Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 40-minute talk, Choedak presents the classical stages of calm-abiding meditation practice through the traditional metaphor of an elephant and monkey, showing how a practitioner’s perception gradually shifts from blaming external distractions to recognizing restlessness as an internal quality of mind. He walks through the first three stages in detail: initial awareness of wild mind; realizing distraction is not caused by external circumstances; and the pivotal third stage where the meditator “befriends” distractions, seeing them as vital feedback rather than obstacles. Choedak covers practical remedies for dullness and agitation, the importance of shortening sessions while repeating gains at each stage, and how clarity—the recognition that one’s mind generates its own experience—becomes the foundation for genuine calm abiding. He emphasizes that true calm abiding extends beyond formal meditation into daily life, where clarity engenders responsibility and freedom. Suitable for practitioners beginning or deepening their meditation practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 TtT.mp3
UUID: 5f2c5886-993b-4097-b317-f63387faa361
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Calm Abiding (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~5,178
The more you do it, that you would have slowed the pace of the wildness of the elephant and the monkey because you know you could do something about about that. And maybe the white patch that you see on the top of the elephant’s head and the monkey represent, there’s some understanding by the meditator of his or her own mind. They are beginning to understand, they’re beginning to acknowledge the world that defines my mind as this world. Almost acknowledging that restlessness of one’s own mind. It is not the coldness of the room or brightness of the room.
Some people could always say when they are not concentrated, they’re straight resting, something is wrong around the room, they’re meditating. It’s no longer exteriorizing his his lack of concentration. He’s actually recognizing that his mind is there as well, not external. So it’s not the wind, it’s not the light, it is not the noise. You know, so he doesn’t see that there is a distracted object external to him.
Because until this time, meditator oversees the distractibility his own mind is distracted by something external to him. So that is the stage where one has to repeatedly bring it back, bring the mind back to the object again and again. So these first two stages is reasonably easy to reach, reasonably easy to reach. But inability to increase the length of your concentration, to focus on one object, and and the belief that there is an object that is distracting you still lingers in the mind of the meditator. He always thinks there must be a quieter place I can go.
There must be a better time I can meditate, where where none of these things appear, you know. So always sees a better condition for meditation. And and as rightly in the teachings, they recommend a place that is solitude, quiet. Best time you should choose. Go to a place that is quiet, peaceful, conducive to meditation.
They usually say that for and it is really necessary to see those. But mind meditator will soon realize going there, even they still have to surpass those problems of mind always seeing something external as a destructive object rather than realizing distractibility of his own mind. If his or her mind is not destructible, no object can distract. The objects become more of a reminder of precursor of this distraction rising, rather than they become the distraction. Third level is called repaired orientation, repaired placement, where, if you look at the diagram, third level, there’s a slight sort of transformation in which is the attitude of the meditator looking at elephant and the monkey.
The patch on their head is increased. So, elephant is looking back, isn’t it? Slightly glancing, back glancing the meditator. Almost mind is looking, oh, do you want to know me? You know after you want to be friend with me?
That kind of almost acknowledging that this is my mind. Meditators acknowledging that this this mind can be like this. Almost that means this back-glancing of the elephant to the meditator is where the meditator is realizing, actually, distractions are insubstantial. There’s no substantial distraction external to it. Almost deciding that there’s no object that is that that is substantially existing out there that will distract me.
So he’s almost saying my it’s only an indication of restlessness of my mind, which is now trying to slowly, you know, reduce its restlessness. This is only inference that my mind is about to relax and rest. So meditator learns to see the distractions as a sign of him trying to relax, trying to calm, rather than a sign of an external object that would distract the mind. So, did not Meditator does not exteriorize an existing object that can distract one’s mind, but rather he reads that as a barometer of how his mind is at. So distractions, how they manifest, is more read, more interpreted as where his or her mind is at.
A powerful That’s why this third stage is called repaired placement. Repair meaning, sometimes it’s termed as patched placement. Patch meaning, if there’s a hole, you put a patch and you cover that part. So the meditator is meditatorial, you’ve got a distraction here, you patch that. He got distraction, he patched that.
