This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Steadying the Mind; The Five Faculties (4 of 5): Unification. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Steadying the Mind; Dharmette: The Five Faculties (4 of 5): Unification - David Lorey

The following talk was given by David Lorey at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 18, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Welcome, good day. I hope you're doing well. Today we turn to the fourth of the five spiritual faculties, and this is the faculty of the collected, still mind that we cultivate in the meditation. I'll talk today in the brief dharmette about how this faculty, this competency, this quality of mind, this capacity of mind is related to mindfulness, which we talked about yesterday. I'll also give a couple of pointers about how to create sufficient steadiness of mind to see clearly, which is the particular benefit that this factor provides to our practice.

I may seem a little distracted by the technical challenge this morning, but don't let that throw you off. It's just the internet.

Guided Meditation: Steadying the Mind

Let's begin by sitting in meditation. We'll bring our attention this morning to the stillness and steadiness that's available to us in the meditation. Perhaps even as we just begin to sit and bring our attention inward and downward, we can recognize the greater stillness of the meditative space. Most of us have been meditating long enough that the contrast between what I think of as the "walking around world"—the getting through the day—and our practice world with the formal sitting practice which we engage now, that there's a greater stillness, a greater collectiveness, a greater focus, a greater unity of attention.

We can bring attention to this, knowing that giving it the gift of attention strengthens it, cultivates it. So once again, in the case of this fourth faculty—wholeness of the mind or wholeness of attention in the meditation—we don't have to reach outside our own experience. We can look within, and by noticing any degree of stillness, of collectiveness, of calm, of ease in the meditative space, we can further strengthen it.

A particular instruction that we can remember today, as we come back to the breath over and over again, strengthening our ability to return to be here now, we can connect again with the breath at hand—whichever one we first connect with, an out-breath here, an in-breath there. So as we come back to center, we can just say softly to ourselves: breathing in, steadying the mind; breathing out, steadying the mind. We can add: breathing in, gladdening the mind; breathing out, gladdening the mind. These soft reminders to ourselves upon our return to center can bring greater steadiness and collectedness to the mind, and also enjoy that greater steadiness and collectedness, enjoying it in a way that strengthens it.

To these two phrases, we can add a third: breathing in, letting the mind rest; breathing out, providing a place where the mind can rest. So any one of these three, all of them together in any particular order, can be useful phrases to drop into the meditation when we return with the breath. Steadying the mind, gladdening the mind, letting the mind rest, giving the mind a place to rest.

It's a natural thing that the mind finds its way into activity, gets caught up in looking forward, looking back, looking outward, looking inward. It's the mind's job. Those are capacities of mind that are well-developed. We return to center to strengthen capacities of mind that are less developed. We appreciate the others, and in this practice, we cultivate the capacity of mind to be still, to be clear, to be here. When we return attention to the here and now of our experience, we can drop in these phrases, connecting with this in-breath: breathing in, steadying the mind, gladdening the mind, resting the mind.

Finding our way in the practice to this breath right here, and then: breathing in, steadying the mind; breathing out, steadying the mind. Breathing in, gladdening the mind; breathing out, gladdening the mind. Breathe in, letting the mind rest; breathing out, letting the mind rest.

We can take this stillness with us, this mindful attention, this sustained mindful attention, this still, collected, grounded mind. It's portable. We can carry it with us into the interactions of daily life. We can call on this quality of mind, this capacity of mind, when it's needed. The stronger it is, the more we cultivate it in the practice, the easier it is to find it when we need it. The easier it is that it becomes, over time, second nature, that it arises to meet life. And as we cultivate it, we can share it.

May the benefit of our practice, may some of the stillness, the calm, the ease in meeting experience, the sustained ability to give attention—may these ripple out into the world and benefit other beings. May all beings share in some of this contentment, some of this ease. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: The Five Faculties (4 of 5): Unification

Welcome again, friends. So far we've been having good internet connectivity. I expect it to fail at any moment, and that's one place my mind has been going. If you're just joining now, this is Thursday, a fourth day of exploring the five spiritual faculties, and we'll talk a little bit about samadhi¹, wholeness of mind. As I guided in the meditation: the steadiness, collectedness, groundedness, rootedness, "hereness," sustained "hereness" and "nowness" of mind. Just making up words here, right and left. Where the language doesn't fit the Dharma, let's change the language. I like to say the "hereness" and "nowness" of our experience. I hope at some point the OED will recognize my coinages in English.

