Transcendental Concentration is where, the subject and the object meet and are fused as one. There is always a subject, and an object, and they never meet except in Transcendental Concentration; they do not meet even in Transcendental Meditation.
There are 2 kinds of Mind Development and they are called:
Concentration or Samatha Bhāvanā, and
Meditation or Vipassanā Bhāvanā.
1. Samatha means calm; it leads to calm and tranquillity and serenity. No previous knowledge of any Doctrine is necessary. You Concentrate your mind and you get the Psychic Powers.
2. Vipassanā leads to Insight Wisdom, and eventually to Nirvana, which is Peace.
The powers and capacities of the Human Mind are really wonderful and has been the subject of much wonder and speculation through the ages.
The source of these powers and capacities is in humans themselves and they can be attained by the Buddhist Methods of mental training.
We have to go about it in the right way, and you have to try hard enough. It is not so very difficult but it is not easy either.
The Samatha Method of Mental Training is based on Concentration. It requires just average intelligence. There is no need for a college education or even a high-school education.
Concentration is a wonderful technique for inducing calm that will help you to face the tensions and pressures of every day life.
Concentration may be called Relaxation, and per se will produce calmless of mind and body.
The main idea is to shut out external thoughts.
After a while, concentration becomes very pleasurable; you should cultivate a desire to concentrate. In due course it will be your ruling passion, your heart’s delight, and you will be at it every spare moment, but don’t let it interfere with your daily chores, your daily work.
But just wishing for results will lead you nowhere. You must not have your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.
There are many intensities of concentration ranging from the preliminary or lowest stage to the highest or perfect stage, which is attained after much practice.
It is not difficult to achieve the preliminary stage of concentration. When you are reading a book and forget about the external world, you are exhibiting concentration of mind. When you go to a play and your mind is engrossed in the story, you are exhibiting concentration of mind. When you go to the movies and you suddenly lose awareness of the signs which say "Exit" on the right or left of the screen, you are exhibiting Concentration of mind. So you see that the possibility of concentration of mind is not beyond you.
Mind is popularly defined, for example, in the Chamber’s Dictionary, as that which thinks, knows, feels and wills.
For our purpose, Mind can be defined as that which is conscious of an object, and consciousness can be defined as the relation between subject and object.
Consciousness is subjective, but it can only arise when attention is present.
Along with every consciousness arise certain mental constituents, otherwise called mental factors, or mental concomitants, mental adjuncts. Examples are; Love, Hate, Greed, Anger, Worry, etc.
Mind consists of consciousness plus a few mental factors. These mental factors total 52, and there are many combinations of these mental factors in each unit of consciousness.
1. Say, you see a Girl. Visual consciousness has arisen. You have a reaction on seeing the girl. Certain mental factors have arisen; they could be good or bad. She may be a good girl or a bad girl. You may have prejudice against this girl or you may have a bias in her favour. You may have just heard something against her. There are so many possibilities for the mental reactions to arise.
2. You hear something. Aural consciousness has arisen. Once again, certain reactions arise, good or bad.
3. You taste something. Taste consciousness has arisen. There are so many possibilities for reactions to arise.
4. You smell something. Olfactory consciousness has arisen. Once again certain reactions arise, depending on whether you like or hate the smell.
5. You touch something. Tactile consciousness has arisen, and there are so many possible reactions to arise.
6. You think of something. Ideational consciousness has arisen, but it is not based on the 5 senses.
Once again, there are certain mental reactions. Only one consciousness can arise at a time, namely one Mind can arise at a time.
One consciousness disappears before the next consciousness arises.
When there are so many competing, outside objects, the stimulus that claims attention at the moment will produce the corresponding Mind.
The Mind works very fast. It is said that it takes about a billionth of a second for the Mind to arise, and it immediately disappears.
It is the Mind, and Mind alone that is aware of, or knows, an object.
When anything is known, there are 2 things involved, namely, the Mind, which knows, and the object, which is the thing known.
The important thing is the Mind, for, without the Mind, the object cannot be known.
However the Mind, instead of pointing to itself, has the habit practically of pointing to the object.
Take the case of a person looking up at something in the sky. Another person comes along and invariably, instead of looking at the first person, looks at the thing in the sky. Similarly a third person and so on.
The Mind is inclined towards the object. It is true that the Mind could look at itself, as it were, instead of inclining towards the object.
But can the Mind look at itself? When the Mind functions, it disappears immediately. One has to recall the Mind that has just disappeared and it becomes the object.
So the mind cannot look at itself at the moment that it functions. Only after the first Mind has disappeared can we recall the first Mind.
Body, (rūpa) and
Mind (citta).
The Body and Mind is similar to the combination of a Blind man and a Cripple. The Blind Man cannot see and the Cripple cannot walk. They join forces, and the Cripple is put on the, shoulders of the Blind Man, and together they function. The Cripple can see and directs the Blind Man to go left and right, and the Blind Man obeys.
It is the Blind Man that wants, say, to drink and it is the Body that drinks. It is the Mind that wants to eat, and it is the Body that eats.
In every matter, it is the Mind that directs and the Body obeys.
All verbal and physical actions are motivated by the subjective Mind.
It is well known that old people cannot hear certain sounds that are audible to younger people. It does not mean, however, that these sounds do not exist.
Similarly, there are sound waves that are inaudible to humans. Moreover, if the Mind is absorbed in something else and attention is not paid to these sounds, the Mind does not hear these sounds.
In these cases, the sounds do not exist for the Mind.
Only when the subjective Mind takes these sounds as objects can they be heard by a person and they exist for the Mind.
Similarly, things exist in the world but they are not known to the Mind, so long as they are not objects of the Mind.
However, the Mind cannot take everything as objects at one and the same time. The mind can take as an object one thing at any one time, and the rest of the world is non-existent so far as the Mind is concerned.
The Minds that have already disappeared are no more existent to the Mind, and the Minds as yet unborn are still non-existent. The Mind exists at the present moment only.