So all his global concentration is hold and he patched that, he patched that, he patched that. So it’s pretty secure because he learned to catch every weak point of his mind and then stay undisturbed. So what it really means is the total transformation of attitude of the meditator. He or she no longer see there’s nothing more danger than a restless mind. He doesn’t see any external object that can destroy.
It’s only inner restless mind that I need to watch more so than external sounds or forms or anything like that. That inner conviction of the meditator almost now waits for the mind, waits for the distraction. He looks forward to his structures because distraction helped him to measure his performance or lack of it. So therefore, because without that, has no milestone as how he is performing in meditation. Because otherwise, meditation is uneventful.
It’s total blank as we go to sleep. Meditation must be creative, eventful, and productive and creative. You must feel something is happening. A transformation of your own own vision of your mind is increasing. The calmness is the first quality.
Clarity is only dawned during the third stage. Third stage, the clarity in the mind. The meditator’s total understanding of meditation and distraction, relationship between meditation and distraction. Almost he befriends the distraction. He befriends distraction.
He regards them as important. He regards them as indispensable. And how his attitude varies distraction will be treated as the barometer of his meditation. So seeing distraction increases some sense of excitement, some kind of excitement, rather than previously was discouraging, quite dulling factor, because you can’t meditate, you get bombarded by the thoughts, and when you don’t want them, they come. But normally the thoughts come, thoughts come because we don’t want them.
And when the meditator is, Now, those thoughts are very good, because seeing the thoughts makes me to know where I am, where are they? Come on. So you’re befriending the thoughts, you’re about to welcome the thoughts, you’re no longer having any difficulty with the thoughts, you need them and then when you want to you want to look more careful. And with that moment, then thoughts all of a sudden shy away. When you look for them, they shy away.
When you don’t want them, they seem to be just just tapping in all over the place. This is the kind of clarity in meditation. Fourth stage, when you reach the fourth stage, it is it is almost like close to being pacified. You know? Close to being pacified.
Mind is reaching there, almost calming itself, calming in a stage in which the meditator will have to now moderately use his hook and rope in moderation. Previously, was hitting the hook all the time. Whichever would catch the elephant he would. Now he has to be moderate, apply the remedies moderately, so that he doesn’t overdo or hinder the application of the remedies. Sometimes we don’t apply remedies and called for, sometimes we reapply what is not needed.
So those kind of fine tuning takes place during this fourth period where the mind is getting to really learning. As soon as the third stage, you know, when you reach third stage, it gets really a sigh of relief because that’s a tremendous discovery that distractions are not external. When you start thinking of that, you could appreciate the Buddhist philosophy of mind only school, the idea that it’s all my own mind, including distraction. When you can decidedly accept all distraction as a projection of your own thoughts, you’re more likely to be able to change, cancel, modify much quicker. You’re not at the whim and mercy of external events.
Your attitude now will play a significant role. But that kind of reaching to that level increases a sense of excitement, which is called gross excitement. You become a little bit happy. Oh, this is wonderful. And there’s a feeling of wonder too, know, and this is a very justified feeling.
One indulges in that for a while. And that indulgence is called the gross excitement. And it’s good to have some sense of of differentiating from one stage to another, the mind can go. So the dulling state of mind is not quite there. Previously, was a dullness.
And other when when you try to sort of remedy these experiences of dullness, sort of excitement, gross excitement, and then you you you try to shorten the session because you’re indulging too much in this recently quite active practice. So it’s good to shorten the session. Shorten the session so that you don’t really jump up too high. But maybe after the session you might feel, it’s a bit even with my feeble effort, I felt very good. Now if I follow the path skillfully, maybe I could do it very carefully.
But it’s very important that I don’t, you know, prematurely over evaluate my achievements. So I don’t become attached to your meditation and its benefits. Yeah. Sorry? The itself represents dullness.
Why it’s called dullness? Because dullness is Rabbits mainly are an animal that lives underground. Sinking mind, because dull mind is usually sort of that it goes down deep into you. So when you discover excitement, the excitement then appears dullness. So there is gross gross distraction and gross dullness, and then subtle dullness, subtle excitement, they sort of they sort of come taking turns, so to speak, in the different stages of the meditation.
