently. These are the classic highs in formal meditation.
Absorption is well worth pursuing for its inherent pleasure alone, but like any good thing it can also be a source of misery. Many meditators pine for the absorptions they experienced in the past. They don't realise how much those good states were usually dependent on a particular confluence of circumstances, such as being young, having few responsibilities and being in a retreat centre, for example.
Samadhis, the fruit of deep focus, can be immensely rich and satisfying but they tend to be short-lived. It would be a terrible waste to meditate for this purpose alone. It is far more valuable to develop attention as an all-purpose, multidimensional skill that can be integrated into every aspect of our lives. Deep focus is good, but awareness is equally important, as I explain in the next article.
© Perth Meditation Centre 2011
