What Is Samadhi? With Christina Feldman

Join us for our annual challenge to commit to a daily meditation practice throughout the month of January. This year, our Meditation Month teacher, Christina Feldman, will guide us through the cultivation of samadhi. Samadhi is an integral part of meditative development showing us the way to cultivate what the Buddha refers to as a well-trained heart and mind that comes to know the deepest peace and happiness. This first video explores, "What Is Samadhi?" and includes a guided meditation.

Transcript

Welcome to this meditation month offered by Tricycle,

The Buddhist Review,

Where we will reflect on the development,

The meditative development of Samadhi,

A word that I will unpack as we go along in this first session.

I would wholeheartedly encourage you to explore this practice as deeply as you can over this month,

Both on the cushion and in the whole of your life.

Its benefits are profound,

Developing what the Buddha described as a well-trained heart,

The well-trained mind.

I'd like to begin by offering you a quote from the Samyutta Nikaya,

Where the Buddha says,

Just as a river Ganges flows towards the ocean,

Slopes towards the ocean,

Inclines towards the ocean,

So too a practitioner who cultivates and develops Samadhi flows,

Slopes,

And inclines towards Nirvana,

Inclines towards awakening and liberation.

So in this first session,

What I would like to reflect upon is what do we mean by Samadhi.

There are two words that you will come across as you travel the meditative path.

One is Samadhi and the other Samatha,

Again,

Both Pali words.

My understanding is that Samatha refers to any training in calming the mind,

Calming anything that is agitated in mind and in body.

Samadhi is often seen as being the fruit of this calming.

The mind that can sustain both intention and attention.

Both words are frequently or mostly preceded by the word Samah,

Which means right or wise attentiveness that has its roots in ethics and has the aspiration of freeing the mind,

Freeing the heart from agitation and traveling a path of awakening,

Of liberation.

More accurately,

The word Samadhi and Samatha too really translates as to gather,

To gather together or to collect together.

The image that is sometimes used in the text is one of gathering harvested corn or wheat and bringing it together into a kind of oneness,

A unified whole.

I think of this as the integration or the unification of body,

Mind and present moment.

And I think as we reflect on our own experience,

We see that this unification or this integration is often absent.

That our body is in one place,

Our mind is occupying some other place and the present moment is frequently just forgotten.

The image that I often refer to or use is the image of a very skilled sheepdog.

And in Wales,

They have these sheepdogs and actually throughout the country,

They have these sheepdogs that are sent out in the autumn to gather together the sheep that are spread over the hillsides,

On the mountainsides and to gather the sheep from the pastures that have dried out and no longer nourish them,

Where the sheep are not thriving.

And a wise sheepdog never intimidates or harms the sheep in this process.

But they gather them together and move the sheep from these pastures that are worn out and guide them and lead them to pastures where they will flourish and thrive.

In the practice of developing Samadhi,

We are doing much the same within the landscape of our own minds and our own hearts.

We're gathering and collecting our attention from places,

From pastures where we don't thrive.

The fields of rumination,

The fields of distractedness,

Of obsession,

Of proliferating thought and stories and narratives,

Where we too often simply become exhausted.

And we're learning to gather our attention from those fields and guide our attention into this mind,

Into this body,

In a collected,

A unifying way.

And this is a pasture.

This is a field where we do begin to thrive.

We're guiding our attentional capacity into the fields of calmness,

Into the fields of mindfulness,

Into the fields of stillness,

The landscape of heart and mind,

Where we flourish,

Where there is creativity,

Where there is appropriate responsiveness,

Where there is a way of inhabiting the moment that we find ourselves in.

This is much more than just concentration.

I think concentration for many people has associations or the real experience of something that is forced,

Something that is driven.

We might remember times in our childhood where we've been commanded to pay attention and to concentrate.

Samadhi is something much more than this.

There's a certain attitude that is needed in developing samadhi.

It's so fascinating to me that in the text,

The Buddha says,

In a mind of happiness,

Attention finds a true foundation.

This often is heard as something rather odd or unusual or something that doesn't make any sense because we often see happiness as going to be the outcome of samadhi.

