Exercise 9, Experiencing the non-reactive mind

Meeting this experience

In Step 8 we bring the reactivity in our emotions and thoughts to stillness. Having done that, Step 9 asks of us no more than simply to experience the non-reactive state to which we've arrived.

Step 9. One trains oneself, "Experiencing heart-and-mind I'll breathe in;"
one trains oneself, "Experiencing heart-and-mind I'll breathe out."

What these words mean

It's the context in which these words appear that gives them a particular meaning. Coming immediately after Step 8 they can only mean that we train to experience the non-reactive state to which that step brought us. On this page we explore what this place is, and then go on to think about how we can fully experience it.

A place of stillness, or quietness

When our normal reactivity grows still there is no more grasping or rejecting of what life offers us, and with it no more desire or fear, anger or regret, or any other emotional response. Emotions like these usually set our thoughts racing, so when our emotions are stilled we may find the mind becomes very quiet. The non-reactive state we first come to in Step 8 may seem peaceful or restful. We just sit. Recognising our usual reactivity has ceased is enough to know we've completed Step 8. The advance that Step 9 makes on Step 8 is that we learn to remain in this stillness, and we begin to explore it. We will discover that this stillness has gifts for us.

An alien and threatening place?

If emotional reactions have ceased, and the mental activity those reactions stimulate has become quiet, this will be a novel experience for many of us. It may take us some time before we feel comfortable with this experience. When we first glimpse it, it may seem alien and threatening. For all the distress that our reactions and our busy minds may cause us, that way of living is at least familiar. If this experience seems uncomfortable, we may react by bringing our practice to a close for today.

In this way we may come to the edge of Step 9 many times, but always shy away from it. If we can stay with the experience, it will in time become a familiar place, not empty and uncomfortable, but full of possibility.

A place of healing

For others of us this place may feel like coming home, like a place we once knew but have long forgotten. The stillness and the quietness may feel good. Here is rest, refreshing and restoring our souls. Here too is growth, though you may not recognise that at first. And here is healing. Whatever issues may have surfaced at Step 7, and been brought to stillness at Step 8, are probably only the tip of the iceberg.

So much has happened in our lives, and we have forgotten most of it, but the collective effect of all that forgotten pain is to put us on edge, afraid of life repeating itself, afraid of what may happen next. The healing we receive from the Anapana process does not depend on making every single issue in our lives conscious, as if we have to work through Steps 7 and 8 again and again, until we can embrace and quieten every one. Other issues may indeed surface in the future. Some we have buried so deeply we really have forgotten they were ever there.

A safe place, of healing and recuperation

Only when our hearts sense that it is safe for these issues to peep out again, only then may they make a new appearance, to be greeted not by horror or a strong reaction, but with the understanding and patience of a skilled healer, meeting a badly injured patient for the first time. We become our own healers.

Steps 9 to 12 are a place of healing and a place of recuperation. All of this implies that this phase of the practice is not the end of the story. There is life beyond healing. The immature lotus plants continue to grow, but they do so in order that one day they will burst out from the surface of the pond, in beauty and strength and wholeness which will touch all who see them, making this world a better place.

And those who have been damaged and hurt by life—and that includes all of us, in one way or another—will go forth from this place of healing whole and strong. All of us will mature in this place of growth, and who knows how any of us will yet affect the people around us, and the world we live in, even in our final days.

Just Sitting

To a large extent the experience of Step 9 might be called "Just Sitting". The first eight steps have changed us. We have brought stillness both to the body and to heart-and-mind. Now we are able to do something we couldn't have done when we began our practice.

We have learned the arts of both Just Hearing (in Exercise 1) and of Just Seeing (where?). Can we now Just Sit, confident that this new environment will be supportive and nurturing, will shape us and bring us to maturity, just as those lotus plants grow by just standing still?

Our challenge now is to sit, not in an empty and vacant manner, which will only lead us to fall asleep, but in full mindful awareness. What marks the third stage of Jhāna meditation, is not only the non-reactivity of Step 8, but its mindfulness and equanimity. As we've seen before (see Mindfulness), that means being fully aware of our present experience in a broadly focussed and dispassionate way. Or, as the "noble ones" are reported to have said, "One dwells pleasantly, with equanimity and mindful awareness." We might read that as "One sits pleasantly, with equanimity and mindful awareness."

What we experience while Just Sitting

Our experiences have grown through our practice of Steps 1 to 8. Every part of these experiences are still with us. Perhaps our threefold experience can be a pattern for us now, even though it has been developed further.

1. Our physical environment

We sit, and still we hear whatever sounds may arise in this place. We tried to hear them dispassionately from the outset in Exercise 1 and now that dispassion will have developed fully as we have stilled our reactivity.

