Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 348: How To Focus | Shaila Catherine

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

Many of us find our minds flitting all over the place, in meditation and elsewhere. In today’s episode we’re going to learn practical techniques for boosting concentration on and off the cushion. This is the second episode in a two-part series on focus we are airing this week.Today’s guest is an Olympic-level concentrator who has tons of tips for staying focused. We also talk about one of the more exotic meditation subjects: The altered states of consciousness called the jhanas that are available to advanced meditators who can attain deep states of concentration. Shaila Catherine is the founder of Insight Meditation South Bay, a meditation group in Silicon Valley. She has been practicing meditation since 1980 and has more than nine years of accumulated silent retreat experience. She’s the author of Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity.In this conversation, we talk about:The basic building blocks of concentration in a meditation practiceCultivating the right attitude for meditationThe difference between concentration and mindfulnessWhether ‘jhana’ states are attainable for regular peopleFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/shaila-catherine-repost-348See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Greetings, my fellow suffering beings. Given that we live in an era that has been called the Info Blitzkrieg, staying focused can be extremely infernally difficult for many of us.

This can be true when we're working and trying to stay on task. It can also, perhaps, especially be true in meditation when we might find our minds flitting all over the place, Heather and Heather. My guest today is an Olympic level concentrator, she probably won't like me describing her like that, but it's pretty much true.

And she has tons of tips for staying focused. We also talk, once we get past the tips for us, newbie or mid-level meditators. We also talk about one of my favorite exotic meditations subjects, the altered states of consciousness called the Johnna's, J-H-A-N-A, the Johnna's that are apparently available to advanced meditators who can attain super deep states of concentration. I say apparently because I clearly have never been in one of these altered states, but I'm

fascinated by the subject and we kind of go there toward the end of this interview. Shaila Catherine is my guest. She is the founder of InSight Meditation South Bay, a meditation group in Silicon Valley. She has been practicing meditation herself since 1980 with more than nine years of accumulated silent retreat experience. She is the author of focused and fearless meditators guide to states of deep joy, calm, and clarity. In this conversation, we cover the basic building blocks of concentration in a meditation practice, cultivating the right attitude for meditation,

the difference between concentration and mindfulness and how they can actually support each other, and whether the aforementioned Janna states are attainable for regular people. One quick item of business before we dive in here, the aforementioned Janna states are attainable for regular people. One quick item of business before we dive in here, as you may know, may is mental health awareness month, and over the past year or more, you're probably aware that mental health professionals have been dealing not only with the impact of the pandemic and political

polarization and racial reckoning, all of it in their own lives, but also trying to help their clients live through all of this and navigated. So we, and I really want to thank all the mental health professionals out there. And one way to do so is to offer up a year's free access to the app, the 10% happier meditation app, where you can find hundreds of meditations and also lots of videos, slash audio courses that should help you boot up a meditation practice or reinvigorate it or go deeper. If you're a mental health professional or if you know somebody who is, you can go to 10% dot com slash mental health and I'll put a link in the show notes. Okay, here we go now with Shiloh Catherine.

Shiloh Catherine, thanks for coming on the show. Well, thank you for having me. So I think it might be worth defining some terms here. When we talk about concentration in meditation, what do we mean? Because the image that comes to mind when I hear the word concentration is, you know, somebody like really furrowing their brow and digging in.

What does it mean in a meditation practice? Yeah, it's somewhat unfortunate that the term concentration in English can have unpleasant connotations to many people. I don't experience unpleasant connotations with it. I think it's a beautiful term to me. It refers to an undistractedness of mind, a stillness, an ability to apply our attention

to something and sustain the interest in it to engage fully, deeply, intimately. So I don't often experience that, but I hear that a lot from students. And some people prefer not to use the term concentration to translate the poly term samadhi. A more literal translation might be a unification of the mind, that sense of undistracted unification. And some people prefer to refer instead of concentration to stillness or collectedness or the steadiness of mind because those terms tend to have less resistance and they actually may be more accurate descriptions.

But I just have been hearing concentration for so long in my practice, I started meditating when I was still in high school that I never developed resistance to it. So it just appeals to me and I continue to use it and it's a common translation. But when we're talking about concentration, we're not talking about a narrow, rigid, focused, forced attention. We're talking about a spacious mind that is undistracted and able to stay steady in whatever it's engaged in. In meditation, it would be engaged with knowing a particular meditation subject. Maybe we're focusing on the breath, and we're actually able to follow the whole breath, breath after breath without wandering off into stories and proliferating thoughts.

But it also is relevant to being able to sustain our attention on a task and follow through. So we don't, you know, start a project or a daily life activity and then kind of quit part way, get distracted, procrastinate and find that nothing has ever finished in our lives. So all of this sounds great. Concentration, samadhi, stillness, unification of mind, being able to follow through. So that's all in meditation. Then off the cushion, you know, just being able to follow through and pay attention, whether I'm having a conversation with another human being or launching into a project, this all sounds great. And yet, I think I'm speaking for almost everybody when I say say it can be very frustrating.

And it often feels like I catch 22 specifically in meditation where I want somebody or concentration, stillness, focus. But the wanting keeps me from getting the thing I want. That happens a lot. It is interesting to me, not the thing I want. That happens a lot. It is interesting to me, not everybody struggles with concentration. I would say the majority of people do, but there's always a segment of any group of meditators who have highly developed concentration abilities. And often they develop it through work experiences. And very disciplined work commitments and professions

sometimes develop that. And some meditation practices that they may have been doing for years also emphasize that. So I will sometimes have students come to me to explore the deepening of concentration and they're attracted to the refined methods that are available in the Buddhist tradition in particular, the jhana practices. And these people I will often encourage them to broaden their field of mindfulness, to actually not focus on concentrating, because they already have that ability and to instead open to the more of the sensory

experiences and develop insights around their experience. But I think you're correct at the vast majority of people struggle with concentration and want it. The thing about concentration is wanting it to a certain extent is important to the extent that we're not going to develop anything if we're not interested in it. We value something so we engage with it and give it our attention, give it our effort and cultivate it so we can have wholesome desires to strengthen our concentration. But very often people add kind of a sense that I want concentration because I want to feel that and if I don't, then I get angry. And desire in a version are hindrances to the deepening of concentration. So if the wanting is infested with a kind of attachment sort of wanting,

and the flip side of that is if I don't get what I want, then I'm going to be angry or I'm going to be hypercritical about the practice or about myself, then we're putting too much pressure on the situation. And so it becomes frustrating then. I like to approach the deepening of concentration, though, in conjunction with working with any hindrances that might arise and really purifying the mind of any obstacles or hindrances, so that the mind that actually is concentrated is hindrances so that the mind that actually is concentrated is not concentrated through a forced, energetic, demanding effort, but instead is concentrated because it is free from the hindrances.

