The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science

747 Pages·2011·11.42 MB·English

by  M. Immergut

CONTENTS
Praise for The Mind Illuminated
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Introduction
An Overview of the Ten Stages
First Interlude: Conscious Experience and the Objectives of
Meditation
Stage One: Establishing A Practice
Second Interlude: The Hindrances and Problems
Stage Two: Interrupted Attention and Overcoming Mind-Wandering
Stage Three: Extended Continuity of Attention and Overcoming
Forgetting
Third Interlude: How Mindfulness Works
Stage Four: Continuous Attention and Overcoming Gross Distraction
and Strong Dullness
Fourth Interlude: The Moments of Consciousness Model
Stage Five: Overcoming Subtle Dullness and Increasing Mindfulness
Fifth Interlude: The Mind-System
Stage Six: Subduing Subtle Distractions
Sixth Interlude: The Stages of an Adept
Stage Seven: Exclusive Attention and Unifying the Mind
Seventh Interlude: The Nature of Mind and Consciousness
Stage Eight: Mental Pliancy and Pacifying the Senses
Stage Nine: Mental and Physical Pliancy and Calming the Intensity
of Meditative Joy
Stage Ten: Tranquility and Equanimity
Final Thoughts
Appendix A: Walking Meditation
Appendix B: Analytical Meditation
Appendix C: Loving-Kindness Meditation
Appendix D: The Jhānas
Appendix E: Mindful Review
Appendix F: Insight and the “Dark Night”
Glossary
Index
Notes
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.
Table 2. The Ten Stages and Four Milestones
Table 3. Comparison of Peripheral Awareness and Attention
Table 4. Preparation for Meditation
Table 5. The Five Hindrances
Table 6. The Seven Problems and Their Antidotes
Table 6. The Seven Problems and Their Antidotes
Table 7. Comparing the Jhānas
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Progression through the stages is not linear: Expect to be
moving between stages over several sits
Figure 2: If the skills and insights you learn on the cushion don’t
infuse your daily life, progress will be quite slow. It’s like filling a
leaky bucket.
Figure 3. Getting annoyed with every instance of mind wandering is
like tearing up the garden to get rid of the weeds.
Figure 4. Conscious awareness consists of whatever you are
experiencing in the moment.
Figure 5. You may listen intently to what a person is saying while you
are peripherally aware of other things.
Figure 6. Attention and awareness are two different ways of knowing
the world. Attention singles out some small part of the field of
conscious awareness to analyze and interpret it. Peripheral
awareness provides the overall context for conscious experience.
Figure 7. Attention moves spontaneously in three different ways:
scanning, getting captured, and alternating. Scanning is when your
focus moves from object to object, searching for something of
interest. If attention doesn’t find anything, it returns to its original
focus.
Figure 8. The third kind of spontaneous movement is where
attention alternates between two or more things.
Figure 9. Introspective peripheral awareness means the objects in
consciousness are internal—thoughts, feelings, states and activities
of mind.
Figure 10. The four-step transition to the meditation object. Step
One—Establish an open, relaxed awareness and attention, letting in
everything, but give priority to sensations over thoughts.
Figure 11. Sometimes you’ll do almost anything to put off sitting. But
the simple act of sitting down and placing your attention on the
meditation object is the essential first step from which everything
else flows.
Figure 12. Following the breath engages the mind by giving it a
challenge, and can be treated like a game. Find the beginnings and
endings of each part of the breath cycle, and the pauses in between.
Then try to observe all these points with equal clarity.
Figure 13. One part of your mind might wear a big hat marked “I” for
a short period of time, but it has no inherent ability to keep that up
for long. Inevitably, some other mental process with a different
agenda and different conditioning takes over and becomes the “I”.
Figure 14. The “mind” is not a single thing, but a rather a collective
of many different mental processes. Each has its own purpose and
goals, but all try to serve the happiness and well-being of the whole.
When you’re dissatisfied with your practice, different parts of the
mind urge you toward other sources of gratification. Trying to stay
focused on the breath can feel like herding cats.