Whereas actually the Buddha speaks about laying the foundations where the mind is willing to gather,

It's willing to calm,

It's willing to collect,

It's finding delight and joy in that collectedness.

It doesn't mean that we come to our meditation cushion elated and blissful.

It doesn't mean that everything is wonderful in our lives,

But it is really developing this commitment and this dedication to rest within a sense of easefulness,

A willingness to meet what life is bringing to us.

But it may mean in developing that mind of happiness that we look carefully at our lives and we might look carefully at where we're practicing unhappiness,

Where we're practicing unhappiness in the sense of being rather enchanted by our narratives,

Our stories,

Our obsessions,

Where we're practicing distractedness,

Fragmentation that leads the mind to be so agitated and so unsettled.

And when I think of the word happiness,

I don't think of a state.

I don't think of a particularly emotional experience that has only one flavor.

I think of it much more as a sense of easefulness,

Simplicity,

Spaciousness,

And sometimes this means making changes in our lives,

Something that we will reflect on as this month develops.

This development of samadhi is not something that is unique to the Buddhist path.

If you look at any contemplative tradition in any religion,

You will see the same encouragement to learn how to sustain a wholeheartedness,

To learn how to sustain intention and attention.

You will see the encouragement to gather and to calm and to be able to listen inwardly.

We can pretty much accurately assume that the practice of samadhi was the primary practice in India at the time that the Buddha ventured on his own path of awakening.

In the story that we inherit of the Buddha's journey,

He sought out the most proficient and well-known practitioners of his time,

Practiced with them,

And developed deep states of samadhi and absorption.

But he also found he was disappointed.

He found that these deep states of absorption,

Of gatheredness,

They were states that had beginnings and they had endings.

And he remained somewhat dissatisfied with these states,

As delightful and as blissful and as collected as they were,

He remained somewhat disappointed in discovering that they actually didn't deliver the lasting happiness and the lasting peace and freedom that he sought for.

So this was the beginning of Buddha really introducing something quite new and unique into this pathway,

Because he spoke about using samadhi,

The power of samadhi,

The power of stillness and collectedness,

And turning this towards a development of understanding and liberating insight.

He spoke about turning the collected mind towards really experientially seeing deeply the arising and passing of all things,

The changing nature of all things.

He turned the samadhi to really investigate what is dissatisfaction,

What is unsatisfactoriness,

How does it arise,

What triggers this background noise of discontent,

Of there being something missing.

And he used the power of samadhi to really investigate the whole domain of who am I?

What do I mean by self?

You know,

How is self formed?

Is it real?

Is it true?

Or is it something that is a process constantly changing?

And through developing the samadhi and turning it in this way to investigate,

To understand,

This is where the Buddha forged new pathways that developed an understanding,

A level of insight that truly liberated the heart from greed,

From confusion,

From ill will,

Directed towards an unshakable liberation of the heart.

As we move on in reading the early texts,

It's clear that the Buddha never left this pathway or cultivation of samadhi behind.

In the discourses,

We get the short version of the path of awakening,

That a practitioner goes and takes their seat at the roots of a tree or in an empty hut.

They close their eyes,

They develop deep states of absorption,

They get up and really proclaim that I've done what needs to be done.

It is the short version.

It doesn't resemble most people's pathways.

For most of us,

Our pathway is one of valleys and peaks,

Times when we feel we're getting somewhere,

Times when we feel we've entirely lost the plot,

Times when we feel we understand something deeply,

Other times when we feel we're just really beginning.

What we do glean from the Buddha's teaching is that samadhi can be powerfully used in the service of understanding,

The insight that truly liberates.

Samadhi providing the inner stillness,

The inner calmness and collectedness and stability that can be turned towards awakening and freedom.

As I say,

This is a very short version we read in the text.

When we practice,

We are often faced with a very wayward and uncooperative mind.

We have intentions to be present,

To attend wholeheartedly,

To find that time and time again,

Those intentions and our attention is hijacked and sabotaged by passing thoughts,

By plans,

By ruminations,

By memories.

