Nine Stages of Training the MindBy Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche presents a map of the meditative process. From a wild and busy mind to the perfection of equanimity, he lays out the nine stages of training the mind.
As the lineage of meditators sat on their cushions and worked with their
minds, they saw the same unfolding process: nine ways that the mind can be
true to its inherent stability, clarity and strength. In their descriptions
of nine stages of training the mind through the practice of shamatha
meditation, or “peaceful abiding,” they left us signposts of that process.
These guidelines are helpful because the mind is so vast that if we’re left
to our own devices, we’ll usually just wander in thought. These nine stages
are a map of the meditative process.
The first four stages—placement, continual placement, repeated placement
and close placement—have to do with developing stability. Stages five and
six—taming and pacifying—have to do with developing clarity. And the last
three stages—thoroughly pacifying, one-pointed and equanimity—have to do
with building strength.
Placement
Placing our mind on the breath is the first thing we do in meditation. In
the moment of placing our mind, it’s like we’re mounting a horse: we put our
foot in the stirrup and pull ourselves up to the saddle. It’s a matter of
taking our seat properly. This moment of placement starts when we extract our mind from its
engagement with events, problems, thoughts and emotions. We take that wild
and busy mind and place it on the breath. Even though we’re placing our
consciousness, which isn’t physical, placement feels very physical. It’s as
deliberate as placing a rock on top of a leaf.
In order for placement to be successful, we have to formally acknowledge
that we’re letting go of concepts, thoughts and emotions: “Now I’m placing
my mind upon the breath.” What happens in that moment? Our attachments are
uprooted. If we can even attempt such a thing, our discursiveness is greatly
reduced. At the same time, by placing it on the breath, we’re gathering the
mind that’s spread thin all over. For beginning meditators the first stage is where we learn how to balance
the focus on breathing, recognition of thoughts and holding the posture.
It’s a grace period during which we develop good meditation habits. As we
continue in our practice, placement is always the first step. It’s that
moment at the beginning of each session when we recognize and acknowledge
that we’ve begun meditating. Because it establishes our attitude toward the
rest of the session, it’s the most important stage. The moment of placement
gives our meditation a crisp, clean start. If we begin in a vague or
ambiguous way, then our meditation will only continue to be vague and
ambiguous. Like placing a domino, how carefully we place our mind in the
first stage will directly affect the development of the next. After that first moment, each time you choose to recognize and
acknowledge a thought and return your consciousness to the breath, you’re
learning placement. It’s such a small act, so innocuous, but it’s one of the
most courageous things you can do. When you recognize and release that
thought, you can take pride in yourself. You’ve overcome laziness. You’ve
remembered the instructions. You can feel happy coming back to the breath.
Don’t worry that you’re going to have to do it again—you’re going to do it
thousands of times. That’s why this is called practice. Each time you remember to place your mind on the breath, you’re moving
forward. Just by letting a thought go, you’re extracting yourself from
concepts, negative emotions and bewilderment. You’re letting go of the need
to be endlessly entertained and consumed. You have to do it again and again
and again. Change happens one breath at a time, one thought at a time. Each
time you return to the breath, you’re taking one step away from addiction to
discursiveness and fear and one step forward on the path of enlightenment,
beginning with developing compassion for yourself. I love golf. I play it whenever I can. No matter what kind of game I’m
having, I can hit only one ball at a time. Each ball is the only ball; my
mind has to be fresh every time. If I think of the balls I’ve hit or the
balls I will hit, I’m not really hitting this ball. I’m only
ingraining bad habits. It’s the same with placement. If you’re not crisp and
fresh in recognizing and releasing thoughts, you’re not really meditating;
you’re ingraining sloppiness. Those thoughts will gain power, and eventually
you won’t be meditating at all. You’ll just be thinking.
Recognizing, acknowledging and releasing a thought is like reaching the
top of a mountain. It’s worthy of the warrior’s cry, “Ki ki so so!”
What we celebrate is leaving behind the self-indulgent fantasies that will
rob us of our life unless we work with them properly. Inspiration, view,
effort, trust, mindfulness and awareness support us in this. The more we’re able to gather our attention and focus, the stronger our
mind becomes, the stronger the experience becomes and the stronger the
result becomes. We know we’re able to place our minds properly when we can
hold our focus on the breathing for roughly twenty-one cycles without our
mind becoming enormously distracted.
