A friend of mine recommended a particular approach to practicing musical scales. She starts with the minor scale on a particular note, say, C minor. She follows with the major scale on the same note (C major), and then the relative minor of that major (A minor). She continues in this fashion four rounds, then picks up the next day with the minor scale beginning a step higher (D minor). In three days, she’s made a circuit of scales.
I’ve tried in the past to practice scales, but found myself giving up in short order. The organization in her approach is helpful to me, and though I’m not practicing as regularly as she does (she’s a performing musician, as well as a teacher), I have begun to practice.
I wrote to my friend:
The striking thing to me about my experience on the cushion these days is that I am practicing some kind of scales, as it were. Gautama outlined the feeling of four states, the initial three and then the “purity by the pureness of [one’s] mind”, the fourth. I’ve described that “pureness of mind” as what remains when “doing something” ceases, and I wrote:
When “doing something” has ceased, and there is “not one particle of the body” that cannot receive the placement of attention, then the placement of attention is free to shift as necessary in the movement of breath.
The rest of the scales are looking for a grip where attention takes place in the body, as “one-pointedness” turns and engenders a counter-turn (without losing the freedom of movement of attention); finding ligaments that control reciprocal innervation in the lower body and along the spine through relaxation, and calming the stretch of ligaments; and discovering hands, feet, and teeth together with “one-pointedness” (“bite through here”, as Yuanwu advised; “then we can walk together hand in hand”, as Yuanwu’s teacher Wu Tsu advised).
In the months since I wrote my friend, I’ve had some time to reflect. There are some things I would add, on my practice of “scales”.
Gautama spoke of suffusing the body with “zest and ease” in the first concentration:
“… (a person) steeps, drenches, fills, and suffuses this body with zest and ease, born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest and ease.”
(AN III 25-28, Pali Text Society Vol. III p 18-19, see also MN III 92-93, PTS p 132-134)
Words like “steeps” and “drenches” convey a sense of gravity, while the phrase “not one particle of the body that is not pervaded” speaks to the “one-pointedness” of attention, even as the body is suffused.
If I can find a way to experience gravity in the placement of attention as the source of activity in my posture, and particular ligaments as the source of the reciprocity in that activity, then I have an ease.
Gautama taught that zest ceases in the third concentration, while the feeling of ease continues:
(One) enters & remains in the third (state), of which the Noble Ones declare, ‘Equanimous & mindful, (one) has a pleasant abiding.’
(Samadhanga Sutta, tr. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, AN 5.28 PTS: A iii 25; Pali Text Society, see AN Book of Threes text I,164; Vol II p 147)
That’s a recommendation of the third concentration, especially for long periods. Nevertheless, I find that the stage of concentration that lends itself to practice in the moment is dependent on the tendency toward the free placement of attention. As I wrote in my last post:
When a presence of mind is retained as the placement of attention shifts, then the natural tendency toward the free placement of attention can draw out thought initial and sustained, and bring on the stages of concentration.
Shunryu Suzuki said:
To enjoy our life– complicated life, difficult life– without ignoring it, and without being caught by it. Without suffer from it. That is actually what will happen to us after you practice zazen.
(“To Actually Practice Selflessness”, August Sesshin Lecture Wednesday, August 6, 1969, San Francisco)
I practice now to experience the free placement of attention as the sole source of activity in the body in the movement of breath, and in my “complicated, difficult” daily life, I look for the mindfulness that allows me to touch on that freedom.