So there is a stage that you when you shorten the sessions, maybe in twenty minutes if you can reach the third level, you you maybe in twenty minutes’ time, you try to shorten that session and you maybe you try to do that session again in that very time. Whether you can do it again, same session, reach to that level of third level of sense of realizing the distractions are not external to you. They very much restlessness in the ones own mind. When you can repeat that in shorter sessions, I mean, no, same length of sessions, repeatedly, I mean, consistently, then you try to shorten the length of your sessions, maybe half the time that you normally take take you to reach that. Whether you could do many of the shorter sessions, whether your concentration can reach to that level in a shorter span of your session.
Only if you can repeat, experience the previous length of time’s achievements in a half length of time’s meditation, then you definitely have consolidated that stage. Otherwise, don’t push too hard thinking that I could improve from here onwards because the stages do not necessarily come in sequence. Last week your meditation reached some, and this week it wouldn’t necessarily repeat. So it’s important not to push oneself sinking, Oh, last week I got that stage, now I’ll push myself. And it’s very important to reconsolidate those stages by halving the times, but increasing the sessions, number of sessions, by shortening the length of the sessions.
And that’s really one skill of improving and consolidating your concentrations. Because sometimes you concentrate so long and then only it becomes clear. But if you repeat that clarity in a shorter session repeatedly, you know, repeatedly, then definitely your calmness and clarity and the mind’s ability to focus on the object will will be dramatically enhanced. So moving on from different stages, you overcome in all in all, the the remedy of alertness and mindfulness are two remedies directed against to remedy so directed to remedy dullness and agitation. Of course, dullness is indicated by the rabbit, and of course the restlessness, agitation is indicated by the monkey here.
So dullness dullness is usually remedied by shortening the sessions and taking maybe a shower, washing their face, wearing their clothes, lighter, eating lighter food. This is a very retreat situation. Lighter, lighter food, and going a little bit on higher places where you can see a view of a valley or big vast spans of the sky. They said this will make ones a little bit, you know, awakened other than being so dull. And and therefore, dullness also one way to remedy that sense of dullness is is to recite lot of praises of the Buddha and various spiritual masters, biographies of theirs, or or certain really inspiring things that that motivates you.
Maybe meditation on the death and impermanence, and that kind of things will induce urgency to practice. It doesn’t make you feel dull, but rather it makes you feel that you have to invigorate yourself to practice harder. And the dullness could be usually just just lack of energy, fatigue, tiredness, when you hold feeling very sleepy. Practical remedies when you’re feeling dull is is in long retreats. I mean, this doesn’t have to be practiced every day.
In a long retreat situation, if you do session after session, you try to avoid dullness by by having the the room where you meditate, enough nice air circulating, enough air, enough light is getting. And also you don’t eat very, very heavy food. And because of that, try to do the shorter sessions, many, many short sessions, not long, difficult shorter sessions, shortened sessions. And if you really stick with the dao, they usually use practical sometimes they use meditation belt. They just make you so difficult to go to sleep.
They put sticks under their chins, or tie their hair on the ceiling, whatever, just to avoid from falling asleep, falling asleep. So, this is the you have to implement them, you know, if you’re doing a long prolonged retreat, you’ve got to get it some get something happening. You can’t keep going out of throwing cold water on your face, you know. So you’ve got to be doing something. And definitely, you’re not in body meditating, pays time, you can’t really waste your time.
So you’ve got to use various practical solutions, how you’re going to work it. But when it’s totally due to because one is not accustomed to such a practice. One is so used entertaining the senses and their needs. That’s why the body feel very lethargic to to feel induced and joyful. It doesn’t feel the joy in eating.
It doesn’t feel the joy in watching something beautiful. Why is it? Maybe because meditation is most most beautiful for the mind to to sustain with, but yet it can’t feel the joy. It is it is rather sort of exactly opposite. So in order to induce the joyfulness, you got to try various various ways and read of the read benefits of the meditation.
