Absorption

This is a talk given at the Blooming Heart Sangha on Nov.7, 2024

Relax. Take a deep breath. I’m about to invite you into a rarified place: I invite you to think what it is like to go beyond the practice and enter absorption, to abandon the practice, to see the practice as impermanent.

Phap Hu talks of the difference between doing and being; to me, that is like practice and absorption.
I admit I know only a little bit about absorption, I experience only a small amount of absorption.
But for me, this little bit is amazingly joy-filled……. This little bit of absorption encourages me to have the intention to enter into absorption, to routinely venture beyond the practice.

When I was a junior and senior in the high school seminary, Mt. St. Francis, I had a privileged position as lead sacristan.

I had the daily chore of making arrangements for many priests celebrating mass.
Also, I was master of ceremonies for special events, such as all the complex celebrations of Holy Week.
I made sure that everything was in place or showed up at the right time: vestments, bells, fire, incense, books, water, wine, people, and so forth.
I made sure all the celebrants knew when to stand, when to walk, when to sit, when to kneel.
I was an orchestra leader who made sure everything happened smoothly and accurately and on time,.
You might say, I guided the community’s practice.
BUT what was most important was what everyone experienced.
Clearly, I tried to make everything move smoothly, but something was more important : Did everyone, the celebrants, the students in the pews, experience the spiritual realm that all this practice suggested.
The intention of all this effort was to lift everyone into a realm beyond all the effort…… beyond my doing and everyone’s doing.
Our intention: To have an experience beyond all the ritual, beyond all the ceremony, beyond the doing.

So it is like that now, for my own practice.

My intention is to go beyond the practice, beyond the ritual, beyond the ceremony.
I want to be clear: for me, the practice is an essential element: I follow scheduled times, I light a candle, I light incense, I invite a bell, I practice mindful movements, I breathe.
Then I let go of it all, including the breath, and enter a realm of absorption;
Absorption is not same as Insight, but makes insight possible.

I think that mindfulness practice solves a problem, the problem of attachment. It offers an opportunity to learn relinquishment, to let go of the practice.

I feel the chair, I feel the movement of breath, then I let go of it and relinquish all sense perception.
No longer experience the breath itself, but I experience the breath as known.
The breath as known is the realm of the mind—the beginning of absorption.
It is a realm without sensory, without form, without concepts.
The practice offers more than knowing how to breathe mindfully, more than knowing how to eat mindfully, more than knowing how to walk mindfully.
The practice offers the basis for entering into absorption, a realm where the practice is abandoned.

I like the guidance provided by the current therapeutic practice that uses psychedelics.

When psychedelics are used therapeutically, it is common to speak of Setand Setting.
Before beginning, set an intention, “what do I want to do,”
Then there is the setting, the room, the presence of helpers, the whole ambiance,
My intent, my Set, is absorption. The setting includes all the aspects of my practice

When I had my two knee replacements, I had the set, the intention of walking freely.

I had to learn again the experience of walking, my set.
To that end I employed a setting, the practice of concentrating on my leg movements, the focused contraction of my quads, the focus on maintaining support, the careful use of my cane.
In time, I abandoned the setting, all that focused practice and I simply walked, I experienced walking without all the supporting concentration or my cane.

For me, to experience absorption, I use ritual, I use the breath, the touch of the chair, the feel of the earth or touch of someone’s hand.

Then I abandon all that: the practice, the setting; I let go of the breath, the touch of the chair, the feel of the earth.
The ritual of my practice serves a purpose, but then it is abandoned so that I experience absorption.

What is it: Honestly, absorption is hard to describe; it has to be experienced.

We have all done it: It is what we can experience in Sangha, in multiple ways.
Someone spoke of it over a month ago when she described what she experiences when she enters this space and sits down.
Here we experience the collective energy of the circle
Here we experience the collective energy of one another.
That experience is beyond the physicality, beyond the senses.

Having a good master of ceremonies in sangha is helpful and useful, but there is something more important than doing everything correctly.

The lighting, the temperature of the room, the arrangement of chairs and cushions, the candles, the inviting of the bell, even the spoken words are all useful, but they are only the opportunity to enter into the realm of the unfettered mind.
No longer a distraction, they are all left behind to enter absorption.
To enter absorption, elements of practice are all relinquished.

I repeat, absorption is an experience hard to describe.

However, in true Buddhist fashion, we can identify 13 steps, beginning with five preparatory actions,
The first step: focus on an object of the mind which allows a gradual departure from sense perceptions.
The five preparatory steps, sometimes called Jhana factors, can be accomplished in a matter of seconds, but after weeks of practice,.

Next, there are the four absorptions, four jhanas; these are four steps of relinquishment to arrive at equanimity They can be learned over a period of years and be experienced at some level in minutes; for some it lasts for hours.

Then there are the four formless perceptions: infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness (non-ego) and emptiness ( nirvana )
The final four can take a lifetime to fully develop, but can be partly experienced now with practice. These four are, I think, implied in how Thay writes about the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra.
In “Old Path, White Clouds” Thay explicitely describes how the Buddha trained in these absorption practices before becoming enlightened

How do we do this, how do we learn to move into the realm of absorption,

Brother Phap Hu has the best advice: create a schedule.
Design your own routine practice, and stick to it.
He has much more to say about this in “The Way Out is In”, with a Plum Village flavor.
One can read about absorption, and I have two favorites: “Focused and Fearless” by Shaila Catherine, and “Abiding in Emptiness” by Bhikkhu Analayo.
There is also: “Emptiness” by Guy Armstrong, and , obtusely, “The Other Shore,”

Much more can be said, but for tonight, I just want to say that the practice is essential and useful

For me, there is more, and that actually involves ignoring, and letting go of the practice.
I use the practice, I also routinely relinquish it.
For me, the practice is impermanent, the path is impermanent.
My intention is to enter absorption, now: “May I find I have no path to follow; may I see that I am standing on the other shore; may I recognize that, alone, I am connected to all things.”
This is achievable, it can be experienced.

What does the practice do for you? How does it work for you?