It's not pulled by desire. There's no pushing with the Version. The energies are Balanced and we're not lost In deluded thoughts and all the Various stories and Embellishments that keep our minds Agitated. We're calm. We're steady. We've created the conditions

That would support concentration. One of the primary conditions is The removal of the report concentration. One of the primary conditions is the removal of the inerances. So I think that attitude towards concentration, a right attitude, a skillful attitude, needs to be cultivated before we actually go very deep in our practice of concentration.

How does one cultivate the right attitude? Well, I think once you see exactly what you spot, a meditator is sitting there thinking, oh, I want concentration, I've got to get concentration. Myself worth depends upon getting concentrated. And then they see, oh, that meditator is sitting very still. I'll bet they're really concentrated. I'm not as good as they are.

And we get into envy and all those other things. Well, let's stop trying to pretend that we're doing concentration practice and deal with what's actually happening, which is that there are thoughts based on desire that are fueled by hindrances and fueling more hindrances. So we deal with that. But as we deal with that and work with becoming mindful of the hindrances and settling the hindrances, we'll find that we're actually creating the conditions that are very supportive of deep concentration. And then we can enhance and nourish that deep

concentration. When you say deal with that, you talked about noticing stories of envy or desire. And you said, let's deal with that before we go back to the concentration. I assume, which is always dangerous, that you bite deal with that. You mean just be mindful of it. Be aware of these storylines that are running. How are they showing up in your body, etc., etc. That's a correct assumption. And that's a correct assumption because I love mindfulness practice. And I do use mindfulness practice as the basis of all of these things. So somebody who is well grounded in developing mindfulness will be skilled at applying mindfulness

to any situation and if a hindrance arises, we're mindful of it. That's dealing with it. There are other ways of dealing with hindrances, no doubt, but the go-to practice, I would agree. Yeah, be mindful of it, be mindful of what's actually happening. Let's not live in a fantasy of I want to be concentrated and just try to do that. We take steps toward concentration by cultivating a continuity of mindfulness. And through that continuity of mindfulness, we wear away the hindrances. We could say, deal with them, we settle them, they dissolve, and they don't have the space to occupy our attention anymore to become

a distraction. What in your mind is the difference between mindfulness practice and concentration practice, because I think for beginning meditators, these terms might be a little bit confusing. It's like, you're basic beginning meditation is sit, watch your breath, and then every time you get distracted, start again and again and again. So how do you delineate between these two terms of art? Yeah, this is a very good question and it's not only confusing for beginning meditators, it's often a point of unclarity. And I also will sometimes slide in between the uses of

these terms so it can get a little muddy. I don't think that's too terrible a thing, but it is interesting to consider what are we doing when we're practicing concentration, what are we doing when we're practicing mindfulness? I prefer to instead of think that I'm practicing concentration, I prefer to be developing mindfulness and developing such a continuity of mindfulness that all the hindrances and the distractions fall away. Then, depending upon the object, am I focusing on a particular object? Say, I decide that I'm going to stay with the development of mindfulness of the breath. Then, I can hold that object in a way that supports more focused quality of attention. Or I could hold that object in a way that includes other

experiences. You know, maybe the breath is like an experience that I touch into and then listen to sounds and other sensations in the body and then come back to the breath. I have a thought about this and a thought about that and then come back to the breath. So it's kind of like a point that we come back to regularly. That would have less of the focused attention, but it's still a valid use for working with the breath. Or we can focus on the changing sensations throughout the whole course of the breath. So we can take an object and it depends upon how we want to attend to it. I like to use the simile of a leash. You know, some people have dogs that they take for a walk on the leash and there's different kinds of leashes. You can

have one of those leashes that are on the spool and it kind of the dogs can run out really, really far. And you can have the leashes that are just a meter or so long. A blind person will have a harness on their seeing eye dog, or the dog can be totally off leash and not under voice control. So I consider that the distracted mind when there's no leash. And the dog is not on voice control. So I consider that the distracted mind when there's no leash and the dog is not on voice control and we just let our minds just wander, either in thither without any corralling. And then we might allow the mind to wander away, but then come back wander away and come back. Maybe that's like theiche on the spool or circling around the experience

of, say, body and minds, but in the present moment might be like the standard, you know, meter long leash or something. And then the blind person holding the harness, I think of when you really focus in on a particular meditation subject for the purposes of absorbing the mind in just that. So it's just a way to try to describe that there are many ways of working with the mind's attention to an object. All of them are mindfulness. You know, we're mindful of our meditation object. Concentration is a continuity of mindfulness.

And when we're mindful of something, we are not distracted in that. So there's an intertwining of concentration and mindfulness always. They rise together. But how are we relating to our object might affect whether our experiences is of more changing experiences or of a more focused attention, which might lead to a more concentrated, absorbed, deep experience. I'm gonna just try to put that in my own language just to make sure I got it.

I've done many retreats where my practice is, an open awareness, maybe I'm using doting and instead of latching onto the breath, it's just sort of whatever's coming up at any given moment in my mind, hearing, seeing pleasant, unpleasant. That's a pretty long leash. That's probably on the spectrum,

sort of more focused on a mindfulness. Obviously, you would want to get a continuity of mindfulness going over the course of your sit or your retreat. A short leash practice would be, yeah, I'm going to hone in on the breath. Oh, or I'm going to hone in on loving kindness phrases. So yes, about heading into right direction here. I think you're describing it very well, yes.

