Today I want to discuss the perfection of concentration. I ask the monks of the Jogye Order: are you practicing it? Some may resent a layperson speaking to monks about concentration. Yet I must ask because the speech, expressions, and bodily conduct of many monks at the national rally revealed little of a concentrated mind.
Concentration is a mind gathered into one and no longer shaken
For those unfamiliar with the term, concentration is a highly stable mental condition. When the mind becomes unified, collected, and unmoving, it enters samadhi. Concentration has four stages, and the fourth is the deep absorption commonly meant by samadhi.
In samadhi, one experiences extreme quiet. Quiet is relative; it appears when noise ceases. What had been noisy? Discursive thoughts, images, desires, and innumerable afflictions. Unwanted mental activity, regret about the past, worry about the future, fear, and dread stop. The quiet may be so complete that the mind itself seems to have disappeared.
Even the first concentration changes a life
Reaching the fourth concentration would be wonderful, but even a single experience of the first concentration changes life. One tastes part of liberation of mind. Mental pain, affliction, and desires that bound the person temporarily disappear.
An ordinary mind is filled with noise. It feels compelled to do something, produces another desire, and is shaken by anger and anxiety. In the first concentration these afflictions vanish, and the mind becomes deeply joyful and comfortable. Some thoughts still arise, but they no longer irritate. One marvels that the mind can be so quiet.
The world itself remains exactly as it was moments earlier. Yet walking through it with a concentrated mind makes even one leaf appear wholly different. It is as if the world has opened anew. The peace and joy are so great that one wonders how life was lived without them.
After entering the first concentration, ordinary consciousness may remain similar to that peace until it falls back into the desire realm. This is why concentration matters.
The desire realm is not only a world after death
By the desire realm I do not mean only a cosmological destination within rebirth. I mean a mental life enclosed by greed, appetite, dark thought, and concepts. Entering concentration temporarily leaves that realm and loosens the domination of affliction.
Anyone who has known such stillness will continue seeking it. A stream-enterer has likewise taken the first step toward Buddhahood. Concentration and awakening share the experience of a mind released from the desire realm.
Concentration practice is not the posture of sitting
Methods for entering concentration exist. Watching monks sit in meditation can make people imagine that sitting itself is the practice. Yet concentration has no necessary relation to posture. Sitting is merely one convenient method.
The essence is focus, or absorption. Consider being absorbed in a book. When one enters its world and laughs or cries with the characters, thoughts of past and future disappear and other voices may not be heard. Absorption in one object stops other mental and sensory activity.
Ancient Indians discovered this human capacity thousands of years ago. When attention is held tightly on one object, the mind stops jumping elsewhere and discursive thought subsides. At the extreme, most mental activity stops. I therefore call concentration the practice of stopping.
Chanting, prayer, breath, and koans are different instruments of focus
Chanting the Buddha’s name, bowing while invoking Avalokitesvara, observing breath, or holding a koan such as “What is this?” or “the cypress tree in the courtyard” look different. Their common principle is collecting the mind on one object.
Koan practice holds an inquiry without losing it for an instant. Teachers say the koan should continue asleep and awake because focus must not break. Extreme absorption gathers the scattered ordinary mind into one and makes it quiet.
Practice begins with intentional focus, but eventually even the thought “I am concentrating” disappears. When mind is completely gathered, the separation between the concentrating subject and its object fades. This is the road toward samadhi.
Was the national monks’ rally conducted from concentration?
What mind, then, did the monks at the national rally display? Did their speech, action, gestures, and voices reveal quiet, stable concentration? In my view, they did not.
Concentration is not a ritual performed only when spare time appears. A practitioner should live continually from a concentrated mind. Is the mind comfortable? Is it quiet? Is it unified and unshaken? Was it swept away by collective anger and agitation? Was the koan abandoned?
Completing hours of seated meditation and attending a great ceremony do not constitute the perfection of concentration. Quiet and equanimity must remain in ordinary life and social action. I ask the monks again: are you practicing concentration now? May they recover its actual mind and proceed toward Buddhahood.
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