Beautiful songs of masters of realization, what they call hymns, what they call songs of realizations. Many great masters who have left their spontaneous experiences how wonderful they felt in deep meditation, how beneficial it was. So you try to induce your mind, invigorate your mind to wanting to practice, if that’s dullness. So dullness can be some reading, more teachings, inspirational teachings, stories from others, those could be very useful things. Excitement, if you feel excitement, which was because the earlier distraction now become excitement.
Earlier, it was distraction. Now it becomes very very excitable. You feel so good about your your sort of recently acquired benefits. You become so attached to it. You just don’t want to even go to work.
You just want to meditate. So that’s important, and for that is whereby one needs to see that, Oh, my effort is so little, but I can already see this kind of glimmer of light of hope. So you try to induce great devotion in the infinite qualities of the great masters, enlightened Buddha and their qualities. You can see how they would have put so many, many eons to reach their reach, what they reach. When we as an ordinary person would put effort, we could already see how it could happen.
So so your excitement shouldn’t make you feel that that you have reached nearly the top, and you’ve a feeling. Comparing to the Buddha and all the others, I’m just just on this on the foot here. On the foot in the foot in the top bottom of the, you know, to speak. It’s good to feel oneself humble when you feel excited. You should try to induce devotion and faith when you’re feeling excited because otherwise, ego may ego may bump its head.
So it’s important to feel humbled and ennobled by this. Feel something has made you good, but there’s a long way to go about that. This sense of ennobling and sense of feeling humbled. It’s very important that everything comes from something external to us. When you do that, it will remedy the problem of excitement, gross and subtle excitement, just briefly speaking.
So with the limited time we have of the day, I would like to conclude this by in summarizing the calm abiding meditation instructions, mainly five obstacles we need to look at, that laziness, forgetfulness, and then two main obstacle count traditionally as one, the dullness, which is sinking also, or distraction or excitement. And then the fourth obstacle is what is called the non application. Non application is not applying the remedies for appropriate obstacles. And the fifth one is over application, where you do not you excessively apply remedies where they’re not needed or too early, too much. So the remedies for them are eight.
The first, laziness, has four remedies, which is faith, which is divided into three types, lucid faith, aspirational faith, and trustworthy faith. And then the second is the determination. Third is the joyous effort, which are divided into four kinds: two, related to positive, two, negative habits, With the negative things is to uproot existing negative habits or patterns, effort directly to that, and picking up no new negative habit patterns. It’s the true choice of a negative. Positive is try to implant new habitual patterns of developing virtuous imprints, impulses, and try and make sure that those previously cultivated do not decline.
Those are the four types of effort. And then fourth remedy to laziness is pliant or rapturous feeling of both body and the mind, being able to reach to a point of pliancy. Mindfulness is the remedy to forgetfulness. So forgetfulness varies both as prerequisites of the meditation in terms of correct timing, place, diet, or maybe your own arrangement of time, place, food, clothing. Sometimes we might be wearing our own clothes, maybe too tight clothing, too heavy or warm clothing can make it difficult to meditate.
Loose, relaxed clothing is very important. So not forgetting all those prerequisites of the meditation and not forgetting the correct techniques of doing meditation. Always doing with the prayers at the beginning preferably, and do the practice and conclude with the dedication of merit at the end. So following the instruction and then learning to spend considerable time on the posture of meditation before moving on to the actual object of meditation, if you also desire. Most people may spend time just relaxing the body or watching their breath.
But just learning learning to relax and work with the body and not forgetting those things. We forget many of those things and therefore meditation can become not very successful. So remembering all of those is the remedy, mindfulness to to all those factors. And then the two obstacles that two obstacles that arise during the meditation, which is dullness and excitement, is remedied by alertness. Alertness, conscientiousness, mind.
Alertness is or awareness, what it does, it’s actually much sharper element, mind which spies upon the quality of mindfulness, mind which self investigates or improves the quality of mediteachings, and therefore watching the watcher type of feeling, the mind which itself to examine the quality of performance of the mindfulness and try to improve that is awareness. So examining whether you’re being dull or whether you’re being excited. If you’re dull, then you do not prolong your session. If you’re very excited, you try to humble yourself at however justifiably achieved result there, one needs to feel humbled rather than feel extremely excited. And those techniques are really practices of awareness in everyday life situations.