And interestingly, they're all concentration in the sense that when you're doing an open awareness practice and you're aware that hearing is happening and then a moment later you're aware that there's sensations in the body and then a moment later you're aware of maybe there's a movement of the breath or something else and your attention is moving between different perceptions. But it's still leashed in the sense that it's not distracted, you're not just wandering off, but you've chosen as your field of attention, you've chosen as your meditation subject to be whatever is dominantly arising in the present moment. So that could be anything in the field of the senses, the body, the mind.

So you've chosen your meditation arena to be quite open and broad, but within that you're concentrating upon whatever is arising in the present moment. There's different kinds of samadhi that are described in the Teravada Buddhist tradition, and this kind of samadhi that develops by observing changing experiences is called Kanaka-samadhi, which is a concentration of mind that arises through the perception of changing experiences. A sound here, a sensation there, heat increasing, thought arising, mood or motion, all these different things. We're not distracted.

We're present, we're mindful. But the objects keep changing. And that can be very powerful. It can develop the qualities and experience of concentration on the mind. But it doesn't lead to the particular states of absorption that depend upon a fixed object. So if you were to narrow your field to say you use the example of loving kindness, I'm just going to focus on the cultivation of loving kindness. I'm not going to be involved in all these other things that might be occurring simultaneously. This is where I've chosen to direct the attention or just focus on the breath. Then those, because of the nature of the object,

and the focus on that object, it ended the focus on that object. It opens up the possibility for another kind of samadhi. In Pali, it's called a panasamadi, which is concentration based upon a sixth object. And the meditator can choose a skilled meditator or somebody can shift from these different kinds. Once you understand what is the quality of samadhi, how is the different than distraction?

And what is the object that I want to focus on and why? Then we become more skillful in choosing the object and the way we attend to those objects to support our aim. You use the phrase that the states that are available when we're achieving you know, achieving certain kinds of samadhi, and that was a reference I believe to the janas, which we'll dive into in a second. But before we go there, I want to go back to this idea of right attitude, because I think

this is such a common situation experienced by meditators where you are getting frustrated because you're trying to achieve some level of concentration or continuity of mindfulness and you're all over the place and you're beating yourself up for it. The last couple of retreats I've done have been with the guy named Alexis Santos who's been on the show a bunch of times and he's also quite popular teacher in the 10% happier app. His teacher is a Burmese guy, Sayada Uteja Nia. And one of his primary teaching strategies is to repeatedly have a meditator ask themselves, what's the attitude in the mind right now? And I found that to be incredibly helpful, like just repeatedly checking in what's the attitude right now.

And it's like taking a black light to hotel sheets where you see like all sorts of gross stuff where I realize, oh yeah, if I'm in the habit of asking myself that question, I'm going to see, yeah, I'm trying to make something happen in this meditation right now. I have an agenda. Over time, though, the more I can just be cool with the agenda, be aware of it and be mindful of it, it starts to dissipate. So, is that track with what you were recommending? It does track very much. I was interested that you said, you know, you're aware that there's an agenda in the mind and you can be cool with that. Some agendas are actually very supportive of our practice, some are wholesome in the sense that we have an intention, an aim, and some are unrealistic,

controlling, demanding, arrogant, or rooted in unwholesome states. So we have to consider what is our agenda. We have a certain aim, perhaps, or a sense of possibility. We're doing something for a reason, you know? How rich it be, do we attach to that agenda? Or does it instead inspire a kind of inspiration of possibility? The attitude is so important. I do think it's the questions that you're asking.

What is my attitude right now? It is so important. We have to monitor what's being developed in the mind because we're not developing concentration or mindfulness so that we can feel, I have such a concentration now. I'm so proud of myself. Oh, this is great fun. I'm enjoying this. Now, it can be great fun and it can be delightfully pleasant. But it's for a greater purpose. I mean, we're cultivating the mind. We're purifying the mind. We're abandoning all the unwholesome states, all the defilements, anger and aversion and fear and pre-occupation with selfishness and all our fantasies and stories and stuff. So there's so many things that we

are abandoning and letting go of and we're cultivating very beautiful qualities of mind and mindfulness and steadiness, stillness, concentration of mind, these are beautiful qualities. So I think we can recognize that we're engaged in something a lot more than just how the mind is feeling right now. But asking the question, what is my attitude? Yes, it brings up the questions like, am I being very proud or am I being very self-critical? Or am I being angry?

Am I blaming those kinds of things? Yes, but we can see a lot of attitude around our effort to, am I being too lazy and just expecting the mind to collect in undistracted somebody. Or am I being too forced and demanding it to happen in a certain way on my timeline? Sometimes people come to retreats with unrealistic expectations and maybe it's a retreat that is designed to give an overview of the four genres. And it's already day four. They thought they were gonna be in genre by day four,

one genre a day, and then you hang out with it for the rest of the retreat. Well, that's kind of unrealistic. And sometimes we impose those kinds of unrealistic attainments on our practice. As though for our practice to be worthwhile, we have to achieve a limited goal, an unlimited period of time, and get a button that says,

I did this, or some kind of like trophy for it. And I prefer to see the practices being and hold the attitude of every step of the way. We're abandoning the unhulsome, cultivating the wholesome. In a trajectory that is not oriented just towards concentrating the mind, it's oriented towards liberating the mind. It's oriented towards awakening. It's a beautiful and kind of amazing goal that we can't just demand to occur on a particular timeline in a way that we can assess it and measure it and say, okay, good, I got that now. Check that one off my bucket list. So this is all part of the attitude.