Continual Placement
Placing our mind on the breath is now fairly easy. We’ve learned to mount
the horse, and now we feel comfortable being in the saddle. The horse is
walking along the trail. We’re experiencing how it feels to be on the
breath, to be continually in placement. When discursiveness and distraction
take us off the trail, by and large we’re able to implement placement and
get back on. What allows us to do this—continual placement—is further
development of mindfulness and awareness, lack of laziness and remembering
the instructions.
Another reason we’re able to successfully place our mind on the breath is
that we have confidence in the reasons why we’re meditating. We do it with
enthusiasm because we know it will bring us peace. We see the futility of
outside concerns, fantasies, thoughts and emotions. We’re willing to give
them up at least for the period of our meditation because we see the
benefits of doing so. Placement has become a reasonable thing to do. When resting our mind on the breathing and relating to our thoughts with
ease becomes the norm, we’re coming to the end of this stage. A benchmark is
that we’re about to rest our minds for roughly 108 cycles of the breath
without being caught in distraction. Through 108 breaths, in and out, we can
be mindful of the breathing. Although we may experience some discursiveness,
the thoughts aren’t bothersome or large enough that we lose mindfulness and
forget the breathing altogether.
At this stage our mindfulness and stability last only so long; then our
mind drifts off. But when the mainstay of our practice is that we can stay
on the breathing for 108 breaths, giving ourselves a little wiggle room in
that we will be neither completely still nor completely distracted. Then
we’ve graduated from the second to the third stage, which is known as
repeated placement.
Repeated Placement We might feel like we have been doing repeated placement since the
beginning. But the landscape of meditation is vast, and the stages
progressively subtle, because they describe our experience, which becomes
more and more refined. The Tibetan word for this stage is len, which
means to retrieve, to gather, to bring back. We’ve learned how to place our
mind and how to continue to place our mind, but occasionally a thought still
breaks out like a wild horse galloping across the plains. In the first two
stages this happened incessantly. By the third stage it happens only
occasionally. During the second stage, we learned to enjoy the ride. We’re delighted
that we can stay in the saddle and enjoy the scenery. In the third stage we
become more confident. But the horse will have spontaneous moments of
excitement and wildness. Now and then it rears or bucks or leaves the trail.
We have to bring it back. We practice occasionally retrieving it throughout
the third stage, and by the end we do it less and less. Our mindfulness is
maturing into stability. Now we’re able to focus on our breathing, on being present. When the mind
departs, it’s usually to chase fantasies of little pleasures, from food to
better weather to romantic adventures. This is elation: we’re holding our
mind too tightly. We’re focused on the breath so hard that the mind suddenly
departs. As this stage progresses, the speed and efficiency with which we
retrieve our mind increases. By comparison, the way we extracted ourselves
from thoughts in earlier stages looks messy. Sometimes it was like
quicksand—the harder we tried to get out, the more we were embroiled. But
now, because mindfulness is so strong, we’re able to remove ourselves with
precision. By the end of this stage we’ve achieved one of the milestones of
shamatha: stability. Mindfulness is so potent that we’re able to
remain on the breath without ever being fully distracted. Awareness is also
becoming more astute. We’re beginning to catch thoughts before they occur. Our meditation isn’t as clear and vibrant as it could be, but it feels
good and peaceful because we’ve stabilized our minds. Throughout the course
of a session, our mind always remains in the theater of meditation. This is
an admirable accomplishment. In Tibet it is likened to a vulture soaring
high in the sky over a dead animal. This bird now always keeps its eye on
the food. It may drift a little to the left or right, but it never loses
sight of the food. Similarly our minds may drift here and there, but never
away from the breath. Before the end of the third stage, sometimes we were present for our
practice and sometimes we weren’t. Now we’re there for all of it. This is
stability. It didn’t happen because we hit ourselves over the head with an
overly simplified meditation technique. We achieved it gently and precisely
through repetition, consistency, view, attitude, intention, proper posture
and good surroundings.
Close Placement The entry to the fourth stage, which is known as close placement,
is marked by nondistraction. We always remain close to the breath. That’s
when we know we’ve crossed the border. This is stability. We know that even
though the horse will wander here and there, it won’t be leaving the trail. Our meditation now takes on a different twist. Previously our main
concern was not to be distracted from the breath. We were worried that our
mind was going to be sucked back into everyday problems. We were always
wondering if we’d be strong enough to return to the breath. Now we’re more
relaxed. We’re no longer wondering if we can stay on the breath because we
know we can. We’re no longer concerned about outside influences pulling us
away from meditation because we know they won’t. Our confidence is
heightened. Now we’re concerned about the quality of our meditation—the
texture, the experience. Before we were worried that we couldn’t get a cup
of coffee; now we want a mocha cappuccino. How can we make our minds
stronger, more vibrant? This is our new priority. By and large, we’ve overcome the obstacles of laziness and forgetting the
instructions. These obstacles were bad because they kept us from meditating.
