Stabilizing & Clearing the Mind
Nine preparatory practices for settling a clouded mind. Before the subtler meditations become possible, the mind needs a foundation of one-pointedness — the way an athlete's specialized skill rests on general fitness. These are the exercises that build it.
The Four Attitudes Toward People
Most of our relationship friction falls into four situations. For each one the mind has a quiet reactive tendency — and for each, a specific attitude to cultivate as its antidote. Memorizing these four and watching for them in daily life makes the vagaries of the mind far easier to see and regulate.
maitri karuna mudita upekshanam sukha duhkha punya apunya vishayanam bhavanatah chitta prasadanam
Five Objects of Focus
Alongside the four attitudes, five specific supports are offered for steadying attention. Any one of them, practiced with one-pointedness, calms and clears the mind.
Finally, you may steady the mind on anything you find genuinely pleasing and useful. The method matters less than the one-pointedness it builds.
How to Practice
The work happens in two places — in quiet sitting, and in the ordinary friction of the day. Neither substitutes for the other.
- 1Choose one of the four attitudes. Let a person, or several people, arise in the mind field.
- 2Notice your actual reaction — the coloring that arrives with the impression. Do not correct it yet. See it.
- 3Rest attention on that inner impression while cultivating the useful attitude toward it.
- 4The coloring gradually weakens and attenuates (2.4). That attenuation is the whole mechanism.
- 5Work all four in a sitting, or stay with a single attitude for an extended period. Either is valid.
- 1Memorize the four. They are short enough to carry, which is precisely the point.
- 2Watch for the small tendency, not the gross one. The mind is rarely wholly negative; it is the faint tilt you are after.
- 3Check all three positions: acting on it yourself, getting another to act for you, or quietly approving when it happens anyway. The inner effect is the same (2.34).
- 4Start small. Work a distant, minor grievance before a large one — shallow understanding is a good tool for deeper understanding.
- ◦Name it in plain internal speech: Mind, this is not useful. This attitude will bring nothing but pain. Let it go.
- ◦Then state the antidote directly: I need to cultivate friendliness with this person — or compassion, goodwill, or neutrality, as the case calls for.
- ◦Do not suppress the contrary feeling. Awareness first, then lovingly choosing to act from care.
- ◦What goes unnoticed does not go away. Unawareness leaves disturbances in the unconscious that surface later and disturb meditation.
- ◦Not suppression of what you actually feel.
- ◦Not approval. Equanimity toward someone’s conduct is not endorsement of it — and often does more to enable change than aversion does.
- ◦Not a replacement for your other principles about how to treat people. It sits alongside them.
- ◦Not a perfection test. This is the gradual clearing of a clouded mind, not a purity standard.
- ◦The yamas (2.30) — the ethical restraints — make all of this markedly less effortful. The ground supports the practice.
- ◦Witnessing without attachment tends to produce humor. The mind starts to look like a very funny instrument, and when that arrives, goodwill comes on its own.
- ◦Two of the four situations recur far more than the others for most people. Notice which two are yours and weight your practice accordingly.
Before You Begin
A few orienting reminders that keep these practices in their proper place.
- ◦Don't skip the basics.
Bypassing this training of the mind is tempting but a serious mistake — meditation then becomes little more than a fight with your own mind.
- ◦These are preparation, not the destination.
They stabilize and clear the mind so subtler meditations and samadhi become possible. Many schools stop here at the calming benefits; few go on toward Self-realization.
- ◦Stabilizing differs from discriminating.
Here you are calming and clarifying the mind — not yet discriminating and setting aside what arises from ignorance. That finer work belongs to the later practices.
- ◦They deepen later.
Once samyama is possible, each attitude becomes an object of samadhi itself, and that razor-fine absorption brings the attitude to perfection (3.24).
The Sanskrit
- maitri
- friendliness, lovingness
- karuna
- compassion, mercy
- mudita
- gladness, goodwill
- upekshanam
- equanimity, neutrality, acceptance
- sukha
- happy, joyous, comfortable
- duhkha
- pain, suffering, sorrow
- punya
- virtuous, meritorious
- apunya
- non-virtuous, wicked
- vishayanam
- regarding those subjects
- bhavanatah
- by cultivating, by constant reflection
- chitta
- mind field, consciousness
- prasadanam
- clear, serene, undisturbed
- dhyana
- Meditation proper — the specific state, not the broad popular sense (3.2)
- samadhi
- Deep absorption in the object of attention
- samyama
- Dhyana and samadhi applied together as a single instrument (3.4–3.6)
- avidya
- Ignorance; the root miscomprehension underlying the colorings (2.5)
- pratipaksha bhavanam
- Cultivating the opposite when a negative attitude takes hold (2.33–2.34)
- yamas
- The ethical restraints that support and steady practice (2.30)
- coloring
- The attraction or aversion tinting a mental impression; releasing it is uncoloring (1.5)