What is our intention? What is our aspiration? What are we doing this for? And how much of that is really a commitment to the possibility of liberating the mind from all the defilements and all the abstractions and all the things that cause cruelty and ignorance in the world. Or are we just trying to like get some kind of personal badge of achievement and personal success? I've gone for the badge so many times. Oh, don't me. So many times. I wrote a book a couple years ago and I described being on my first meditation retreat

and having really my first experience with Samadhi and with being in the present moment in some sustained way and how happy it made me and the meditation teacher with whom I work the most, this guy named Joseph Goldstein, I'm know you know him, he's a jokester. And he sent me an email, he said, yeah, I'm going back to Spirit Rock with that was the place where I was doing that retreat. He was teaching that retreat.

And he said, I'm going back to Spirit Rock, the place of your great awakening, I expect they'll put up a plaque. Yeah, so I've had the experience many times where I have like a reasonably good sit and I expect a pause or where I'm not having any quote unquote good sitting or good meditation sessions and I'm getting super frustrated because I'm not exactly reproducing some experience I may have had in the past. I think it's important that we not then think that that's a big problem. We just have to have a light attitude towards it, just as you described, being able to laugh about the idea that there might be a plaque,

Dan got enlightened here. This was the place of deep samadhi, and then it would become the next pilgrimage location This was the place of deep samadhi. And then it would become the next pilgrimage location for all followers. Conceit is classified as one of the defilements and the fetters. But it's also kind of useful. Now, it causes a lot of trouble when we are invested in it

and put a lot of energy into competition or arrogance or comparing those are the forces that circle around conceit. And that can be very destructive for our lives. But there's also a way that we can be with it lightly that just senses, hmm, that teacher attains something interesting. Their qualities, their human qualities are coming across in a way that I respect. They were able to have some kind of clarity or freedom that I admire. Maybe I too can do that. Maybe I too can experience that. And so that subtle and not clinging way of recognizing the comparing allows us to grow. It

organizes what we want to learn. It inspires us to try something new. So a lot of it again falls into our attitude around it. Can we laugh a little bit at the conceit and just see, oh yes, I actually wanted this. And I got it and it felt great. But I don't have to build up the reification of that eye and get stuck there. Might be worth saying a little bit about the term conceit, because we all know the term conceited. But in Buddhist circles, the word conceit actually

has a pretty specific meaning. Can you hold forth on that? It's short. It is a kind of a technical term. The polyterm is mana. It's one of the last fetters to fall away. So one could be completely free of desire and aversion. No anger could arise, but there

might still be this comparing function in which there's this comparing that occurs that keeps a delusion in play. And that comparing at a subtle level, we laugh that it we hold a light attitude towards it. And we recognize that at some point in our awakening process, even that feather will fall away. in process, even that Federer will fall away. At the course level, like the extreme competitiveness, or that if we don't get it and we don't win, we go right into anger, we can work with that a lot earlier. So the conceit in Buddhism really is the ultimate delusion of thinking that we have a solid self. The conceit is that I am. The conceit I am, but it's not necessarily the belief in I am, like what the process, the experiencing, the sense of I am. Yes. That attachment to the experience of body and

mind. And I'm glad you bring in that phrase because that's a phrase we find in the early discourses of the Buddha where it's literally called the conceit, I am. So we're not just talking about somebody being arrogant and conceited and there could be, of course, superiority conceit, but there can also be inferiority conceit. And there's also an equality conceits because that comparing is functioning to keep the attachment of I am in play. This concept is one that trips a lot of people up myself included. The notion that it is a delusion to think that on some level that you exist, it doesn't mean you don't need to put your pants on in the morning or make a sense of deployment.

It means that on an ultimate level, if you look for the self inside of your mind, you're not going to find some core nugget of you in there. Yeah, I think that's correct. And people can get entangled with philosophical debates about what is this teaching on no self. Lately, I'm just preferring approaching it from a very practical perspective and to question the various things that I might identify with or believe I could possess or control.

Just question that. Really am I that? I feel this. Well, five seconds later, I feel something different. So can I question, I am that. What if there's a sense that, oh, this object belongs to me. Really? Does it?

Can I control it? Can I say, hey, don't break? Don't get lost? Or this body belongs to me, really? Does it? Can I control it? Can I say, hey, don't break? Don't get lost? Or this body belongs to me. Is there a me who possesses it and then could control it? So wherever I see the attachment to the experiences of body, feelings, perceptions, mind experiences, the sensory experiences, whatever it is that's being known, anything that's being known. If there's a sense of attachment around it, I can ask, really, is there a self-possessing that? And I look. So I try to unravel any attachment to the concept of self. And then in daily activities, of course, I wake up in the morning. I'm the one getting out of the bed and going to do the responsibilities that I have committed to. So there's certainly a

functional use of the concept of self, but I try to question any attachment to that. Okay, so let's talk about the John as now. Oh, before we do, can I respond a little bit to something that you said because you described having your first experience of, I think you use the language of sustained somebody. And I thought that was really beautiful and it sounded like it was in conjunction

with an insight meditation practice where you were working with open awareness, but the mind was steady and undistracted. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Because, because this, this sense that, ah, the mind is concentrated is a, is a wonderful thing. It can be tremendously inspiring. And it describes a mind in which the hindrances are absent. And what are called the five intensifying factors

or the five John factors are strongly developed. So the hindrances have fallen away, so we're not getting caught in anger, aversion, our energies are balanced, so we're not falling asleep, we're going into restlessness, and there's a real steady presence in our practice. We're not corrupting the experience with self-doubt and all that stuff, and we're not getting lost in thoughts of past or future. So the hindrances are set aside, but in addition to that, something else is developing, to that, something else is developing. And the factors that are called these

John factors are intensifying factors, are the directing of attention, the sustaining of attention, the joy that arises with knowing our object, the pleasure that arises with knowing that, and a one-pointedness of attention with that. And although the term John factors is used to describe these five qualities of mind, they develop with other meditation practices, with most meditation practices.

