Open Enlightenment

The Myth of Concentration

Lucid dreaming is a concentration attainment, because being aware that you’re dreaming whilst in a dream is a particular state of mind, and the awareness lasts only as long as that state of mind. Lucid dreaming is the ability to induce and maintain that lucid state. The ability to cultivate and sustain any mental state is what we call ‘concentration’.

Alan Guiden is probably one of the best lucid dreamers alive. His recommended technique for inducing lucidity boils down to this: fall asleep, but remain awake.

If you haven’t already, give this a try. It’s very hard. It could even be argued that Guiden’s technique (or my summary of it, at least) isn’t a technique at all because it doesn’t really tell you how to have a lucid dream; it’s simply a description of what one is.

I don’t intend to suggest that Guiden’s writing on lucid dreaming isn’t helpful – it very definitely is – but it’s a good illustration of the fact that the only thing you can do to attain a mental state is to set your mind on attaining it, keep it set until that state arises, and then set it against wandering off.

In meditation, there’s no real ‘how-to’ for experiencing a concentration jhana. You wait until it happens, or until it stops not happening. Of course, there’s guidance given to students, but that guidance boils down to merely a description of the state: ‘Let your awareness fill your whole body… Focus the attention finely but gently,’ etc. If you do this, then that is the state; it’s not an instruction for how to do it.

It would be really great if we could give someone a proper set of instructions – for example: ‘Sit like this… Breathe this number of times per minute.’ But of course, it doesn’t work. Where mental states are concerned what ‘needs to be done’ is at the same time the result of the doing. Because the action and the result are the same thing, all the supposed ‘how-tos’ of meditation are really just descriptions of the states themselves dressed up as advice. And, like all descriptions of mental states, they are often very subjective.

Many other kinds of action – such as talking, walking, thinking or feeling – most of the time issue in results beyond themselves. But concentration, and other forms of activity that require concentration to a large degree – such as singing, making art, praying, etc. – tend to share this characteristic of the action becoming its own result.

You might argue that the results of concentration also lie outside itself, if you hold the results of concentration to be things like ‘reduction of stress’, or ‘improved memory’. But aren’t these merely side-effects? Consider: the lucid dream and the jhana will both collapse as soon as our concentration ceases. Yet walking, talking, thinking and feeling will still tend to lead to their results whether there is concentration or not.

So where does this leave the idea that we can develop the ability to concentrate, or that concentration provides us with mastery over the mind? If concentration is the cultivation and maintenance of a mental state, does it start when we focus our mind, or when we sit down on the cushion, or before both of these in the first moment we resolve it’s time to go and sit down? Likewise, when does it end, because can the mind be said to ever do anything other than concentrate? Even when the mind strays from its intended object it is nevertheless entering a state, which is sustained for a while until the next one arises.

Search for concentration and we cannot find it. Paradoxically, the more we focus upon it and look, the more it yields to the procession of our experiences framing themselves as such before each gives way to the next. Some of these frame themselves as a ‘continuation’ of the previous experience, but if our awareness is keen we see through this lie and realise its emptiness. We can either mistake concentration for the lie of ‘continuity’ or admit it’s something that’s nowhere to be found.

If it’s not something that we can even find, let alone do, how can we fool ourselves that we can or should master it? Of course, we know what is meant and what we should do when someone asks us to concentrate, and we understand it involves qualities such as focus, calmness, alertness, etc. But these are all qualities cultivated by an effort not to allow other qualities to predominate. If we’re successful at this, then we have the impression of concentration. But can we really describe as a ‘skill’ something that can only be described in terms of not allowing anything else to happen?

Alan Guiden, supreme master of lucid dreaming that he is, admits to dry periods in his practice where for weeks on end he can gain not even a sniff of lucidity. Hiroshi Motoyama, on the other hand, developed the ability to induce out-of-body experiences at will through meditation (Corazza 2008: 51-2). The downside is that several hours of sitting are usually required before astral lift-off is achieved. Alan B. Wallace strongly suggests that if you want to bring yourself up to the standard of the world’s best concentrators you’ll need to undertake a year-long retreat dedicated to doing nothing else (Wallace 2006: 162). He also mentions that the ability will start to degrade as soon as you come off retreat.

