Lama Surya Das offers the five Ts of Concentration as a way for us to deepen our understanding of this practice.
The first T is taming. We’ve often heard our minds described as wild monkeys, and that feels true, doesn’t it? For a moment, though, picture your mind as a wild mustang- beautiful, strong, powerful. When you enter into meditation, you seek to channel this power in a productive way. But listen: we are not talking about trying to make a mustang into a donkey. Don’t be overly harsh with your mind. Don’t beat it into submission. That’s not Right Action. Let its wild nature inform you, not distract you. Trust the goodness underneath there. Taming is about trust, not about cages. A horse that trusts his rider stands in its power. It doesn’t hide its power. Taming may not be the best word, actually. It’s more like a trusting relationship. Develop a trusting relationship with your mind. That’s step one.
The second T is training. At first, meditation feels unfamiliar. We don’t normally sit with our silence, or even our thoughts. But unfamiliar doesn’t always mean bad. In Right Concentration, we train our minds to slow down, to drop down into the unfamiliar long enough for the quiet to become familiar to us again. We’ve forgotten that silence can also be our home. Silence is our deepest knowing. We can’t get there if we don’t stay with the uncertainty first.
Third, concentration means testing. How do we know anything about our minds if we don’t test it out? When we concentrate, we learn what distracts us, what helps us, what works and doesn’t work. This helps us not only with meditation, but raises our awareness in all of life. In testing, we get deeply acquainted with our power, with our particular kind of majesty.
The fourth T of concentration is transforming. Eventually, this practice transforms us. We channel the beauty, power, and strength of our minds for their highest purpose. We begin to feel like mind/body/soul is all working from the same script. Here, we feel energy, but it’s focused energy. It’s energy we know what to do with.
Lastly, the fifth T is transcendence. Have you ever ridden a horse and felt like you were completely in sync? Like time melted away and everything fell into perfect harmony? In the transcendence of concentration, horse and rider become one. Body/mind/soul embodies the wholeness that has always resided at your center. You are still wild. You are still free. You’ve just gotten rid of the delusions and distractions, cleaned out the dross.
The Five Ts of Concentration give us another way to understand how Right Concentration unfolds within us. For me, though, the most powerful gift of this teaching is the ability to see our minds not as pesky monkeys, but as regal mustangs. If we want to bring out our best, we’ll never get there by shaming ourselves. And when we meditate, it’s so easy to belittle ourselves or be overly critical.
So: the next time your mind is bucking everywhere and not settling down, don’t see it as an annoying, frustrating monkey. See it as the powerful mustang it is. Appreciate its strength. And then consider how you can approach it calmly, with love, in a way that breeds trust.
This post belongs to my series on practicing the Eightfold Path. Read all my posts on Right Concentration here.