And when these are strong, the joy quality is very strong. And the directing and sustaining of attention is very strong, and the one-pointedness is strong. So we have the experience of being collected and steadyed and the one point of this is strong. So we have the experience of being collected and steadied and undistracted with whatever is being known, and the mind is totally imbued with, suffused, drenched with a kind of pleasure or joy. Some people experience the joy intensely, and other people experience it with greater equanimity or neutrality of feeling, but it still is on the pleasant side of things. So it's a very delightful state that

does not require absorption into an altered state. It comes along with the development of mindfulness when those factors come together. When we're no longer fighting the hindrances and we're cultivating these qualities. And we may not be consciously cultivating them. They come out of a continuity of mindfulness. We don't say, okay, I think for five minutes I'm going to cultivate the directing of attention and then I'm going to give three minutes to the sustaining of attention. And let me be imbued with joy. Oh, I'll give that one ten minutes. It's not like that. Just by developing a continuity of mindfulness, we might notice that to have a period of undistracted attention where mindfulness is developing, these five intensifying factors will probably be present.

And then we can nourish them. We can trust them. We can let the attention allow them to support a deepening of our concentration. Just to make sure I'm providing some clarity to listeners here. The John is, which we'll talk about in a second, our altered states that can arise from deep end of the pool concentration slash somebody, whereas the Johnic factors,

the list of five sustained attention, et cetera, et cetera, those can come up in more garden variety meditation, like me on my first meditation retreat, where I achieved some level of continuity of mindfulness. Is that correct? I think that's correct. I would only adjust what you're saying, just so that people don't think that, oh, Johnna is better. And that, oh, these factors are only preliminary. We need to understand that these are the

conditions of mind that are powerfully and beautifully wholesome. And that is the Samadhi state. The Samadhi state is composed, it's unified, it's settled, but the particular states of John, the altered states you mentioned, they are four, and they're creatively called first, John, a second, John, a third, John, a fourth, John. I don't know why the ancients didn't come up with a more creative title, but nevertheless, that's what they're called. So we have this sequence of four altered states, in which the mind is so steady on its chosen object. And the object is an object that is suitable for an absorption, usually a mental object.

If we're using the breath as the object, we're not feeling changing sensations of the breath, we're not observing the abdomen rising and falling. We are with a bare, basic knowing of breath, not sensations, breath. So it's a mental concept of breath. We're not thinking about the breath in a discursive way, but the object is suitable for the absorption. So the mind absorbs with mind. And it's a very particular experience of mind that has

particular qualities and characteristics. So yes, you're correct in describing that all of the John factors have to be developed before John is possible and they're available in other practices like insight meditation and mindfulness practices. So we can have a taste of powerful, beautiful samadhi, doing many different kinds of practices, meditative practices that are not jhana. But when the conditions are there, the hindrances are absent, the jhana factors are present, and our objectances are absent, the John effectors are present. And our object is suitable. It's possible that a meditator can learn the skills of absorbing the attention with that

object and then be able to sustain a state, which is called a state of seclusion. So we're not only secluded from unhulsome states, but we're also secluded from all the distractions of sensory experiences. The mind is no longer darting out, oh, there's hearing, oh, now there's heat, oh, now there's a thought, because thought will have settled. And the mind won't be reaching for anything else. It'll just be directed to its meditation subject and without any distractions pulling it away, it stays so settled there and it's an active energetic joyful settled that the mind absorbs with it. And so that becomes possible, it becomes available when all the conditions are there. I just want to make sure though that it's a beautiful practice

and it's available to people. So people who get really into the meditation, as you say, the deep end of the pool, I think it's nice to know that these things, you don't have to go off to some cave in some remote mountain region in order to practice these things. They're available to us,

but the conditions do need to be there and it is a specific practice. Delightful practice, powerful practice, life changing. I recommend it, I teach it, I encourage people to do it, but I don't say that it is the only or the best way of practicing samadhi. We have to honor the purity of the mind that you just described, where the mind is having a sustained experience of samadhi. You've just chosen an object that the absorption doesn't happen. Because in that experience, you're still experiencing sound and sensations, and you're aware of mindfulness of the flow of thoughts and feelings. So there isn't

the condition for an absorption in it, but there is the powerful healing and potent state of somebody. Much more of my conversation with Shaila Catherine right after this. Like the short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What is happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others.

And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times.

But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is Short, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. I always find the idea of the genres to be so wild and I'm talking about the four genres that you're referring to, although I've heard it described as sometimes eight two which

I'm sure you'll clear up any confusion on. But basically my understanding of this is that you can get so concentrated, so absorbed in your object, your breath or whatever, that you end up in these four sort of, I've heard them describe, as kind of interlocking rooms in the mind, these altered states that are accompanied by, you know, feelings of bliss and happiness. It's just so interesting to me that meditators over the years are just describing such similar experiences. Why did evolution create a mind that was capable of this? I have no idea why evolution developed the mind and the patterns that it did. Yeah, I couldn't even speculate on that subject, but I can say that there is a value for it.

There is a purpose for this kind of somebody practice that people developed thousands of years ago. They were able to explore the terrain of the mind. And when one has mastered these states of seclusion, you're quite correct in describing them as being suffused with bliss and happiness. What's important for listeners to know is that this bliss and happiness is not a sensual pleasure.

So being able to allow the mind to be filled with joy and happiness, that is nonsensual. That is not oriented towards that kind of attachment to the senses. A lot of trouble is caused by rampant, sensual pleasure that has no restraint. And when we experience this kind of happiness, it totally transforms that orientation or attachment to or understanding of sensual pleasure. So it's interesting, it's significant, it's quite powerful. It also suffuses the mind with the joy that is energetic, the joy that is energetic, that is deeply healing to the mind, healthy, and makes the mind able to do the difficult work of insight practice. Because it's not easy to do insight meditation, to really see the changing and empty nature of experience, to really contemplate the fact that to really contemplate the fact that we're going to die and things are not all satisfying in life. So we don't withdraw from the senses in order to transcend the senses and live in bliss,

but the experience of this bliss transforms the mind so that it provides the energy and the perspective to have a different view on the senses and sensory pleasures and to then be able to we I think the texts use the language make the mind fit for insight This is a key point because there are people who are This is a key point because there are people who are critical of the janas in that you can get addicted to the pleasure of concentrating the mind and then living in at least temporarily in these states of bliss. As I said, you get addicted to it, but the point as you just articulated is to sharpen the mind, make the mind fit for doing the hard work of insight meditation,

which is to see how everything is changing so rapidly. If you cling, you will suffer. There is nobody home who is experiencing all of this. These are hard things to see. And Johnna's can prepare the mind to see them. Yes, exactly. I think in my first book focused in fearless, I used the example of sharpening a pencil. You remember in the old days, there were these pencil sharpeners on the walls of the classroom, and we'd put the little yellow pencil in to turn them.

