In meditation we rest into what’s always here. Like dropping a net into the river and seeing what we catch, we simply take note with awareness, deep listening and open presence. Use structures and qualities as a skillful tetherings, to turn citta away from the complexity of stimulation, activity and abstraction. When energies are no longer running out, citta settles in itself. This is samādhi.

Citta jumps and rushes towards experience it thinks will bring security. It’s a compulsion, an addiction. But citta can turn, starting with disengagement, then stabilizing and calming. Settle into the happiness of these effects, and you have a good foundation to eliminate the irrational drives and compulsions that cause suffering.

Meditation is often approached from the standpoint of a person who ‘does’ the meditating. This self view is not a position that will give rise to calm or release – it’s the condition we want to be released from. Meditation can be used to change the ways we attend that form the separate self. Eventually the steadiness of mindfulness, rather than the ‘I am’ sense’, can become the orientation.

It’s a natural inclination for citta not to suffer, but it’s confused, it needs to be trained. Citta can turn away from the tangles of ignorance towards signs that produce ease. Training with nimbleness and flexibility, citta becomes grounded, stable, not easily knocked over, easily handling what comes its way.

On account of the untrained citta, consciousness is skewed – its input is unstable, unsatisfactory, doesn’t fit. It can make one feel crazy. How to get free? In meditation we practice disengagement, the possibility to be ‘with it’ rather than ‘in it’. Lingering in that space, what can arise is action based on sanity, that comes from a trained and healthy citta.

The untrained mind is always half crazy. Citta has left the safety of its home and is affected by conditions and circumstance. But it can be trained to turn back to immovable ease, to remain in the place where the floods and tides of suffering don’t go.

Conditioned by ignorance, we can end up concocting the very scenarios we feel trapped in. The citta leaves its own center and gets stuck in conditions. Samādhi gives us the possibility of disengaging from the tangles, and allowing wisdom to be directed to the heart of the problem – ignorance and outflows. This directed wisdom can dismantle the box we unconsciously create for ourselves.