By the end of the third stage and into the fourth stage we’re dealing with
the obstacles of elation and laxity. Either extreme has distracting results.
However, since by now we’re always remaining at the scene of our practice,
these are considered good problems to have. In Tibet we’re warned that at the fourth stage we might be fool enough to
think we’ve achieved enlightenment or high realization—the mind feels so
strong and stable and good. Because the struggle with our mind has been
reduced greatly, there’s a quality of joy and ease. But if we enjoy the
stability of the mind too much, it will become too relaxed. We might not
reach the other stages. Hence the obstacle of laxity. Our mind is stable but
not clear. The bird can’t land on the meat; it can only fly around it. We
need awareness to hone in, sharpen sensibility, pull our mind in tighter.
Taming
Even though the accomplishments at the third and fourth stages are
heroic, there’s further to go. In the fifth stage we’re able to tighten up
our meditation by bringing in more clarity. This stage is known as taming
because we begin to experience the true fruits of a tamed mind, something
that we began to cultivate long ago in the first stage. Taming here is the
experience of lesu rungwa, being able to make our mind workable. In
the fourth stage, we might still feel awed by the fact that we’ve tamed the
horse. But now a strong, stable and clear mind feels natural. Our mind is
not perfectly still. We still have discursive thoughts. But we’re feeling
true synergy with the horse. We’re feeling harmony. We’re no longer
struggling. The harmony and synergy create joy. A traditional metaphor for what we
experience at this stage is the delight of a bee drawing nectar from a
flower. Meditation tastes good, joyous. If you’ve ever had a hard time and
then suddenly felt the pressure lift, you might have briefly known such
bliss and liberation.
Pacifying The sixth stage is known as pacifying. A great battle has taken
place and there is victory. We’re seated on the horse surveying the field.
We know we’ve won. We feel tranquil and vibrant like mountain greenery after
a thunderstorm. Everything has been watered and energized. There is
tremendous clarity. We’re still working with a mind that is sometimes tight and sometimes
loose. In our practice we still have to make many little adjustments. But in
making these adjustments we’re no longer frantic, as we might have been in
the first few stages. Then it was questionable that we would ever make our
mind an ally, and now the peace we feel tells us that we have. Our
meditation is joyous and clear. We begin to experience not only mind’s
natural harmony, but also its inherent strength. At this stage we also feel excitement. We begin to see the possibilities
of what we can accomplish with our tamed mind. Before, this relationship was
a burden, but now it’s full of possibilities. The wild horse has been tamed.
Thoroughly Pacifying The battle may be over, but there are still a few little enemy soldiers
running around in the form of subtle thoughts, mostly about pleasure. We may
be slightly attached to how good meditation feels. There are little
dualistic rumblings. Although we know that they’re not going to disrupt our
meditation, we can’t just sit back and ignore them. In thoroughly
pacifying, we don’t dispel the thoughts as we did in stage four. Now we
seduce them, like snow falling into fire. Our meditation is becoming so
strong that when thoughts and emotions encounter its heat they naturally
dissolve. Remember the waterfall of thoughts we felt when we first sat down on the
cushion to tame our minds? It’s become a lake with only a few little
ripples.
One-Pointed
By the eighth stage, known as one-pointed, the remnants of
discursiveness have evaporated. We’re sitting there completely awake, clear
and knowing. This is possible because we’re no longer distracted. Our
meditation has developed all the attributes of perfection, which is what we
will accomplish at the ninth stage. The only difference is that at the
beginning of meditation we still have to make a slight effort to point our
mind in the direction of the breath.
Equanimity
Our meditation has come to perfection. When we sit down we engage with
the breath in a completely fluid and spontaneous manner. Our mind is strong,
stable, clear and joyous. We feel a complete sense of victory. We could
meditate forever. Even in the back of our mind, there are no traces of
thoughts. We’re in union with the present moment. Our mind is at once
peaceful and powerful, like a mountain. There’s a sense of equanimity. This is perfection. Like a finely trained racehorse, our mind remains
motionless but alive with energy. The mind has actually grown—in strength as
well as size. We feel magnanimous, expansive. This is the fruition of
peaceful abiding. Now we have a mind that is able to focus in any endeavor.
We feel centered and confident.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche is holder of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage
established by his father, the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Reprinted by
arrangement with Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., from
Turning the Mind Into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham,
2003 by
Mipham J. Mukpo.
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