I mean, maybe kids these days don't have those, but I grew up in a time when there were these yellow pencil sharpeners. And we would sharpen them and sharpen them and there'd be a trash bin underneath to catch sure the stuff because a little plastic thing always broken schools. But it would be fun to sharpen sharpen sharpen, but what's the point of sharpening the pencil? You sharpen a pencil so that you can write with it. And if it gets dull, you sharpen it again, why so that you can write with it? You don't just keep sharpening and sharpening and sharpening and sharpening

to get a perfect point, and then admire it, or to just keep sharpening and sharpening and sharpening because it's fun and you enjoy the activity. It's for a purpose. And similarly, we develop the mind. We could say sharp in the mind. We clarify the mind. We develop the conditions of the mind that make it possible for insight practice.

And I have heard people say, oh, my teacher told me not to do John a practice because I would get attached to it or I could get attached to it. And that is just not something that I worry very much about. Because it's not something that I see happening. And partly, it may be because I give a great deal of emphasis to cultivating the right attitude and the right view of practice. To not just cultivate concentration for the heck of it, that would be like sharpening the pencil and putting it in a frame saying,

oh, I got a perfect sharpened pencil, this is mine. It would be like making the pencil a trophy on our mantle but instead I cultivate and teach John a practice as one expression of right concentration and in the Buddhist practice there's something called the eightfold path which I believe many of your listeners will be familiar with and the first factor on the eightfold path is right view. It's right understanding. And we could even put right attitude in that

category as another way of understanding, how are we coming to this? And for what purpose are we engaging in this practice? The correct attitude and the valuable reason and purpose for practicing, it has to be remembered and inform how and why we concentrate the mind. So in every step of the process, in the way that I teach, in the way that I guide, in the way that I believe, that it is taught in the Buddhist tradition. John a practice is taught as right concentration, which means it's informed by right view and understanding, which means it cannot, at any point, for any length of time, reinforce an identification and an attachment to it. So we're purifying the mind, we're unpacking any kinds of cravings that may arise.

Now, the general sequence of abandoning cravings and attachments are first we let go of the attachments to the ones that are hurting us, right? You know, the harmful things. Most people want to let go of rage and fear, you know. But then there's subtler things that we can let go of our attachment to and subtler and subtler and subtler and subtler. Similarly, there are core sensual pleasures and then there are subtle sensual pleasures and then there are pleasures that are developed through meditation. Those pleasures that arise through meditation are not unwholesome, but they're also not to be attached to, not to be craved for. We cultivate them, yes, because they're valuable, they're useful, but without attachment. So if we bring right few and

understanding of the path of practice to the way we develop concentration, then we are developing concentration as a practice of letting go. We understand it to be a practice of relinquishment. So if we understand it correctly and we're practiced it correctly, then I just don't worry about people getting attached to it. Any more than I fear that if somebody goes and has a really good dinner at a really nice restaurant, that they're going to be craving that for the whole rest of their life and not be able to function. You know, we do have experiences that are superior than others in some way. And it doesn't mean we're necessarily attached to them.

in some way, and it doesn't mean we're necessarily attached to them. Can anybody hit the genres? I find the descriptions of the genres to be incredibly compelling, but I don't think of myself as somebody with naturally high capacity for concentration. So is this something anybody can do and how do we do it? It's an interesting question, and I've been criticized for every way I've answered this question, so there will be different views on the subject. I'm something of a cheerleader for Johnna States. I think they're beautiful, and I want them to be accessible and available to people.

I want to inspire people to practice concentration, to even attend a jhana retreat and focus on it. For myself, before I practiced jhana, I was already doing mindfulness practice for more than 20 years. So it wasn't where I started, and I usually don't recommend beginners start with it. I usually recommend that people develop skill with mindfulness and skill with focusing their energy, because otherwise you can spend the whole time balancing your energy and your effort

or getting caught in the hindrances. And mindfulness practices provide a lot of teachings on these ways of working, but the mind, and developing skills. But concentration practice develops additional skills and highlights because it's such a deep state, it helps us see if there are any ways where maybe after some period of mindfulness practices, there are things that we still are lost in.

And it can be very useful for somebody to say, okay, for the next year or two, I'm going to focus more on concentration and to try to strengthen that quality and then see what I learn about the mind. The actual experience of the Jhana States, like when you say you come to a retreat, is it realistic to expect that you will die deep and have a genuine,

profound life-changing experience of Jhana in which you have mastery over that. I would say for every retreat, every Jhana retreat I've taught some people have, and the majority have not. actually had an experience, a profound deep experience of Johnna. Does that mean that they can't? I'm not prepared to say that. I'm just gonna say that in those 10 days, the conditions didn't come together.

And I'm not gonna say that after two retreats or three retreats, if it didn't happen, that they're not capable of it. Because Johnna becomes available when we have cultivated the conditions on the particular skills and have learned not only to free the mind from the obstacles but to also hold the meditation object in certain ways. So these are all learning things. And when does it click?

When does it come together? I don't think we can predict that. So we have to enter into the training without demanding it appear in a certain way on a particular timeline. It's interesting to me that we find in the early discourses of the Buddha's stories where lay people from time to time, abided in the bliss of seclusion, the experiences of the Janus. So it's certainly not something that's limited to a monastic or somebody who's a full time meditation practitioner. It's also something that can be done at home. It doesn't require the isolation of a retreat, although retreats are extremely supportive.

