CHAPTER ONE

WHY MEDITATION?

Many of those reading this book will already have some experience of the benefits of meditation, and be more concerned with how to use it successfully with children than with explanations of its nature and value. However, others will be new to the subject, and will want some background. Even those who meditate regularly may welcome the opportunity to have certain of the fundamentals re-emphasized.

The details of meditation are set out in You Can Master Meditation, written by one of the present authors. But the term is used in a variety of different and potentially confusing ways, so let’s start by looking briefly at what meditation is not.

What Meditation Is Not

One of the most common misunderstandings about meditation is that it is a kind of daydreaming, a process in which the mind is allowed to follow flights of fancy or idly play with ideas. Almost as common is the belief that listening to music or focusing upon the associations set up by a theme such as peace is meditation. Another mistake is to see meditation as a kind of trance, comparable in some ways to a hypnotic trance, or as deep relaxation in which the mind experiences tranquil thoughts or happy memories, or visualizes pleasant scenery or imagines itself floating in the air or drifting on bright water.

Each of the above states has its own benefits at appropriate times, but none of them is meditation. In each of them, the mind is occupied by thinking, or enjoying a sleepy or dreamy condition in which there is no particular clarity of focus. Such activities are very different from meditation.

A mistake of a different kind is to see meditation as a determined struggle to ‘stop thinking’, and by a supreme effort of will to keep the mind a blank sheet upon which nothing is allowed to be written. Equally misguided is the attempt to occupy the mind so fiercely with a mantra (a repeated word or phrase, about which more later) that it has no space for anything else. Activities of this kind restrict the mind rather than allow it gradually to expand into a richer and deeper dimension, and lead to boredom and frustration. The mind soon tires of the effort involved, and becomes increasingly irritated with the fact that no matter how hard one tries, thoughts still succeed in breaking through into consciousness.

What Meditation Is

Meditation is not just about sitting in quiet concentration, central as this is to the practice. It is also about a range of active techniques that enhance the powers of mind control used not only while this sitting is taking place, but also in the rest of waking (and perhaps even of dreaming) life. Meditation thus touches most aspects of human experience, rendering them potentially richer, profounder and more meaningful.

In one form or another, meditation has been practised by all the great spiritual traditions, and its origins are lost in the mists of time. It is almost certain that the authors of the Hindu Vedas, which date from around 1,500 bce and constitute some of the oldest scriptures in the world, practised meditation. Some of the earliest teachings on the basic technique of meditation (watching the breath, of which much more later) were given orally by the Buddha around 500 bce. Patanjali, the semi-legendary founder of yoga philosophy, provides even more details in the Yoga Sutras, which date from the second century bce. An unbroken tradition of meditation extends from Patanjali down to the present day, when probably more people meditate worldwide than ever before.

Meditation is essentially a state of poised, highly directed concentration, focused not upon a train of thoughts or ideas, but upon a single, clearly defined stimulus. Meditation is the very opposite of wandering thoughts or even of a directed train of thinking. A fifth-century Buddhist monk, Buddhaghosa, spoke of meditation as a training of attention. Other early writers have referred to it more broadly as a training of the mind, or as a way of understanding what is going on within the mind. Over the years, yet other writers have defined meditation variously as stilling the mind, as focusing mental energy, as discovering the true self, as achieving inner peace, as harmonizing body and mind, or simply as sitting quietly, doing nothing. But it is a very special kind of sitting quietly doing nothing, in which the mind is held clear and still, alert and watchful, and free from losing itself in thinking.

Phrases such as training the mind come as something of a surprise to many Westerners. Isn’t our formal education system, in schools and in universities, a training of the mind? Isn’t the mind trained by learning the facts and figures and techniques of the various academic subjects that are taught by our teachers and our lecturers? Why should we need to bother with something as apparently esoteric and timewasting as meditation?