I mentioned at the outset of the hour that I've received word from the good people at Xfinity that there are going to be outages beginning at 6:00 a.m. So far, we're good. If I disappear, I set myself up as co-host on my phone. I see all the chats about the echoes. Believe me, I heard the echoes. What I reflected on is how this is a nice metaphor for suffering: the constant echoing of one's own voice in one's head, and the ease that comes when that echo is reduced or softened. Maybe we come to understand its function better and we can thus let go of it a little bit. At some point, in attempting to address the echo—which, I use Zoom a lot, so I know the echo thing, this is a little different issue—I finally thought, "Okay, I'm going to use an old trick. I'll just put the phone under my leg, and I won't be able to hear the echo." That disconnected the meeting, at which point there was this lovely silence as that echo stopped. And there too, I was like, "Oh, okay, there's that ease that comes with the relaxing of that echo of my own telling myself about my experience in the world."

At any rate, I did my best to engage the technical challenge with the Dharma and make the echo into a teaching. And maybe I'm going to keep going with that. Why not?

So this fourth factor is samadhi, and I love the word in Pali², samadhi, s-a-m-a-d-h-i. Samadhi. It's a lovely word. It has many translations, none of them very, very accurate, but the closest literally, as Gil has probably shared, is "collectiveness of mind." Samadhi means a bringing together of mind, collectiveness of mind, stillness of mind, and ease of mind.

I'll share this interesting history with you. Now that I've lost my other Zoom sign-in, if we get cut off, I'll pick it up tomorrow. But when the people who first translated the word samadhi translated it, they used the word "concentration." The meaning of the word concentration, its associations in English, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, have changed since that time. When they used the word "concentration," it meant, and I'm quoting here, "the action of bringing to a center; the act of collecting or combining into or about a central point." This is a really nice definition of samadhi, this idea of collecting or combining into or about a central point. That's one meaning of concentration. If you think about it from the Latin—you don't have to speak Latin to sit in on these 7 a.m. talks—concentrare, that is "with the center." So I like the idea that we're bringing the mind to around the breath, around the center of our spiritual life, the breathing body, our ability to be with our experience without adding things, as I've been talking about the last couple of days.

Then later, the same word "concentrate" comes to have a meaning which will be familiar from other uses, which is to intensify or condense. I think, for example, of concentrated orange juice. Not very common anymore, but when I was growing up, orange juice was kind of an unusual thing. Fresh orange juice, with or without pulp or with some pulp, wasn't really a thing fresh in the grocery aisle, but rather something that one's parents made from concentrate. This idea of bringing the mind's ease and the steadiness of mind and the gladness of mind in a way that intensifies it also really describes samadhi. So when thinking about this fourth faculty, I think the best word to use is samadhi and the associations maybe that you can start to create with that aspect of the meditative experience.

Diana Clark, one of my lovely colleagues, somebody I teach with, a good friend, describes this fourth faculty as something like this: a stillness of mind accompanied by a feeling of well-being. And these two things together are really important: that there's both the stillness of mind and the sense of ease or well-being that comes with it. This is why these phrases dropped into the meditation can be so useful. That is, steadying the mind, gladdening the mind; steadying the mind, gladdening the mind. As I've been saying the last few days, the gladdening is important because it helps us appreciate, and it actually triggers important things in the brain. This pleasure taken in the steadiness of mind helps us strengthen it. Another way to think about strengthening or cultivating is just that it helps us create a path. We talk about the path of practice. Part of the path is figuring out, remembering how to get back here. If you think about a well-known path in your life, you know, to the 7-Eleven at the corner or to work, we develop a path and then it becomes automatic. This is true with the practice, too. As we go, "Oh, this is how the mind is steadied," we become so used to recreating those conditions that support that steadiness of mind that we forget that there's a path we're following. And part of that path, I think the cookie crumbs along the path or the mile markers along the path, that's the gladness. "Oh, right, I move this direction because it feels good." And it feels good because there's more steadiness of mind there, and we keep inclining the mind in the direction of that steadiness.