Among the students that I know, generally people learn it in retreat, experience deeply in the retreat, train their mind to explore it deeply in the retreat and gain that mastery, and then are able to continue it at home. And some people can maintain it at home for a short period of time, some weeks, some months, and some people maintain access to it for the rest of their lives, depending a lot on the conditions and how they develop their meditation. So it really varies, but I like to believe that it is available because I think that we can always adjust the conditions of our mind. What might be useful though is to clarify that it's not just the hindrances that are an obstacle to the attainment and mastery of Jhana. because I've had many students who have done many years of

insight meditation and their minds are not preoccupied with the hindrances, they experience the arising of the John of factors, but their way of perceiving objects has been so conditioned to observe their changing nature that their mind is reluctant to hold the meditation subject in a way that allows the absorption. And it's a particular skill in holding the meditation object. So if somebody has done decades of practice of open awareness,

where they allow the attention to go to whatever is dominant and then experience the changing nature of that. Although it's developed samadhi, it will be a different skill to say, no, don't go there, we're focusing on just this and teach their mind to do that. So, even advanced meditators who've had extraordinary insight still will have to learn some specific techniques to steady the mind and allow an absorption to occur. I wanted us to talk about John as just because I think that they're fascinating, but if I'm honest, I think the vast majority of people listening to this perhaps myself included are unlikely to go out of John a retreat and

Even you said most people Google on John a retreats are unlikely to hit the John's So that being said, I wonder if we could talk about practical applications of John a practice to our daily Garden variety meditation practice. What tactics do you use when teaching John a practice that can help us with our everyday meditation? I think it's a fair question, but before I talk about the daily practices, I just want to emphasize that because something is not so easily accessible, doesn't mean that the path of practicing it isn't incredibly valuable.

So one can practice that path without the expectation of the attainment and find it incredibly enriching to one's practice. That's a great point. The skills that's defalible when doing the jhana practices are very refined. Our understanding of the mind is heightened and refined because we're so steady. We're so steady with it. Even a sound here or a sensation there doesn't provide the distraction that might keep us from seeing how we're relating to and perceiving this experience So although I say that the majority of people who attend my retreats don't enter jhana

I would say that a hundred percent of the people who attend my retreats experience deeper samadhi than they have ever experienced There's a great point. I guess I shouldn't say a%, maybe somebody out there didn't, and they just didn't tell me. But it was their fault. So I don't want your listeners to call in and say, oh, no, no, that didn't happen for me. But really, I would say almost 100% then experience deeper concentration and have learned things about their minds that they didn't learn in decades

of doing other kinds of practices because of the particular orientation to Johnna. So I think it's extremely important just that we have to let go of the sense that it's only successful if it results in this picture perfect accomplishment called, I entered the first jonna. I also find that anybody who enters the first jonna has no problem with second, third or fourth. Because to enter the first jonna, you have already abandoned all the hindrances. So I've never had a student enter the first jonna and not be able to progress further. I've seen references to it in the texts, so it must be possible. But I don't lighten the description or definition of what a Johnna state is to make people feel as though they got it earlier.

I wait until the conditions are really ripe. And then I find that when somebody really does, it has the mind completely free from the hindrances. And the conditions available, the mind can settle into an experience of absorption that remains accessible, that is sustainable, and that the whole sequence unfolds naturally. And I have to say easily after that. The hard part is creating the conditions for the first jhana, because the hard part is freeing the mind from the innertices. But once we've done that, and it's worthy work, very worthy work, not to be belittled as or rushed through,

once we have done that, then it's just a question of how do we hold the meditation object, learning the skills, developing the masteries, and refining some of the ways that we can direct and explore our minds. But in terms of practical daily life exercises, one simple thing people can do is simply to spend a little bit more time in their meditation practice at home focusing on the breath or focusing on a particular perception that they want to explore more deeply.

There can be value in just allowing any object that is dominant to arise and be known and allowing the mind to rest with that. So it's not to diminish the value of those practices. But if somebody really wants to strengthen concentration, a simple way of doing it is to direct the attention to something and stay a little bit longer with that. And maybe just staying with the breath, for example, for a period of time, pre-determined the first 15 minutes

or the last 15 minutes or something like that of your daily practice can actually do a lot for strengthening that ability to make a determination to focus the attention and to teach the mind that that's what it's doing for the next 15 minutes. So it's just a very, very simple thing to do. It takes time to cultivate. Simple doesn't necessarily mean it's accomplished easily. It just means the instruction is simple. One thing that may be underappreciated by some people

is the impact of our ethical behavior on our capacity to concentrate. Is that worth exploring here in this discussion about how to get focused on mind and meditation? Oh, my heart is leaping out with joy with that question because it's very important. And the suit is described right concentration as being based upon virtue. So it's necessary if we're concentrating the mind without virtue, without having considered how we act in life. We're not gonna succeed. And we notice that, because we'll notice that the mind will be more restless. We might be strategizing about how to get even with somebody or obsessing about something

that triggers anger or be lost in various kinds of proliferating thoughts that relate to kind of an unskilled engagement with the world. So we have to consider how do we act? How do we speak? So the concentration meditation, although it's focused more on how we use the attention, how we use the mind, the courses of action that are described in the Buddhist tradition are not only the actions of mind, but also the actions of speech and the actions of the body. What do we do?

So yes, it must be based upon virtue. And most meditators, I think, discover that when they sit in meditation, if there's a lot of restless agitation, sometimes there's something not pure or virtuous, something we don't really respect about the way that we acted, the way that we spoke, or the way that we thought. And so that's something that I would again say, we deal with, we become mindful of, and we cultivate different conditions. And the last technique that stuck out to me from what I've read of your work in terms of increasing our ability to stay focused in meditation is a practice you described as talking back

to the mind. There's a few big primary hindrances that meditators who are focusing on concentration tend to experience and they're not gonna be surprising. The balance of effort, not too forced and not too lax is the common one. So I work a lot with people to really balance the effort so that we can be fully engaged and yet relaxed. So that's a lot with people to really balance the effort so that we can be fully engaged

and yet relaxed. So that's a huge one. And then skill with the object which we spoke about and the working with all the hindrances and cultivating the John Factor's all that we spoke about. But this experience of distraction is worth attention of its own. How is the mind thinking? How do we relate to the thinking mind? And we need a whole lot of different strategies for working with the distracted mind.