Figure 15. By making meditation satisfying and enjoyable, the part of
the mind that wants to meditate can get the other parts to stop
resisting and join in.
Figure 16. How forgetting happens. At first your attention alternates
between the distraction and the meditation object.
Figure 17. Labeling. Practice identifying the distraction with a quick
and simple label.
Figure 18. Handling pain and discomfort. When unpleasant
sensations arise, ignore them as long as you can. Resist the urge to
move to find relief.
Figure 19. Subtle dullness is a comfortable state in which you can
still follow the breath but not vividly or intensely.
Figure 20. The different levels mindfulness works at can be
compared to dealing with a thornbush. At the first level of
mindfulness, you can learn to dodge the thornbush.
Figure 21. Overcoming gross distraction. Step 1—Recognize when a
gross distraction is present,
Figure 22. The strategy for dealing with pain begins with ignoring
unpleasant sensations for as long as possible.
Figure 23. After sustained investigation, pain often resolves itself
because you have stopped resisting and accepted its presence.
Figure 24. Exciting insights can be a powerful distraction.
Figure 25. Memories and disturbing emotions from the unconscious
mind can well up into consciousness.
Figure 26. Connecting: Compare the different parts of your breath
cycle with the corresponding parts of the previous breath cycle. Is the
current in-breath or out-breath longer or shorter when compared to
the previous breath? Has the length of the pauses changed? Do the
in-breath, out-breath, or pauses change when there’s more or less
subtle distraction, or more or less dullness?
Figure 27. In all, there are seven kinds of moments of consciousness.
The first five correspond to the physical senses: sight, sound, smell,
taste, and touch. The sixth category is called the mind sense,
meaning it includes mental objects like thoughts and emotions.
Finally, there is a seventh type of consciousness, called binding
consciousness, that integrates the information provided by the other
senses.
Figure 28. If the contents of one moment are gone before the next
arises, how do we ever put it all together so we can understand
what’s actually happening? The content of separate moments gets
briefly stored in “working” memory,” where the moments are
combined and integrated with each other. The “product” is projected
into consciousness as a “binding moment” of consciousness.
Figure 29. Any moment of consciousness is either a moment of
attention or of peripheral awareness. If it’s a moment of peripheral
awareness, it will be broad, inclusive, and holistic—regardless of
which of the seven categories it belongs to. A moment of attention,
on the other hand, will isolate one particular aspect of experience to
focus on.
Figure 30. Sitting on a deck in the mountains, gazing out at the view,
each moment of visual awareness includes a variety of objects—
mountains, trees, birds—all at the same time. Auditory moments of
awareness include everything in the audible background—birdsong,
wind in the trees, a babbling brook. On the other hand, moments of
visual attention might be restricted to just the birds you’re watching,
and auditory attention to the sounds the birds are making. Binding
moments of attention and awareness take the content from the
preceding sensory moments and combine them into a whole.
Figure 31. Ordinary conscious experience includes a significant
proportion of non-perceiving mind moments.
Figure 32. Intention in one moment determines what subsequent
moments of consciousness will take as their objects. The stronger
your intention to attend to something, the more moments of
attention are focused on that object. The lack of intention in non-
perceiving mind moments leads to more non-perceiving moments
and increased dullness.
Figure 33. In-breath—Most moments of consciousness are moments
of attention with the breath as their object, but others have knee pain
or thoughts about lunch as their object. Attention isn’t actually
moving between the breath and these distractions. Successive
moments of attention hold different objects. Interspersed among
these moments of attention are moments of peripheral awareness of
other bodily sensations.
Out-breath—If the pain in your knee draws your attention, a greater
proportion of moments of attention are devoted to knee pain than to
the breath. The pain is now a gross distraction, and the breath slips
away into the background.
Figure 34. According to this model, the phenomena of forgetting,
gross and subtle distraction, and exclusive focus all exist along a
continuum. Where each is located on that continuum depends on
only one thing: the proportion of the moments of attention in a given
period whose object is the sensations of the breath versus some
distraction.