A way that can be very useful to think of this faculty of mind is how it relates to the one we talked about yesterday: mindfulness. Andrea Fella, co-guiding teacher of IMC, has said in the past that she likes to think of samadhi, this fourth faculty, as a sustained mindfulness. That mindfulness, our attention to the present moment, when it becomes sustained, and when, maybe going two days back, when the effort involved becomes effortless—that that steadiness of mind, that sort of consistent bringing of mindful, judgment-free attention to what's coming up in our experience in the meditation, for example, but also other points of the day, that this is a way to characterize what samadhi can be. I think that's a really useful idea of Andrea's, just because it's another thing where we can notice that happening. We'll notice, "Oh, here's a period of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, half a day, half an hour, where there's a lot of sustained mindful attention," and we can recognize, "Oh, that's this steadiness of mind." Similarly, in the meditation itself, we keep bringing attention back to the breathing, and sometimes we'll notice, "Yeah, there's just this easeful being with the breathing where there's not a lot of... maybe stuff's going on in the mind, but it's not getting a lot of attention. It's just kind of coming and going." That sustained mindfulness, that sustained being here, that's that steadiness of mind with, as Diana says, a feeling of well-being.

This fourth faculty, it's true with mindfulness as well, in the texts we have, in the teachings, they're both ends and means. They're a lovely place to sit and abide, as is said, and at the same time, they're a means to an end. So mindful attention has benefits in and of itself. It's always more useful to be here now rather than "there then" in the mind, right? Present for what's coming up in our experience. And at the same time, mindfulness over and over again leads to this sustained steadiness, stillness of mind with ease, with a feeling of well-being.

This fourth faculty, samadhi, it also is a pleasant abiding, as the texts say, a pleasant place to be, something to take pleasure in because it's a wholesome pleasure. It doesn't depend on external conditions, doesn't lead to over-attachment or holding on. We can try, but eventually we learn, "Oh, it's just a pleasant place to be without strings attached," as it were. And it too, in addition to being a pleasant abiding in the here and now, is a means to an end. There's a lovely phrase from the texts that I'll read you. Where does it go? What's... how is it a means to an end? I got to make sure I'm not running over time. I could talk about this all morning, but eventually the internet would give out. I'd like to think that this profound teaching could break the internet, and yet it's just Xfinity service disruption.

This phrase says, "Practitioners, you and me both, this stillness of mind with well-being, it's like a lake in a mountain range: transparent, clear, undisturbed. And standing on the shore of this lake, a person with good eyesight could see oysters, shells, and pebbles, and fish moving about and fish holding still." And that person might think, "Ah, this transparent, clear, undisturbed lake. I can see clearly shells, oysters, stones, pebbles, fish moving about, fish standing still." In the very same way, this stillness of mind allows for clear seeing. In particular, it allows us to see all that extra being added on to experience that causes suffering, or that is suffering. And it allows us to see that the mind can be free of suffering.

This is the particular importance and power of this fourth spiritual faculty, or fourth divine human quality, that we cultivate in the meditation. I like to sum this up by saying that the still mind, the collected mind, the samadhi mind—to make up another word—sees clearly. The still mind sees clearly. The still mind can see the arising and passing of suffering without getting all caught up in it, just noticing the coming and going.

This is how this particular fourth faculty benefits us in the practice. It allows us a way to be very, very here with our experience in a way that makes the subtlest arisings, the subtlest creations of suffering, apparent to us. And, little by little, maybe starting with the larger, grosser disturbances, turbulence, suffering, "selfing" that happens in the mind, we can sort of notice ever more subtle arisings of stress and tension and suffering. At that subtle level, it's easier to let go of it. It's easier to just let it bubble up and bubble down.

May this teaching be a benefit to you. And may we—I, at any rate—learn from today... I really like that metaphor of the Zoom echo that I think we've all experienced whenever you try to zoom with somebody in the same room, even if it's your stunt double in my case this morning, that there's a way to recognize that really unpleasant chatter that comes with the echo as a nice metaphor for what it's like to be in our heads when we first sit down and meditate. All this "me, myself, and I" reverberating. I think it's also related to the way when we hear our voices, it doesn't sound like it does in our heads. So there's lots of nice little metaphors there. And it's just a reminder that we can incorporate even the most random of experiences into our practice.

At any rate, may your days go well. And may that echo of our attachments and unskillful engagement with the world, may that be reduced a little bit by our practice today for ourselves and for others. And may we have some of that clarity, some of that ability to see clearly that comes with the unification of mind or the sustained mindful attention to the here and now. May that be of benefit to us and to others.

All right, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Hopefully, Xfinity will have completed its work and we'll move on from here. Thanks very much. Take care.