When your faith is firm and you are intent on Nirvana, develop to fullness the threefold training — virtue, concentration, and wisdom. Once virtue is kept pure, cultivate the mind toward calm: this is meditation, the training of one’s own mind to be steady and to give rise to the wisdom that sees clearly into the Dharma. Its aim is letting go, being without grasping. Methods differ according to each person’s temperament, but all aim at a single point: they are like the many tools for boring wood, differing in shape yet made for one purpose — to bore through the wood.
The stages of concentration
To sit calm and still, fixed on the breath, is already the keeping of virtue; the calm born of it is concentration; and to contemplate the in-and-out breath so as to see it as impermanent and without self is wisdom. Developing mindfulness of breathing is thus to practise virtue, concentration, and wisdom all together, at one stroke. Sit in a composed posture, without forcing the body, and follow the breath at every moment: as it comes in, as it goes out, short or long, from beginning to end. Whenever the mind slips off toward other thoughts, mindfulness has lapsed; when you notice, restore it gently and bring the mind back to the breath. At first this happens often; but with steady practice mindfulness will learn to know the breath of its own accord.
When mindfulness is full, you will see that breath, mind, and mindfulness are present together at a single point, as one thing. Then the mind rises above the five hindrances — desire for the senses, ill will, drowsiness, restlessness, and doubt fall away — and it is established in concentration. From there let the breath grow ever finer, until it seems almost to have ceased: do not be alarmed, for the breath is still there, only in a most subtle state. Then train yourself to enter and leave concentration with skill, knowing each state of the mind in the order it unfolds, so that you can retrace the way another time. And in every posture — standing, walking, sitting, lying — keep mindfulness throughout.
Walking meditation
Meditation can also be cultivated while walking. Mark out a path of some twenty or thirty paces, and walk it to and fro. Standing still at its head, gather mindfulness; when the mind is steady, step off with the right foot first. Let the stride be moderate, the gait natural and slow, and at every step recite in the mind «buddho, buddho». If the mind grows restless, stop a moment, settle it, then resume. When a thought or an image arises, stop walking and contemplate it: see it as impermanent and without self, arising and ceasing, with nothing to cling to; then let it go and return to the step and the word «buddho». Meditation is accomplished in every posture and at every moment, for in any posture the wisdom that sees clearly can arise.
In meditation, set the mind just right, ever present to yourself, and know each state: calm or not calm, the various objects that strike it, and know how to let them go. When the mind is not calm, do not be dismayed; when it is nicely calm, do not be elated; just follow its states. To practise thus continuously is our task; but the fruit — when and how it will arise — comes of itself, in its own time, when the causes are complete. It is like planting a tree: our task is to dig the hole, plant, water, loosen the soil, fertilize, and tend it as best we can; but whether it grows slow or fast, and when it bears fruit, we cannot command. Make the cause good and full, and the fruit will be good.
During meditation visionary signs may arise: when this happens, keep mindfulness and turn it to examine your own mind. If it is settled in concentration, understand that the sign arose by the power of calm; but do not be beguiled into clinging to it as something marvellous. Consider it uncertain, arising and ceasing, and let it pass: then it will dissolve of itself. For the beginner it is natural to be excited by it; for one who has passed through it often, it is an ordinary matter.
The states of calm
There are two kinds of calm. Coarse calm arises from concentration alone, and mistakes pleasure for calm. Subtle calm arises instead from wisdom, which does not take pleasure to be calm but knows how to examine both pleasure and pain, standing firm above them both — for pleasure and pain are but clinging. True calm, then, is the wisdom that sees clearly into what is real, and clings to nothing.
Calm and insight
Calm and insight can scarcely be told apart: they are like a single tree branching into two boughs. First one relies on calm, so that concentration arises and the mind is steady; then, upon that foundation, wisdom arises — that is, insight. Calm alone makes the mind quiet only as long as concentration lasts, and the defilements remain; insight, by contrast, subdues them with the wisdom that sees clearly into the objects that strike the mind. Contemplate every form and mind — pleasure and pain, beings and things, ourselves and others — as one and the same thing: mere elements under the law of the three characteristics, which arise, persist a moment, and cease, with nothing to be grasped. Seeing this clearly, the knowledge of insight arises, which makes all suffering cease and is the way to Nirvana.