From 'Concentration Work' in Meditations 6 by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.
Ajaan Lee would always recommend starting out with three to seven good, long, deep in-and-out breaths to highlight the process of breathing in the body and to give the body some energy. As the mind settles down, there’s a tendency for the breath to get very subtle and quiet, and sometimes it’s not really enough for the body’s energy needs.
Ajaan Fuang had a student one time who really liked the quiet breath. She would always go there in her meditation. I remember him criticizing her one night for that. He said, “You really have to read the body to see what it needs right now. If you go just for the quiet breath all the time, it saps your strength.”
An essential skill in meditation is learning how to read what your body needs. Give it more energy when it needs more, even though that may not seem as quiet and refined as you’d like. You’ve got to take care of both the body and the mind.
Consider the issue of directed thought and evaluation. Ajaan Lee recommended that you go through the body in quite a lot of detail to settle things down and to clear things up to create a good place where you can feel at home. People complain that it’s not quieting to think about the breath and work with the breath energy in different parts of the body.
Well, it’s part of the work needed in order to get things ready to settle down in a way that will be solid and lasting.
Be willing to do the work that’s needed for a good, solid concentration. Don’t just go hiding out in a little quiet corner. Allowing your awareness to spread and fill the whole body is what gives you the proper foundation for your meditation.
In doing this work, you exercise your faculties of mindfulness, alertness, and discernment.
There’s a tendency in some circles to encourage students talented in concentration to direct their energies in the direction of concentration. If they’re more talented in the area of analyzing the mind, they’re encouraged in the direction of discernment.
Ajaan Fuang, though, would turn tables on people. If they were already talented in concentration, he’d have them work more in learning how to think about and analyze the movements of the mind. If they were already talented in analyzing things, he’d have them learn how to be quiet: just sit with things for a while without predetermining all the time. This way, you learn how to detect when things are out of balance and to bring them back into balance when needed.
There’s work to be done. Ajaan Lee called it your concentration work: the directed thought and the evaluation.
When you start out with these things, they can be rather coarse; but by exercising them, you learn how to bring them to refinement.
Sometimes you find that refined breath is too weak. You’re drifting off.
You’ve got to strengthen things again, to get in touch with the body and to gain a sense of how to listen to it and respond to its needs. This is especially difficult for people who have body issues, who basically want to run away and block out their awareness of the body.
Learn how to trust the different sensations in the body and trust your ability to handle them.
In the beginning, you may want to start with just one little, familiar spot in the body or a spot that seems okay, and be willing to hang out there for a while. It may not seem impressive, it may not seem all that quiet yet, but you’re working on potentials here. You’re also working on patience, learning how to allow potentials to develop in a positive direction.
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From 'Concentration Work' in Meditations 6 by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Meditations6/Section0014.html
16 March 2023
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