A Million Thoughts: Learn All About Meditation from a Himalayan Mystic

No matter how short or long your session of meditation, your attention is going to experience nine different states. Yogic scriptures call it navaakaaraacittasthiti, literally for the nine forms of the mental state. Having spent years practicing meditation, I can tell you with utmost conviction that all great meditators, from absolute beginners to the finest of yogis, go through these stages. No one is born with the skill to meditate. It’s learnt like any other art.

Master Vasubandhu gives nine critical instructions on the art of settling your mind so that you may meditate. In his commentary on Sutraalankara, he says:

Stabilize the mind

Settle it completely

Settle it firmly

Settle it intensely

Clear it of obstacles

Pacify your mind

Completely pacify it

Channel the mind into one stream

Settle the mind in equipoise

Once you reach the ninth stage, you are ready to meditate. It seems hard work, it perhaps it is too. But if you are serious about meditation, eventually it will become effortless to you. Following the aforesaid nine instructions pushes your attention into a different state. Each state is progressively better than the preceding one. During the days of my intense practice, I used to remind myself of these instructions at least twice in a span of 24 hours.

A disciple once asked his guru, “Why do we pray after completing our meditation?”

“We do it to thank God that it’s over,” the guru quipped.

On days, meditation truly feels like a boring and difficult activity. I remember feeling extremely tired and exhausted from intense meditation lasting 18 hours a day, sometimes 22, and doing it like a madman day in and day out for hundreds of days. But, you need that kind of madness to succeed at anything. It’s that madness that gets you results.

If you remind yourself of the nine instructions on building, directing and harmonizing your attention, your mental state will go through a transformation in nine stages. It’s important to understand that you’ll experience these nine stages in every session of meditation. They are not post-meditative states. Instead, you’ll experience them every time you sit down and meditate. In the beginning, you may never experience the ninth or even the fourth state for any more than a few seconds. If you do, then probably you had dozed off. As you progress on the path, however, you will slip into the ninth stage of your attention within the first ten minutes, if not earlier. The rest of your session will be good meditation. Here are the nine states or stages of attention. For now, I’m giving a brief account on the instructions on attention. In the subsequent sections, you’ll learn how to put these instructions into practice for flawless meditation.

Positioning of Attention

Scriptures call it cittasthaapana. It also means placement of the mind. This is the first stage in the life of a meditator. At this stage, the mind constantly wanders off and doesn’t stay on a thought for any more than a few seconds. Meditation feels more like a battle with the mind at this stage. Basically, a meditator’s attempt to channelize his thoughts only results in more restlessness at this stage. This is the beginning of your meditation. You sit down with an alert mind and position your attention at your object of meditation (which could be breath, sound, form or void, but more on that in later sections). This stage corresponds to the first instruction: stabilizing your mind.

Intermittent Attention

This stage is called samsthaapana and it also means comforting or encouraging attention. The meditator experiences short periods (lasting a few seconds) of good attention during the meditation.

These are the times when the mind is not wandering off. After a mental quietude of a few seconds, thoughts come knocking again, but often the meditator remains unaware for several minutes of the stray thoughts. He ‘forgets’ that he is meditating.

For most part, you’ll discover that your mind wanders off. Every time it does, bring your attention back with the second instruction: settling your mind completely. You had stabilized your mind in the first stage and now you are focused on settling it.

Constant Attention

This stage is called avasthaapana, which, interestingly, also means to expose. What happens when your body is exposed to heat or cold – you feel it more, right? Similarly, when you expose your mind during meditation, you become more aware and alert.

Mindfulness is exposing your mind. The primary difference between this and the earlier stage is the degree of alertness. In this stage, the meditator keeps his vigil on-guard and becomes aware as soon as the mind is distracted.

To strengthen your attention and improve its quality, follow the fourth instruction: settling your mind intensely

Fixed Attention