Figure 35. As the proportion of non-perceiving moments increases,
we experience more subtle dullness. Increase it even more, and we
experience strong dullness. When the proportion becomes great
enough, we fall asleep.
Figure 36. Body Scanning. Systematically investigate discrete body
areas, examining all sensations, but looking in particular for
sensations that change with the breath. As you get better at this,
begin combining smaller areas until you can observe sensations with
equal clarity in large body regions. Any time you realize you’re in a
state where perception is much more powerful than before, shift your
focus back to the breath at the nose. Sustain this heightened
perception as long as you can, and when it declines, return to the
body scan.
Figure 37. The mind-system consists of the conscious mind and the
unconscious mind. The unconscious mind exchanges information
with the conscious mind.
Figure 38. The unconscious part of the mind-system is divided into
two major parts: the sensory mind and the discriminating mind. The
sensory and discriminating minds are each composed of many
individual sub-minds that function simultaneously and
autonomously.
Figure 39. The visual mind projects a collection of sense-percepts
into consciousness in the form of an image, which then becomes
available to the thinking/emotional mind.
Figure 40. The conscious mind is like the “boardroom of the mind-
system” where information is exchanged and discussed, and
decisions are made.
Figure 41. If, while meditating, the smell of coffee arrives in
awareness associated with a strong enough intention, attention may
move to the smell, and even the thought of “having a latte.”
Fortunately, we aren’t entirely at the mercy of these unconscious
intentions, and conscious intentions can overcome spontaneous
movements of attention.
Figure 42. The narrating mind is a sub-mind of the much larger
discriminating mind. However, it has a very special role and
importance all its own. It takes in all the information projected into
consciousness by other sub-minds.
Figure 43. When the visual mind processes information from the
eyes, an image is projected into consciousness. But in this “seeing,”
there is only the seen. When the image is further processed by the
discriminating mind, a conceptual representation is then projected
into consciousness. But in this “recognizing,” there is only the re-
cognized concept. If the image and its associations are pleasant, an
appropriate emotion is projected into consciousness. But in this
“feeling”, there is only the felt pleasure.
Figure 44. Attention moves spontaneously because unconscious sub-
minds project things into consciousness with an intention to become
an object of attention. When annoyance at the sound of a barking
dog arrives with a strong intention to be an object of attention, this
conflicts with your intention to follow the breath. Attention
alternates between the breath and the distraction, and whichever
receives more support and energy from the mind system gets the
most attention.
Figure 45. When you can clearly observe all the breath sensations
occurring in the body, at once, there’s no attention to spare and
distractions are ignored. Thoughts from your discriminating sub-
minds may keep “knocking on the door” of consciousness, but they
can’t get a “word” in edgewise. After a while, they just quit trying.
Figure 46. The flow of energy becomes a circular and continuous
movement between the body core and extremities, and the base of
the spine and the head. You might also perceive a continuous energy
exchange with the universe around you, through the top of the head,
the base of the spine, and the palms of the hands and soles of the
feet.
Figure 47. Mindfulness can continue to improve even when there is
absolutely no dullness, because mindfulness depends not only on the
number of perceiving mind moments, but also on how much
unification there is. The larger the audience for the contents of
consciousness, the more mindfulness you have.
Figure 48. The Moments of Consciousness model attributes dullness
to the presence of low-energy, objectless, non-perceiving mind
moments, interspersed among perceiving moments of
consciousness.
Figure 49. Consider a situation where unconscious sub-minds
remain tuned in and receptive to the contents of consciousness,
while at the same time, none of them project any content into
consciousness. Consciousness would cease—completely. There would
be a complete cessation of mental fabrications of any kind, including
cravings, intentions, and suffering.
Figure 50. The mind-system consists of the conscious mind, which is
a locus where information is exchanged between unconscious
sensory and discriminating minds. This same basic structure is
repeated within each of the unconscious minds. The auditory mind
has a collection of sub-minds responsible for a variety of processes,
such as pitch, intensity, and so forth, all connected by an information