We meet the habit of fragmentation,

Too often encountered both in our lives and in our practice,

Where our bodies are in one place and our minds are quite separately inhabiting a different space.

From the Buddha's perspective,

This fragmentation,

This disunification is truly a recipe for distress,

For confusion,

For struggle and for heedlessness.

And this disunification is very often a recipe for unhappiness.

I'd like to offer you a quote from the Dharmapada,

One of the early most beloved collections of the Buddha's teaching,

Where the Buddha recognizes and acknowledges the waywardness of the mind.

Where he says,

This mind,

Hard to control,

Flighty,

Alighting where it wishes,

One does well to train.

The well-trained mind brings happiness and deepens happiness.

Many practitioners will recognize that Samadhi,

This quality of intercollectedness,

Calm and stillness,

Is in reality the Achilles heel of their practice.

We can have many insights,

But too often they just remain at a conceptual level.

We know about dukkha,

We know about unsatisfactoriness and what triggers it.

We know about impermanence,

And we have glimpses of non-self and non-clinging.

Yet somehow that knowing too often doesn't really seem to sink into our bones in a way that transforms the landscape of our heart and mind.

That gap,

That sense of dissonance can be so frustrating to us.

When we find that time and time again,

Our intentions and attention are sabotaged essentially by psychological,

Emotional habits of reactivity.

That so often our intentions and attention are sabotaged by agitation.

Samadhi is a process,

It's development,

It's a process.

It's a cultivation that takes truly some commitment,

Some time,

And some dedication.

But it is the cultivation of a mind that feels to be a true friend,

That heals dissonance,

That allows for creativity and responsiveness.

That is the foundation of liberating insight.

It's so important to recognize that this is a pathway,

It is a training,

It is a cultivation.

And it is really worth developing,

You know,

A dedicated piece of time to this cultivation,

To not be discouraged,

To not yield to frustration.

But to really see this process of calming is often new territory for us.

We can have such a long history of agitation and reactivity and narrative building.

And it takes care to begin to calm all of this.

We can appreciate the challenges that we face in developing this pathway,

But perhaps also sense the profound benefits of this well-trained mind.

I would really recommend a specificity of intention in your practice in this month.

So often we have rather generalized intentions that I'll be mindful today,

You know,

I'll be aware today.

And we find that those intentions are forgotten so easily.

It's almost as if they're too generalized.

Specificity of intention means sustaining a focus,

Sustaining a contemplation over a period of time so that it can truly begin to sink into our bones.

And we begin to glimpse,

Or we begin to taste the landscape of a well-trained heart.

I would encourage you to give this whole of this month over to the development and the cultivation of Samadhi.

You don't need to be concerned about missing out on insight or missing out on kindness.

You will find that all of this comes to you.

Yet there is something about being quite specific in our intentions to give ourselves wholeheartedly to this one intention of developing a well-trained heart and mind,

To developing calm abiding,

To developing our capacity for stillness,

Collectedness,

Gatheredness.

There's no right amount of time to sit.

In my own experience in developing Samadhi,

You need to listen inwardly.

There are times when it is completely appropriate to get up from your cushion or your seat.

If the body is complaining,

If you find there's been an energy slump,

Or if you find that you're beginning to struggle and turn the whole practice into some kind of battleground,

It is better in those moments to get up and to do some walking or to move.

Sometimes it's helpful to go past that first moment where your body is shouting at you or your mind is shouting at you to stop the practice.

To go past that first moment,

To again,

Regather,

Recollect,

And then perhaps in just a few minutes to respond to what your body and mind are telling you.

If the practice is going well and there is goalposts for this,

You know you're not struggling,

There is a sense of contentment,

Don't go for set periods of time to sit.

Go for minimums but not maximums.

If you're well,

If the mind-body are being cooperative,

Are engaged,

Don't set a maximum.

Listen inwardly to when it's the right time to come out of your meditation posture.

There's no such thing as too much collectedness in our lives.

But to be aware that intention needs an ongoing renewal.

It's not enough for most people to set an intention in the beginning of their days to be kind,

To be collected,

To be gathered.