All of our other bodily senses should also be open and alive by now. We feel the warmth or the coldness of this place, we're aware of the brightness or dimness of its light, we smell any odour that arises. If our eyes are open we see the whole scene with our peripheral vision and without getting involved in any part of what we see. We're aware of some touch sensations. We may sense less tangible things as well, such as the 'feel' of this place.

So we are fully present to where we are, yet without becoming distracted by anything specific here.

2. Our breathing

As we sit, we continue to breathe. As we sit, we continue to know our breathing.

3. Our own bodies

We have worked through a growing practice of mindfulness of the body. Our initial sensing of "the whole body" (Step 3) has grown into an enhanced body-sensitivity (Step 5). The whole body has become intensely alive to us, each part of it and the whole of it. And although the pīti will fade now, we'll continue to sit with a continuing sense of bodily well-being.

4. Our non-reactive state of heart-and-mind

And now we also experience this non-reactive heart-and-mind. This is the new thing we experience. To a large extent this may be a silent mind and a still heart, and if so we just sit in the stillness and the silence. Once we become accustomed to the novelty of it, this will feel good. We can just sit and enjoy the experience.

Issues that may come up in our minds

It's possible that some thoughts will arise. An issue may come up, whether something long past, something still present, or something we anticipate in the future, but an issue that has caused us pain or anxiety, an issue that in the past has caused our reactivity to arise. Now we see this issue in a new way. Now we see it dispassionately. If we have been at fault in some way, we see that, and we can accept it. I was wrong. What I did was hurtful. If others did what was wrong or hurtful, we also see that, and accept it. I may have carried the pain of it for a long time, resenting it. Now I can simply accept it. This is what happened; it hurt me, but that was long ago. Now I can let it go.

Or, this is what's going on now. I've tried to react against it, but that only makes it worse. I may need to protect myself from unnecessary abuse and remove myself from the situation as far as possible, but I can't deny that this is the reality I'm in just now. So what might I do, now that this is how it is? And you may find that the heart actually knows what to do, but the mind has never been able to accept that before now. Or you may find there is no "solution" but that it's OK. I can live with this for now, until something changes in this situation, as it will.

Whatever the issue, we can hold it. We see it now with a new dispassion. And so we can return to the silence of the mind and the stillness of the heart, just sitting. We may not realise it, but we've just grown in some way. And for the rest of our hour we can sit, untroubled and undisturbed.

Conclusion

So when the mind becomes quiet at the end of Steps 7 and 8 I suggest you continue to sit and bring awareness to where you are, to your own body, and to this non-reactive state of mind.

Exercise 9, Experiencing a non-reactive heart-and-mind

Work unhurriedly through Exercises 1 to 8, or as far through them as you can manage at this time. However far you get, your practice will do you good.
If you wish, take a break at this point, but remain quiet and don’t get involved with anything. Then briefly recap Steps 1 to 8.
When you are able to enter into the non-reactive stillness of Exercise 8, try to remain in that stillness for as long as you can. Taste it, feel it, experience it, explore it. Be content to just sit, doing nothing.
If it helps, recall the image of the immature lotus plants.
If you wish, become consciously aware of each part of your present experience:
—Sit and Inhabit this Place.
—Sit and Experience this Body.
—And at the same time Just Sit, experiencing the non-reactivity of heart-and-mind.
When some issue does come up in your mind, can you welcome it and smile at it? Can you hear it, politely, kindly, dispassionately? How does the heart respond to it?
And then, can you let it go again? Return to the emotional calmness and mental stillness, and continue to feel what this place is like. Experience it and become accustomed to it.
Stay here while you can, but when enough is enough, let it go. You might like to sit quietly and alone for a time, perhaps with something to drink, before getting up and re-engaging with the rest of life.

What does this exercise achieve?

Just Sitting, doing nothing, not even thinking. Just aware of the place, the body and the mind. What is the purpose of that?

Internalising mindfulness

My own take on this is that it internalises the attitude of dispassionate, broadly focussed awareness. When we practise any skill, from playing tennis to making music, from carpentry to gardening, we develop abilities we can make use of in future without even being aware of how we know what to do. Sometimes we call such skills "muscle memory". It's as if our hands and other parts of our body know what to do of themselves, without a conscious intervention from the mind.

As a result, the tennis star plays exactly the right stroke, the pianist sits down and produces a concerto. And when we have internalised mindfulness and equanimity, then as we go through life and difficult situations arise, we meet them by seeing the whole situation, and we meet them dispassionately.

Keeping up our skills

This sort of skill needs adequate on-going practice. If we neglect the practice we can begin to lose our abilities. How much practice may be difficult to quantify, but like pianists and tennis players, meditators find that they too need to keep up their practice.

The challenges of life can come quite unexpectedly. Whenever they do come, we can be ready for them, ready to meet them dispassionately, ready to know exactly what to do when the time comes, with an ability and an inner strength we never knew we had.