The previous blog post discusses the first four steps of the Buddha’s sixteen step meditation popularly known as Tranquil Wisdom meditation.
Now we can briefly discuss steps five through eight, the four steps that collectively develop mindfulness of feelings, the second foundation of the four foundations of mindfulness.
When we experience the breath of the moment during the fourth and final step of mindfulness of the body, if we can stay at that stage long enough, we will eventually enter into the fifth stage of the meditation effortlessly.
Happiness arises in powerful form in the fifth step of Tranquil Wisdom meditation. While the practitioner is enjoying the breath of the moment, it appears unannounced; it cannot be willed.
We sit with patience and not with greed for the joy that announces we have arrived at the fifth step of our sixteen step meditation.
It is a bubbling, unstable level of joy that naturally evolves into a serene, more stable form of happiness as the sixth step. Ajahn Brahm teaches that this is not yet the joy and happiness of the first two jhanas; it is a herald, though, of what is to come.
Most of us are jolted out of our meditation by the sudden experience of the bliss of the fifth stage, and the meditation ends abruptly.
With practice, however, we can maintain our calmness and the stage five joy will settle down into the stage six serenity that lasts a long time.
Step six – Awareness of serenity
The practitioner is still aware only of the breath of the moment (the fourth stage) when stage five joy mellows into stage six serenity.
Ajahn Brahm calls the breath of one who is experiencing the joy and happiness of the fifth and sixth steps: “the beautiful breath.”
The serenity is stable and long-lasting, unlike the unstable, short-lived rapture of step five. But Ajahn Brahm says this is still not the first jhana.
Step seven – Awareness of the end of breathing
As the serenity of the sixth step continues, there will come a time when the breath of one who holds the precepts is no longer a physical experience. The breath becomes a mind object.
The meditator is no longer aware of the breath as something that is happening to a living body. From a physical perspective, the breath has become so subtle that it seems to have stopped.
The mind is now breathing. As Venerable Ajahn Brahm so eloquently puts it: In the seventh step of the Buddha’s meditation, the beautiful breath is gone, only the beauty remains.
Only those who follow the precepts and only those who have placed their faith and trust in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha have any hope of experiencing not just the beautiful breath, but the beauty alone that follows it.
When the breath seems to disappear and only the beauty remains and the diversity of consciousness has been brought to this fine point, we still are not finished. As Ajahn Brahms says, there is more bliss to come.
However, these experiences are not willed and we can’t make them arrive. They flow naturally from the very first step of Present Moment Awareness but only if one holds the precepts.
Hold the precepts or the Buddhadharma in contempt and you can kiss enlightenment goodbye.
We might as well embrace suffering because we always get what we want. Mick Jagger, who practiced with Theravada monks in Laos in 2012, was wrong when he said we can’t.
Step eight – Awareness of equanimity: The Still Forest Pool
After the breath seems to have faded away, we arrive at the eighth step, A Still Forest Pool made famous by the great Thai forest monk Ajahn Chah. We sit by the still forest pool in this eighth step of the Buddha’s Tranquil Wisdom meditation in absolute stillness and tranquility, and wait.
The Buddha said of this eighth step: “I shall breathe in tranquilizing the mental formation. I shall breathe out tranquilizing the mental formation.”
So this eighth stage is when the mind becomes calm, tranquil, and eventually it reaches equanimity which is in some way a refinement of tranquility. Equanimity naturally follows the long, sustained serenity of step 6 which continues into step 7 as the breath itself becomes a mind object and the mind is seen as tranquility.
If we become excited at our progress, such excitement ends the progress.
As intermediate practitioners, if we can make it to the Still Forest Pool, we are advanced intermediate practitioners.
If we can make it to the Still Forest Pool, we are in the neighborhood of Nirvana.
If we cannot make it to the Still Forest Pool, we can’t move on and there is no reason to attempt to move on.
However, once we arrive at the Still Forest Pool and stay there for awhile, the remaining stages of meditation will unfold for us just as they did for the Buddha in the year we now call 528 B.C. (The Buddha was most likely born in 563 B.C. and experienced enlightenment at the age of 35).
When absolute tranquility is experienced, the experiencer disappears. But we haven’t reached that stage yet.
We are just half way through the sixteen steps. And we haven’t even left the realm of sense desire, the lower six worlds.
Zazen has become so easy that the temptation to stop practicing is strong. We begin to carefully consider the teachings of the Zen masters that we are perfect and complete, just as we are. Sitting at the Still Forest Pool, we begin to feel that we really are perfect and complete, and that there is no further reason to practice.
Yasutani Roshi says this is the stage where the meditator must vow to practice for another thirty years.
