Focusing on the Fire Kasina

In Focusing on the Fire Kasina Vince Fakhoury Horn introduces the Fire Kasina meditation practice, emphasizing the primacy of concentration and the recursive process of learning through focused attention on a candle flame.

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💬 Transcript

Vince: All right, so today we’re going to be diving into the practice of the Fire Kasina, and I’m excited to share this with you in part because it seems like it was a really important part of my own teacher’s practice—my first meditation teacher, Daniel Ingram. When I was reading his book for the first time, I remember him talking about how he went on retreat and worked with the candle flame at the end of a long vipassana retreat.

Later on, that story was shared again in the beginning of a book called The Fire Kasina, which I’d recommend. It was a conversation—a dialogical book—between him and Shannon Stein, an experienced meditator who was talking to Daniel during her own replication of his long Fire Kasina retreat practice. It gives some great instructions in that book—a good overview of the practice and the kind of stages that one can go through. Not universal, perhaps, but fairly common. It also gives some really good, basic, practical pointers on how to do concentration practice.

And this is one of the two frames that I’d like to share today in exploring the Fire Kasina, because I think it’s useful. I’m going to start here and then loop back around, because it’s so important that it bears returning to.

So here’s what Daniel said in The Fire Kasina book to Shannon, as she asked for basic instructions on how to do the Fire Kasina. He said, “Concentration on what is happening is more important than what is happening.”

What does that mean? It seems pretty simple in a way, but it’s deceptively simple, because we just seem to keep forgetting this important point when we do the practice.

So what does it mean to me? “Concentration on what is happening” means that what we’re focusing on is more important than whatever is happening there.

So if we’re focusing on our breath—the classic meditation object—then whatever’s happening with the breath is what’s happening. We could think, “Oh, I wish my breath were really soft and gentle,” or, “I wish my breath had stopped, because I heard that when it stops, that’s a good sign of concentration.”

Okay, cool—but what is actually happening? Because what might be happening is you might be thinking about your breath instead of noticing your breath. This is the simple way we get lost in concepts about what’s happening instead of being with our meditation subject.

So: concentration on what is happening is more important than whatever’s happening. That’s the most important thing to remember.

What does that mean in terms of Fire Kasina? Here, I think it’s really useful to consider that whatever you’re seeing is what you’re seeing. You may be looking at a candle flame, and you may see all kinds of things—eyes open or eyes closed.

In the guided practice to come, I’ll offer instructions for both. When that’s happening, it’s important to just remember: whatever you’re seeing is what you’re seeing. That’s what’s happening. It might be really clear and vivid, which makes it easy to see. Other times it might be unclear, murky, dull, or hazy—and that’s what’s happening. That’s what you’re seeing. Concentration on what’s happening is more important than what’s happening.

The other thing that’s useful to remember in this practice is something John Vervaeke, the professor from Toronto, said: “Evolution is revolution with change.” Evolution is a pr