And then the non application, the obstacle of non application is knowing the exact appropriate, knowing how to appropriate the remedies to the relevant obstacles is therefore how to moderate moderation. Like meditation is like either adjusting your guitar strings, either not too tight, not too loose. Or the example I gave about spinning on the wall. Being able to balance it so that you do not put too much effort unless they’re necessary. But at the same time, know, do not push too hard.
But when things are going well, one doesn’t become attached to meditation and one actually shorten the session. And try to see whether that the consequences of that experience is corresponding with your after non meditation periods, whether those calmness that you felt in meditation is actually translated in everyday activities, before pushing, thinking I’m getting so high in meditation. Learning how to adjust and steady cultivate steadiness is what is called applying the right remedies to non applications. So, over application, which is fifth obstacle, which is when you apply the remedy, sometimes you do too much too soon because of that, the techniques you employed weren’t even called for. For instance, if you were feeling if you were feeling excited, maybe there’s something happiness to you today, but you think this is something to your meditation.
There may be some other reasons that you are happy anyway, but it’s nothing to do with the achievement of it. And then try to humble oneself, try to use techniques that are not called for. So, there’s just a fine when a meditator learns to match the remedies with the obstacles, they actually learn learn to fine tune those qualities. All in all, all these things could be encapsulated to three. Stability sorry, stability, clarity, and intensity.
Stability of the stability of your mind and the body. Your body will sit still with you. Your mind focuses on the object. Clarity is where you distinguish distraction as not being external to you. That’s a way you would not only recognize distraction, you will not only see them rising, you not only see them affecting your meditation, but at the same time, you’re not ascribing it to anything external.
That’s clarity because you really feel much refreshed by that realization. You could not be intimidated by distractions because you know they are self produced. It’s good to know that we produced. While produced by ourselves and everything, somebody produces a really long takes a long while to remedy anything at all. So, it’s good to know that really.
Once you once we know the distraction of self produced, they are we become responsible. That’s the whole thing. Clarity means we become responsible, that increases clarity, and therefore it engenders responsibility. Responsibility meaning possessing what you you know, you you will reorganize it. You will do something about it.
You wouldn’t escape from anything, anything extraordinary. So clarity is a is a one which is really the boost of the karma by your Clarity is the one which makes you to shift from one stage to another. And it is not until seventh level of those stages that intensity of your calm abiding meditation will be there Because it’s relapsible. You may reach a certain level, but you may not be able to reach that consistently. So that’s why intensity is To improve intensity, one must use the practical application of the formal meditative benefits in everyday life.
So, one focuses its practical benefit to everyday life, whether everyday doing events, whether they’re clarity dawns in your everyday activities. As you see things manifest, as things unfold before your eyes, what’s your perception? Do you take responsibility? Do you see your own input? Or you see something inherently external there that you have nothing to do with, it seems to have so much effect on you.
So unless when there’s that clarity, we we become responsible for whatever we have contributed to make things manifest the way they do. And therefore, the subjective contribution we have made makes the situation much, you know, less intense as a see as a factor. Because of that, the clarity, the mind’s a lot sharper. It is a lot more happy to acknowledge one’s own failures and mistakes. It is much much more forthcoming to acknowledge those than to find anything done by, I guess, somebody outside us.
One doesn’t waste time and energy in doing wrong to somebody else. To wrong somebody, usually people do wrong, which they themselves disapprove. Clarity, when the mind enjoys clarity of the calm abiding meditation, that clarity actually stays with the mind and therefore, person can feel the sense of upliftment in their performance in with people and society. And because of that, they have they have less regret every day. Almost every day has ended beautifully.
One day ended beautifully, two day ended beautifully. So there’s nothing sort of backlog of days that didn’t end it properly, affecting today or next day or each day. Now this is very important because while we may orthodoxly talk about these different stages, it’s superfluous for us to talk about those stages unless we can experience and reap the benefits in everyday to day practices. So that’s the clarity of awakening the mind that is really refreshed. Just as in meditation, post meditation, if a meditator is beneficiary of that clarity.