Unfortunately, the mind quite categorically is not trained by the facts and figures and techniques that are taught in our school and university years. The knowledge we gain during these years is of enormous value to us and in many cases to our fellow men and women, but it does not constitute a training of the mind.

Those who doubt this statement might like to try a simple little test. Close your eyes and stop thinking . . . How did you get on? Very few people can manage such an apparently simple task for even half a minute. So who is in charge of your mind? One thing is certain – if you can’t stop thinking even for thirty seconds, it certainly isn’t you.

We tend to suppose that ‘thinking’ is a good thing. So indeed it is, provided we have some power over the way in which thoughts arise and the direction which they take. However, for much of the time we have neither. Thoughts arise involuntarily and unbidden, and set off typically on their own course, with associations giving rise to each other in the manner of a rollercoaster. Happy thoughts, sad thoughts, anxieties, memories, hopes for the future, and regrets for the present and for the past – each of them goes its own way and exerts its own power over us. The same is true of feelings and emotions, which can carry us away like leaves caught in the wind.

A Zen Buddhist master, near the end of his life and in physical pain, once smiled at his disciple and asked, ‘Have you yet realized that thought is the enemy?’ Of course, thought is not always the enemy. Much depends upon our ability to think our way through problems, and to create our poetry and our science and our drama and our arts. But thought can often be the enemy, when it dominates our inner life instead of allowing us to be the masters.

The question sometimes arises, do we exist when we are not thinking? Such a question indicates the questioner’s lack not only of control over his or her thinking, but a lack of any true self-knowledge. Of course we exist when we are not thinking, and until we have learned to demonstrate the fact for ourselves, we are little more than beginners in what we might call the art of being ourselves.

A mistake too often made is to equate this art with intelligence. The more intelligent we are, we are led to assume, the more we know ourselves and are in command of ourselves. Sadly or happily, depending upon your opinion of intelligence, this is far from the truth. Highly intelligent people are little better at running their inner lives than the rest of the human race. They may be better at solving certain kinds of problems in the outer world, but when it comes to solving those of the mind, their intelligence gives them few advantages.

The truth is that the mind isn’t trained through knowledge and thinking. A university professor is not necessarily any better (and may often be far worse) at controlling his or her mind than someone who has had very little formal education. Knowledge and thinking allow the mind to be very good at handling the outside world, but they may be of little value in helping us to control what goes on inside our own heads.

The great majority of people who consult psychologists and psychiatrists with problems such as depression, anxiety, and stress, recognize that most of their difficulties come from thoughts which dominate, obsess or in other ways trouble their minds. Even though they may know that these thoughts are unhelpful and often untrue and actively counterproductive, they can do nothing to stop their incessant flow. Frequently people will confess that they know how damaging and unwanted their thoughts are, but they cannot do anything to put a stop to them and allow the mind to turn to happier and more productive ways of thinking.

In the East, one of the symbols of the mind is a chattering monkey, constantly producing noise but saying little of value. Another symbol is a runaway horse, totally out of control and ignoring the best efforts of the rider to tame it and turn it in the right direction. Symbols such as a chattering monkey and a runaway horse can help build up our motivation to practise meditation. Few people would willingly put themselves at the mercy of a chattering monkey or a runaway horse.

The Benefits of Meditation

What are the benefits of the mind training developed through meditation? They can be summarized as follows:

• Physical relaxation – meditation, as we shall see in due course, involves a letting go, a progressive ability gently to relinquish physical and mental tension. But it is also relaxation of an especially beneficial kind, involving a poised alertness which ensures that the body uses just the right amount of energy, not only to sit upright during meditation itself, but to carry out its daily physical tasks. Meditation in other words re-educates the body out of the bad habits of physical tension and unnecessary over-exertion that we pick up all too early in life. Together with this comes greater body awareness. The meditator is in effect tuned in to his or her body, so that tension is noticed and relaxed.

