Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte,and#8221;Samadhi and#8211; Concentration in the Highest Senseand#8221; is track from the talk and#8220;Buddhism and the Path of the Higher Evolutionand#8221; by Sangharakshita.
In answering the question and#8216;What is Buddhism?and#8217;, Sangharakshita identifies higher evolution and#8211; the development of higher states of consciousness and#8211; with the twelve links in the progressive trend of the Buddhaand#8217;s teaching of conditioned co-production. Talk given in 1969 as part of and#8220;The Higher Evolutionand#8221; series.
[Music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [Music] And now, seventhly, concentration. Concentration. On this link, this stage is based on an important psychological principle, which is that when we are completely happy, completely blissful, then all our emotional energies are unified. And when our emotional energies are unified, we are concentrated. The happy person is the concentrated person. A happy person is not restless. They do quite a lot. They go about quite a lot, say quite a lot, but the happy person is not restless. And in the same way we may say that the concentrated person, the person who is unified, whose energies are unified, is a happy person. And all this is related to the practice of meditation, because meditation begins with concentration. But we know only too well how difficult many people find concentration. Find meditation. This is really because they are not happy. The more difficult a person finds concentration, the more difficult they find meditation, the less happy they are likely to be. The emotional energies are not unified. Concentration is not just a matter of the forcible fixation of mind. It's not just sitting down and forcing your mind onto a single point. If one does that and one can do that, then one risks a sharp reaction from one's unconscious. Concentration, really we may say, is concentration of the whole being, not just of the mind, not just of the conscious mind, not just of thought, not just of intellect. Concentration is the concentration of all the energies of one's being, emotional, intellectual, volitional, on a single point so that all the energies are streaming and flying towards that point and bringing themselves to bear fully on that point. And this is the reason, mainly for the importance of preparation for meditation. You can't sit down and simply switch your mind onto the object of concentration. You have to prepare, have to pave the way. And this is why so many people find that under the comparatively ideal conditions of the retreat, it's so much easier very often to concentrate, to meditate. We have first of all to disengage our energies from other things to direct them as it were into one channel. And when our preparations for meditation are complete, when we pave the way properly, then the concentration exercise, whether the mindfulness of breathing or any other, just puts the finishing touch, and we're away. Now there are various levels of concentration. Four are usually distinguished, and for each of them the Buddha gives a simile, a very beautiful simile. I've recounted these things before, but I make an apology for repeating these similes. The four stages with their similes represent four stages in the progressive unification of our energies. We had a diagram last winter to illustrate this, perhaps we'll produce it and even print it again. The first comparison that the Buddha gives, the first simile, illustrating the first stage of concentration or higher consciousness, is that of soap powder and water. The Buddha says, "Suppose you take soap powder," which apparently they did have in ancient India. And suppose you mix it, suppose you need it with water. You've got two things. You've got the soap powder, dry, hard. You've got the water, fluid, and you mix the two together into a ball. And you mix them in such a way that every grain of the soap powder is saturated in water. And you mix them in such a way that there's not one single drop of water extract leaking out as it were. It's just one mass, one ball of soap powder fully saturated in water. So this represents the first stage of concentration. And of course it represents the stage, we may say, of unified consciousness. It represents the stage of the union of positive and negative forces within our conscious mind. We may say represent the unification of what the Chinese tradition calls the Yin and the Yang principles within the conscious mind. It's a state therefore of harmony, of integration, of peace. And this is the first stage of concentration. It's as though the energies of the conscious and the energies of the unconscious mind were brought together, unified and harmonised. Just like the soap powder and the water in the Buddha's simile. Then the second simile, illustrating the second stage of concentration, is that of the subterranean spring. The Buddha said imagine as it were a lake of water. And that lake is fed by an underground inlet. There's a subterranean spring. The waters of which bubble up into the lake and keep it continually fresh and pure. So the waters of the lake represent that unified conscious mind, or represent the mind as unified. The conscious and the unconscious, unified, integrated. Then into that unified, the integrated consciousness that bubbles up something from deeper levels. Or if you like higher levels. So this represents, this simile represents the infusion, if you like, of a super conscious state into the ordinary. Unified conscious state. And thirdly there's the illustration of the simile of the lotuses bathed in water. The Buddha says imagine lotus flowers growing in the water, bathed in the water, saturated by the water. This represents the ordinary, unified conscious mind, not just percolated by the super conscious state. Not with the super conscious state just trickling into it as it were, but as fully permeated by that and living in it, dwelling in it, as though in an element. So this represents a higher stage still. And then there's the fourth simile for the fourth state of concentration, which is that a man wrapped in a white sheet after taking a bath. And this represents a state of complete insulation from lower states of consciousness. One is fully identified with the higher state and the lower states are all around and one is insulated from them. Sometimes we find this when we come away from the retreat. In the course of the retreat we become as it were saturated with some higher consciousness, some higher element. And when we go out from the retreat, when we come back into the city especially, we can feel this insulating us from the atmosphere around. So that we don't feel it at first, we don't react to it at first, we're not even conscious or we're at first. But this immunity, this insulation unfortunately doesn't last, it fades away into the light of common day. And this of course, we can go on. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