Almost he can see how confusion unfolds and weaves the pattern of negativities. He can see them have been weaving and yet he can undo them because patterns that does the knots of the activities, he can unrelease them. He can lose loosen them because of his ability to see things clearly. He’s not darkened by superficial appearance, apparent reality. He sees them as a as more of a reflection of the mind that is perceiving rather than inherently something that is there.
Because in meditation, he experienced that all the time. Therefore, he’s quite happy. He become quite free, he becomes the governor of his experiences. He doesn’t become governed by the experiences. Therefore, the clarity is a sense of upper hand, a sense of freedom, sense of joy, sense of extraordinary strength that wasn’t there before, both in meditation and also there’s no human human misdoings that can taunt us, that can upset us.
We feel sorry, we feel pitiful, but there’s no justification for us to do anything similar to wrong them. So therefore, one becomes much more responsible because that is why clarity engenders responsibility. Responsibility engenders restraint. If one can’t engender restraint, then one can’t stop the whirlpool of activities. Activities activities, therefore, doesn’t become habituated.
They become cancellable. You can cancel it. You can say no when you have to say no, even to yourself. So, when one is able to say no to oneself, almost you have installed a superior wiser being in you with your meditation. Almost you have a private guru with you, always, saying, telling you what to do, and you feel totally entrusting with you, you trust totally.
What in vajrayana or Asutary Buddhist meditation would be called as inner guru, where you don’t have to talk to somebody always to clarify things. Your clarity of mind manifests. The teacher, be they living or far or near is your realization. Your realization functions as the best effective teacher. That really shows us that we ourselves can consult with him through meditation.
Oh, so coming by the meditation is quality of clarity. Clarity of the mind is is the quality of the is the characteristic of the mind. Much of the time, our mind is adventitiously obscured. We cannot see the clarity of mind. We only see the wires.
We cannot lift the wire and see the clarity within. So only in meditation we allow, you know, that sense of clarity. Mind is clarity means presence, presence meaning being, bare beingness. There’s no word to explain otherwise. Anywhere to individualize oneself other than mere presence is already a mistake.
Upliftment that you’ve obtained from the sense of beingness that is not localized in any particular place is not deprived of any knowledge or time or space, because one doesn’t place the self in any one location or time or place. Because self is not separate separate from that vast beingness. And the mind, mind’s freedom or spaciousness people talk about usually comes from the mind’s dawning of its clarity. Now that is with meditation or without meditation. Whatever you do, whether that clarity is clear with or not.
Well, are we with us? Are we with us? Just as we said with us, are we with us when we’re doing everything? Are we with us when we are serving somebody as a customer? Are we with us when somebody is not so kind to us?
Are we with us when all kind of circumstances happens. That sense of clarity is, I recall, deepened. Clarity can be deepened. Profoundness of clarity is experienced when one reaches the level of intensity. So that so that with them, with a formal meditation or outside meditation, this the the the pristine awareness of the mind is constant.
The constancy of your pristine awareness inside that that dawns with the sense of clarity even shines brighter amidst the mist of ignorance. Whatever conditional mist of ignorance takes this, the rays of the pristine awareness inside of the mind even shines much brighter. So, that’s why the voice of the Buddha usually described as like the lion’s roaring. The lion’s roar is easily distinguishable from any noise of animals, so is the realization of the person amidst whatever torrent of ignorance. So, the mind which is able to mind which is able to invoke these feelings, formally in meditation, is able to invoke where the person is.
Because there is no time, the clarity of the mind is not retired. And it is this point of time when the presence, we talk a presence of clarity can be felt and lived and expressed, then it becomes calm abiding. You abide in it. Any adversarial factors becomes the tester of one’s abiding. The calmness, unquestionably there, whether it’s can abide, is tested by adversarial factors.
So, one of this calmly abiding adversarial factors becomes very real barometer which measures one’s calm abiding. So, calm abiding is not antithesis to any adversarial factor.