Live Session Summary, Sunday, May 15, 2022: The theme of today’s Live session was Cultivating Tranquility on the Path to Freedom. The main points I made were:
1) In some meditation traditions, tranquility/calm, bliss, or deep peace are seen as goals or ends of the spiritual path. For the Buddha, however, these states are not the goal of the path because they are conditioned and impermanent states that are not reliable as they change and end. The goal of the path is freedom from suffering that does not depend on any conditions.
2) But while these qualities are not the ultimate goal of the path, they are extremely valuable and beneficial states to cultivate. Tranquility/calm is the fifth of the Buddha’s seven factors of awakening—seven qualities that when fully developed incline towards freedom, just as a river inclines towards the ocean.
These seven qualities are: Mindfulness, Investigation, Energy, Joy, Tranquility, Concentration, and Equanimity.
3) Tranquility, when cultivated wisely, leads to a deepening of focus and unification of the mind (concentration), which in turn leads to a steadiness and balance of mind, manifesting in equanimity. When these three (tranquility, concentration, and equanimity) are developed along with the other four factors, meditation can deepen into states of absorption, which are a powerful support for insight and awakening.
I quoted from an article by Ajahn Brahmavamso in Lion’s Roar magazine, entitled, ‘Cultivate Tranquility, Harvest Insight’ (July 26, 2018); from the last paragraph of an article on ‘Tranquility’ by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center; shared a quote from Ajahn Chah called ‘A Still Forest Pool’ in Jack Kornfield (Ed.), ‘The Buddha is Still Teaching; and also shared Pablo Neruda’s poem, ‘Keeping Quiet’ and Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’.
Wishing you a good week ahead and see you next Sunday at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh
