Respect for Emptiness

　　Thanissaro Bhikkhu

　　November 15, 2003

　　Respect for concentration. It”s interesting that of the factors of the path— virtue, concentration, and discernment—the Buddha singled out concentration as something worthy of respect. At one point he called it the heart of the path. And yet the reason he needs to remind us to respect it is because we tend to overlook it, tend to step on it. Those little moments of stillness in the mind: We tend to ignore them, we don”t pay them much attention. We”re so much more interested in running after things: thinking about this thing, thinking about that thing, looking at this, looking at that, getting the mind all stirred up, yet ignoring those little moments of stillness between what basically come down to moments of disturbance in the mind.

　　We see the disturbance as interesting and the stillness as boring, and so we keep running after whatever flashes in and promises to look interesting. We look at it for a while and see that there”s not much there, so we drop that, the mind goes still for a moment, and then we move to something else. Those little moments of stillness are pushed so far in the background that we hardly even see them—and yet these little moments of stillness are what the Buddha wants us to work with, to respect.

　　Without these little moments, for one thing, the mind would go crazy. It wouldn”t have any rest at all. Secondly, if you”re going to develop stronger concentration, you”ve got to start with these little moments. Start connecting them up. Resist the temptation to go running after any new disturbance that comes barging into the mind. Make up your mind that you”re going to stay right here with the breath. The breath is not that colorful an object—at least on the surface. You find, though, as you get to know it, that the more you spend time with it, the more it has to offer, the more absorbing it gets. But to get to that state of absorption, you have to start out with small moments of concentration, of stillness. Pay attention to them, look after them.

　　To describe this process, Ajaan Fuang often used the Thai word prakawng, which describes what you would do if a child was learning to walk and you were standing behind it. You want it to learn how to walk on its own, but you don”t want it to fall, so you”re gently hovering around it to make sure it doesn”t fall, while at the same time not preventing it from walking on its own. That”s the kind of attitude you should have toward your concentration.

　　In the beginning you have to take it on faith that the concentration is going to be a good thing. You read passages in the texts and they”re there to give you inspiration. “A sense of rapture permeating the body.” The image they give is of a spring of water welling up, permeating a lake, or of lotuses saturated with water from the tip of their roots to the tip of their buds. Sounds good. Something you”d like to experience. The images are attractive for a reason. One: they really are descriptive of a state of concentration. Two: they”re designed to make you want to go there, to remind you that these little states of concentration that seem so unpromising on their own, if you stitch them together, develop a strength, develop a depth, create a sense of intense gratification that they wouldn”t have otherwise. When you take these lessons to heart and carry them through, you find that the sense of space in the mind becomes more and more attractive. You want to move into that sense of space for good.

　　The Buddha calls this taking emptiness as your dwelling. Instead of focusing on the figures in the foreground, you focus on the space around them. You realize that this space is an appealing space. It”s quiet, undisturbed. “There”s only this modicum of disturbance”: focus…

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