Concentration skills

Thinking you are a poor meditator? Doubting whether meditation is the right thing for you? Well, you are not alone.. The problem is you have to understand what constitutes concentration so that you know which areas to work on.

Do you know that meditation entails distinct types of concentration skills? In general, there are two (as operationalized by Lutz et al., 2008):

  • Focused attention involves directing and sustaining attention on a particular task or object. Naturally, one trained in focused attention will naturally develop the abilities to: detect mind-wandering and any other distractors, disengage from distractors, and reshift attention back to task or object.
  • Open monitoring involves sustaining no explicit focus on objects. Roughly speaking, one merely executes neutral monitoring on sensory, perceptual, and various other stimuli.

How do these skills apply to Vajrayana meditation?

FOCUSED ATTENTION:
  1. Taking refuge to the Triple Gem (5 min)
  2. Supplicating for forgiveness (5 min)
  3. Taking vows (5 min)
  4. Chanting mantra (15 min or longer)
OPEN MONITORING:
  1. Dissolving into luminosity (15 min or longer)
FOCUSED ATTENTION:
  1. Dedicating merits to all sentient beings (5 min)           +
    =====================================
    Total time approx. 30 min or longer

The stated length of time is only a rough approximation for beginners. In practice, how much time to allocate in each stage or in total should vary across individuals. As your aptitude grows, you will find yourself able to perform the first three stages each in less than one minute.

Expert meditators are able to incorporate the first four stages into one single phase of focused attention; that is, while chanting mantra, they are able to maintain the motivational and attitudinal aspects of taking refuge to the Triple Gem, supplicating for forgiveness, and taking vows. Moreover, they are able to transcend the dimension of time by meditating 24 hours for years (e.g. the First Patriarch of Zen Master Bodhidharma who spent 9 years meditating in a cave without talking, eating, etc.).

Meditation and the mind

H.E. Trizin Tsering Rimpoche (personal communication, May 4, 2009) says:

"The ordinary mind is inescapably clouded with ignorance. Enlightenment means to turn ignorance to Buddhahood. Because we all have the same inherent Buddha nature within ourselves, only efforts differentiate us in the end. The more we work effortfully on eroding ignorance, the higher levels of spirituality we attain--from ordinary humans, Gods, Arahat, Bodhisattvas, Mahabodhisattvas, to Buddhas.

There is nothing mystical about the concepts of spirituality in Buddhism. Mysticism exists only in the ignorant mind. Simply put in everyday terms, practicing meditation enables one to transcend one's previous levels of ignorance and be able to decode or demystify whatever one's doubts with the appropriate levels of analysis."

The various temptations that we face in life--from food, fame, to sex--invariably keep our mind spinning restlessly. We are so accustomed to be entertained by the external environment (e.g. music, movies, games, etc.) that we lose touch with our inner spirituality. As a result, we often get obsessed with ends rather than become mindful of simply being (or means). Taking on the commitment to practice Vajrayana meditation serves to erode our ignorance of inner selves and uncover our inner Buddha nature, enhancing our self-well-being as well as the ability to contribute to that of others. In short, the journey to become a Buddha though challenging yet is the most rewarding.

* Who was I?
* Where do I come from?
* Who am I?
* Why am I here?
* Where do I go after death?
* What will I be?

Play the whole game

Focused attention

Can you recall a time when you were so absorbed in a task--be it work, game, or study--that you completely lost track of yourself and the surroundings?

  • Why were you be able to be completely focused on it? What could be the possible elements conducive to your absorption?
  • Were these elements derived from the environment or more from your discretion?
  • Do these elements have similar characteristics to other absorbing instances in your life?

Open monitoring

  • Can you recall a time when your mind was so tranquil that although it was not clouded with any thoughts or even slight emotions, it was fully aware of whatever was occurring?
  • What could be the possible causes of this tranquility? Could they be replicated?

Focused attention and open monitoring

  • Do you think you have better understood what are the prerequisites to focused attention and open monitoring?
  • Do you think you will be able to apply focused attention and open monitoring out of your own will in this meditation practice?

Now take fifteen minutes or so to put what you know about yourself into practice... Let's play a rough junior version of it. Don't worry if you can't practice it perfectly for now. This is just to get a threshold experience, to gauge its level of difficulty so to speak. You may want to review the stages to practice them all at once.

Be sure to take note of how you feel, what difficulties you face, etc. afterwards. We will come back to these notes later.

Some of the prompts are provided here; feel free to come up with additional questions and thoughts.