We need to be sensitive to all the moments when agitation or disunification or fragmentation is happening.

Beginning to hear the sounds of this in our minds and bodies and to renew intentions in those moments.

Ah yes,

I can return to the touch of my feet on the ground.

I can return to just this breath,

To gather and to collect again.

It is actually so important to be doing this in our lives and not to anticipate that a period of time on a cushion is going to have a magical effect in terms of developing samadhi and collectedness.

To sense what it is like,

To sustain this intention through our days,

Both on the cushion and off the cushion.

The benefits will come.

The benefits will be felt.

So let's end this first session with beginning to practice what we've just been exploring.

You will find in the texts that the Buddha was quite light on prescribing how to practice.

But what you do discover is that there are many moments of encouraging the use of the breathing process as a place of collectedness.

But in other parts of the Pali Canon,

You will find other objects suggested and offered.

Sounds,

Sights,

Images.

For some people,

Because of histories of breathing issues or sometimes even with histories of trauma,

Mindfulness of breathing is not a restful place to be.

And if that is so for you,

Then it's really important that you choose a different object where there's a greater sense of easefulness,

Wellness,

And access.

What is so important in this development of samadhi is that it's not a battleground.

It's not an endeavor to force your attention,

Where it can feel to be a welcoming space in which to settle.

So I encourage you to find a posture for yourself where you feel supported,

Where you feel as easeful as you can be,

Where there's a marriage of both alertness and softness.

We begin by developing an embodied intentionality in our posture.

So beginning to find that posture,

Arriving in the body,

Inhabiting the body,

However it is in this moment,

As much as you're able to,

Developing an uprightness in your back,

In your neck,

Establishing as much as you're able to a sense of balance,

Of groundedness,

To feel your legs,

Your feet,

Touching the mat,

The chair,

Just mindful of the sensations that are present in those places of contact,

Your hands touching each other,

Aware of the touch of your clothing and the air on your skin,

An intentional posture of alertness,

Wakefulness,

A body of calmness,

Just allowing the thoughts,

The images,

The memories just to sit in the background of your attention and foregrounding this mindfulness of the body sitting just now,

The body sensing,

The body listening,

The body breathing in the midst of all of this,

Cultivating a calm abiding,

A wholeheartedness of attending,

Sensing what is well in your body just now,

Even what is pleasant in your body just now,

Appreciating the quality of gatheredness,

Collectedness,

Appreciating the sensations in your body that are pleasant,

That are well,

Exploring what it is to breathe into the entire body,

Aware of the body expanding with the in-breath,

The body relaxing with the out-breath,

The breath breathing itself without any need to control or regulate,

Sensing when there's a short breath and there's a long breath,

Mindful of the small pause between the ending of the out-breath and the beginning of the next breath,

Breathing in,

Calming anything that is agitated in the body,

Allowing the body to soften,

Just sensing the easefulness of that softening of inhabiting the body wholeheartedly,

Breathing in,

Breathing out,

Calming anything that is agitated in the mind,

In the heart,

The thoughts,

Obsessions,

The ruminations,

The images,

Not holding to anything that arises in the mind,

Aware of the arising,

But also of the passing,

Allowing the mind,

The heart,

To settle into the body,

To inhabit the body fully,

Breathing in,

Brightening the mind,

Brightening the heart,

Breathing out,

Calming the mind,

Calming the heart,

Gathering your attention,

Directing your attention into the body-mind of this moment,

Sustaining your attention as much as you're able to and appreciating the collectedness,

The gatheredness,

The unification of body,

Mind,

And present moment.

And if you wish,

Just continuing with the practice,

The cultivation,

Or if you're ready to emerge,

Then emerging,

Opening your eyes,

Sensing the space around you,

The space around you.

Reviews

Fantastic explanation and practice. Thank you 🙏🏻

Thank you. Beautiful reminders.

Wonderful, looking forward to the next installment. 🙏🏼😊

Thank you. Very helpful. Especially to hear my struggles are not so uncommon even 2,500 years ago. Peace.

I loved it!