Nine Stages of Training the Mind

By Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

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.

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.

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.