In the same way that the heart beats and the lungs breathe, the mind manufactures thoughts and impressions by breaking down the radiance of the Absolute into the splintered colours of individuality. To try to force the mind into not doing what it does is like holding the breath or trying to stop the heart. Yet I do not mean to claim that exploring the limits of our nature is somehow wrong or pointless.

I’ve experienced first-hand how it’s possible to concentrate too much. I remember a period (after reading Alan Wallace) when my practice suffered because the focus on the breath was too tight. It’s not sufficient – I discovered – to follow exclusively the sensations of the breath. Some ‘room’ has to be left for the jhana, because how can you experience the jhana if you’re focused too tightly to notice it?

Focus on the breath is not the ‘how-to’, but only an aspect of the description of the state. And the more we consider the nature of concentration, the clearer it becomes that ‘mastery’ is something alien to its nature.

References

Ornella Corazza (2008). Near-Death Experiences. Oxford: Routledge.

Alan Guiden (forthcoming). Traveling. London: Aeon Books.

B. Alan Wallace (2006). The Attention Revolution. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications.

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Rapid Versus Gradual Awakening

Vipassana plus magick is perhaps the quickest, driest route to enlightenment there is. It was the path I followed, and although I’m not necessarily an evangelist for this route I think there are problems with the criticism that it makes sense to ‘hold back’ on awakening and develop concentration and morality instead.

The first problem is the simple question of time. How much do you suppose you have to plan your ideal realisation? The longer we ‘delay’ enlightenment the greater the risk of dying before we get there. The Great Work is no less subject to impermanence than any other goal.

Secondly, how much mastery of concentration and morality is enough? If you can sit in samadhi for a whole day, should you aim for a week? Similarly, morality: how easily should selfless acts come before you’re a worthy candidate for enlightenment? Should you wait until you’ve landed a Nobel Peace Prize?

Concentration and morality are attainments based in the relative world. There’s always more work you could do on them. This leads to the third problem: because they’re relative attainments they can stand in the way of the Absolute.

If you can remain in samadhi for a whole day, then great, but there will always be situations in which you can’t. You might be ill, or problems may arise in your life that distract you, or the people next door are too noisy, or an earthquake strikes. No matter how good you get, something can always trash the mastery. The same goes for morality: similar sorts of factors can disturb the purity of our intentions and – of course – there’s never any guarantee that even the most refined of intentions will produce its appropriate result in the real world.

In short, the assumption that concentration and morality can be ‘mastered’ sometimes arises from a belief in a masterful self, whereas mastery of concentration and morality actually consists in realising that they can’t be done – not in the way we might imagine they can.

Fourthly, the idea that fast awakening in itself is somehow morally slack or retrograde is presumptuous. What specific harm can a rapid awakening be supposed to have done? Any answer that points to something that may happen in the future rather than to what is supposed to have occurred already I propose to disregard, on the basis that people are innocent until they actually commit a crime.

Doubtless, there are gurus with psychopathic personalities. Their moral failures generally involve financial or sexual exploitation of their followers. Treating students in this way will hold them back rather than awaken them. I’m not aware of any guru who could be accused of awakening too many people too quickly. Quite the opposite, sadly. And let’s face it: concentration and morality were never going to fix people like these. Someone with the moral world-view of a three year-old was never going to sit down and think ‘I really must get myself sorted before I go too deep’, so why pretend there’s any solution to enlightened fuck-ups other than cutting off the supply of fragile personalities who unfortunately flock to them?

The world is full of nut-jobs who will do you over, given the chance. There are probably more plumbers, builders and bankers among them than gurus. If a banker made your investment grow ‘too quickly’, or a builder put up your house ‘too fast’, you’d have every right to be suspicious. But it wouldn’t be correct to assume automatically that they’d committed a crime, or that you were necessarily their victim.

If someone has awakened and discovers that this makes them happier or more free, then choosing to help others follow the same path is surely more morally developed than vanishing into silence. The fact remains that some people have a harder time with dry insight practice than others. If the issue lies with the person rather than the path, then an alternative route may indeed be a good tactic. It’s understandable that someone fortunate enough to enjoy a swifter ride may attract suspicion, but genuine psychopaths behave in the same way regardless of whether they set themselves up as gurus: they intimidate, dominate and exploit.

I strongly doubt that dry insight practice is a common factor among psychopaths.

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