• Improved concentration – concentration is the foundation upon which all meditation systems rest. We have so much to say about concentration throughout the book that we don’t need to elaborate further here. But not only is meditation built upon concentration, it is also one of the very best ways of developing concentration. And concentration developed in meditation, because it is pure concentration rather than the ability simply to concentrate upon something that captures the interest, quickly generalizes to other areas of life. The meditator is thus better able to turn his or her mind to whatever needs learning or doing, and focus upon it until the task is completed.

• More control over thought processes – this does not mean that the meditator can necessarily stop unwanted thoughts at will (although some meditators can). But it does mean that the meditator is less dominated by them. Put simply, he or she is aware of thoughts and observes them, but without being side-tracked by them. Unwelcome thoughts thus have less power to preoccupy or disturb the mind.

• Increased tranquillity and the ability to deal with stress – just as thoughts have more power to dominate the meditator, so have the emotions. The meditator may be aware of sadness or anger, but as with unwanted thoughts, these emotions are distanced from the meditator, who feels an inner peace and tranquillity in spite of them.

• Improved mindfulness – mindfulness is the ability to be aware of what is happening around us, and to turn our attention from one thing to another as it makes its appearance, rather than being so lost in distracting inner thoughts and dialogues that we go through life as if in a waking dream.

• Enhanced self-understanding – if we were asked if we knew ourselves, the answer would usually be yes. But in fact most of us are strangers within our own minds. We tend to live on the surface of our inner lives, aware only of conscious thoughts, and oblivious of what happens in the deeper levels of the unconscious. We are even ignorant of how our thoughts arise, or from where they actually come.

• Improvements in creative thinking – creativity involves accessing, or opening up to, the unconscious levels of the mind where original ideas are born. The quieter the conscious mind, the better able we are to reach these levels.

• Improvements in memory – much of our forgetting is due to our failure to concentrate upon what is happening, and thus to store it in our memory banks. Much more is due to interference by the conscious mind – particularly when we are worried or anxious, for example before sitting an examination or taking a test. Meditation helps to still these inhibiting emotions and allow us to recall the things we need. This is helped by the improved awareness mentioned above. We cannot hope to remember things effectively unless we are fully aware of them in the first place. All too often we accuse children of being in a dream, and of forgetting things we consider important. Part of the problem is that we spend so much time telling them to think that we shut off a large part of their awareness of the outside world.

• Enhanced spiritual development – one doesn’t have to be religious or even interested in religion to find meditation of value. Yet meditation is inseparable from spiritual development in many of the world’s great religious traditions. Nothing further need be said about this at the moment, but for all meditators, no matter what their spiritual beliefs, meditation can lead to a new way of seeing the world, a way in which the inter-dependency of all things becomes a lived experience, and in which feelings of compassion and love for one’s fellow creatures become an integral part of one’s world view.

In addition to these psychological and spiritual benefits, meditation also brings benefits in terms of health. These vary from person to person, but can include lowered blood pressure, reduced heart rate, and the various other physiological benefits that arise from relaxation and from reduced levels of stress. Such benefits operate not just when one is meditating, but as one goes about daily life. Meditators generally find themselves calmer and less prone to anxiety and negative emotions, and better able to cope with the challenges and pressures of living. In addition, by composing the mind in meditation before undertaking stressful tasks, they are often able to carry them out with greater success and with less strain upon themselves.

Meditation isn’t something that can only be done when sitting cross-legged on a cushion. You can meditate standing up, lying down or sitting in a chair. The state of your mind is far more important than the position of your body, though sitting upright with a straight back does help the concentration which is an essential part of meditation. And meditation isn’t something that can only be done in the silence and privacy of one’s own room. You can meditate practically anywhere – on a train, waiting for a bus, before going into a meeting or an interview – in fact at any otherwise idle moment.

Children, of course, don’t suffer from high blood pressure or the heart problems that take all too high a toll of adults. But it may well be that the seeds of these and many other adult illnesses are sown in childhood. The more we can help children to be at peace with their own bodies, the better chance we have of helping them avoid these killers in later life.