Because it is the hindrance that sometimes feels like the one that we are battling or just not battling and allowing it to take over our minds. And if we're too forceful with the thinking mind, it becomes a hindrance in itself. And if we're too lax, it takes over. So how do we, with a strength of clarity, say, no to the mind? I'm not going to think about that. I'm not going to be planning that now. I'm not going to be ruminating about that now. I don't need to think that now.

So first we have to simply be mindful that those thoughts arose. But how do we transform the pattern? Sometimes our mindfulness is strong and clear and there's wisdom imbuing, filling, and suffusing that mindfulness. So when a thought arises, we see it as just a thought Sometimes our mindfulness is strong and clear, and there's wisdom imbuing, fulfilling and suffusing that mindfulness. So when a thought arises,

we see it as just a thought that arises and passes away, and it doesn't cause a distraction to us. But sometimes we're focusing on our meditation subject with an aim towards concentrating the mind. And a thought of something else arises, and we start thinking about it. We start planning it, we start going if then scenarios, we start embellishing it, we get a lot totally lost in the world of thought. Then what do we do? Actually, there are a lot of different strategies that we can do and I just wrote a book that's going to come out next year

on removing distracting thoughts, specifically just on dealing with a variety of ways to counter the thought. But the one that you're talking about is talk back. Just say, okay, what's going on here? No, I'm not going to think that now. And if your mind is telling you something that is not true, which many minds, when we look at our own thoughts and we ask, is that actually true? Is that really how things are? We might discover that it's not true. So we talk back, we counter the beliefs of the mind, we don't buy in, we don't believe that our thoughts are telling us a true experience. So we use our thoughts to counter thoughts. Of course this is not done in Johnna because the mind is not having discursive thoughts in Johnna. But it can be done as we counter the hindrance

sis and to try to clear away a space so that the mind is free from those agitating or restless thoughts. Just to say when that book on distraction comes out, our hope here on the show is that you will come back on this show. But as we approach the end of our time together for this episode. Can I just get you to shamelessly plug, focused and fearless and any other things you've got going on, website, social media, retreats, anything that we should know about that year up to? What a lovely offer. Thank you. I just love plugging this stuff. So I've written two books,

focused and fearless and wisdom wide and deep. Focused and fearless, I think, is a very accessible book and it's very powerful. It explores the topics we've been discussing on deep concentration and includes a lot of exercises for deepening concentration in daily life. Wisdom wide and deep is a four-more advanced practitioner and describes a very specific and systematic approach to both concentration and insight practice. So I recommend focused and fearless first. I also teach courses online through Bodicourses.org and they're connected with the deepening of concentration.

Also insight and mindfulness practices, but my specialty in that is to explore some of the themes that were written about in the books and to help expand and embellish and guide people through these practices. The online courses provide a kind of an overview and understanding of the states. They refine our view, our attitude, our right view. They provide instructions in the basic practices, but we can't create the kind of conditions online that we do in a retreat experience. So I also teach retreats worldwide and courses of various kinds that people can find on

the internet or through my websites, boaticourses.org or IMSB.org, which is for InSight Meditation South Bay, which is the meditation group that I founded. Shaila, thanks so much for doing this. Really appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation with you. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks again to Shaila, excited to have her back on the show soon.

Before we go, one item of business and one announcement for an event Thanks again to Shiloh, excited to have her back on the show soon. Before we go, one item of business and one announcement for an event that's coming up this Thursday, May 20th, with Richie Davidson, and that's happening through the New York Insight Meditation Center. I'll tell you more about that in a second. First though, the item of business, which is in invitation for you to participate in this show. In June, we're going to be launching a special series of podcast episodes focusing on anxiety,

something I'm sure we're all way too familiar with or many of us are way too familiar with. In this series, you're going to become intimately familiar with the mechanics of anxiety, how and why it shows up, and what you may be doing to feed it. We're going to teach you how to have a realistic view of your anxiety and to increase your ability to cope with challenging situations. You're going to teach you how to have a realistic view of your anxiety and to increase your ability to cope with challenging situations.

You're going to learn tools for examining and overcoming your own particular anxiety feedback loops while building the skills of mindfulness, compassion and courage along the way. And this is where you come in. We'd love to hear from you with your questions about anxiety that experts will answer during the anxiety series we're going to do here in the podcast. So whether you're struggling with social anxiety, anxiety about re-entering the world post COVID or if you have any questions about anxiety at all, we want to hear from you. To submit a question or share a reflection, you can

dial 646-883-836 and leave us a voice mail. 646-883-836. The deadline for submissions is Friday, May 21st. If you're outside the United States, we've put details in the show notes about how to submit a question through an alternate method. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you in advance. And also just as I mentioned briefly a second ago, I do want to tell you about an event that's coming up with my friend, Richie Davidson, who's a renowned author and psychologist and neuroscientist.

He's doing an event with New York Insight this Thursday night, May 20th. It's called Wellbeing as a Skill. Richie is gonna discuss the interaction between Dharma and scientific evidence that suggests we can change our brains by transforming our minds and cultivate habits of mind that will improve our wellbeing and the world.

The online event starts at seven Eastern. I put a link to the registration in the show notes, or you can just head over to nyimc.org, nyimc.org to search for the event. Richie's amazing, he's been on the show several times, and really is a pioneer in terms of using the modern tools and neuroscience to look at what meditation does to the brain.

So go check that out. With all that said, big thanks to everybody who makes this show, Samuel John's DJ Cashmere, Kim Bikam, Maria Wartell, and Jen Point. We get audio engineering from ultraviolet audio, as always a big shout out to Ryan Caster and Josh Cohan for maybe see news. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a freshy brand new episode. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with 1-replus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

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