The Art of Meditation
Q: I don’t know much about meditation. I’ve tried it a few times but I’m not sure I went about it the right way. Is there something I have to do after I cross my legs, close my eyes, and sit still?
A: Yes, there is an art to meditation. Crossing your legs and closing your eyes is just the initial step, a signal to the one inside that you are setting about developing an understanding and a proficiency in this art.
Meditation concerns the way one relates to the inner world. There are factors in the mind that need to be balanced. Therefore, you have to be exceedingly alert and determined. There are all kinds of ways to make mistakes in meditation. I reckon I’ve made them all.
The skillful meditator has to keep on correcting, realigning, and staying alert. When the yogi gets this right, I call it “sitting in the Buddha.” In the Buddha is contained the Dharma—enlightened, natural wisdom. Most of us can get it right some of the time. However, sitting in the Buddha is a dynamic condition. We practice extending and sustaining it through mindfulness and observation.
Almost everyone can meditate. It is important to understand right from the beginning where you are going with your meditation, why you are going there, and how to go about the journey properly. If you just force yourself to sit still with your eyes closed and legs crossed without a goal or a vision, you will soon abandon this exercise for something more interesting and less painful.
Q: What meditation technique can you recommend for me? May I ask which ones you have had extensive experience with?
A: There is a whole spectrum of techniques that have been used by sages since ancient times. It is impossible for anyone to be familiar with all of them. Ancient Eastern texts and commentaries list dozens of these techniques and describe skillful ways to develop them. Some are more general, while others are appropriate for particular personality types or stages of spiritual development. Some address the more destructive energies, like lust and greed. One of the contemporary classics on meditation is by Ajahn Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. The technique he masterfully describes—focusing on the breath at various levels of refined awareness—has been a useful mode of practice for many meditators. You should at least become familiar with this way of practice.
I have had considerable experience with five or six techniques. Each one turns the mind toward an object on which we can fix our attention. The technique is then developed and cultivated through patient practice. The techniques I have incorporated in my practice use as the object of awareness the movement of the body, the fluctuations in the mind between the poles of fear and desire, the inner sound current that seems to be constantly ringing in our consciousness, the spaces between the mental and physical phenomena where conceptualization has no place to attach, the bones supporting the body which we term collectively the skeleton, and death as the end of a beginning and the beginning of an ending. Any one of these practices can lead you toward the wisdom you need to perfect your life and gain the freedom you hunger for.
I can alert you to particular things that come up in practice so that you don’t repeat the mistakes I made. Undoubtedly, though, you will go ahead and make your own mistakes—and of course you will learn more from these than from your smooth-flowing experiences.
You will find comprehensive overviews of meditation in many meditation manuals available in bookstores, and these should address most of your concerns. One facet of meditation you are not likely to come upon as you review those manuals, however, is the importance of beginning your practice with the right view and the right attitude. Maintaining these is important for your efforts to bear appropriate fruits. This is no easy matter, for it means that you endeavor to set yourself where you can see the limitations of any technique and its relationship to its goal. The end will only manifest itself fully when both technique and meditator slip away and the deeper dimensions of awareness shine through. A raft is a tool for crossing a river. Reaching the other riverbank, the wise will set the raft aside and continue on their way, burdened by nothing. In the same way, the technique takes us where we want to go, and then we leave it behind.
Because the nature of true meditation practice is close to a catch-22 situation, novice meditators need careful and thorough orientation to their practice. If you are not grounded in your practice closely enough to the teachings of the Buddha and his wise disciples, you may simply head off in any interesting direction. You might end up with supernatural powers that would enable you to fly, levitate, see the past, or know the minds of others. You would become a fascinating, powerful person capable of extraordinary feats, but you would have missed the top prize, the pot of gold, by not going all the way to the end of the rainbow.
Q: Why do all the meditation books require that we sit in a cross-legged position? I can’t sit that way for more than three minutes!
A: These days most meditation books suggest other options as well, such as sitting on a straight-backed chair. The posture of the body is not primary. It is the posture of the mind that needs to be straight, alert, and receptive.
Hold the resolve that you are seeking truth in order to live at peace in this world. If you come to your sitting place with the intention of learning, with the intention of realizing the truth, your mind will be occupied with this intent. Then the discomfort of your body is likely to shift quickly, and you won’t be so distracted by pain. Even sitting in a comfortable chair becomes unbearable after a few hours.
Q: What can I expect to gain from meditation?
A: From the position of inquiry that comes from effective meditation we can see clearly how fear permeates our lives and how desire drives us crazy. You have probably noticed already that much of our day is spent repeating familiar patterns and following basic instincts. Karma, memory, fear, and desire for pleasure—these form the circle that pretty much circumscribes our lives. We can also talk about eating and procreation, but these activities are common to the animals as well. We humans are more complex, more easily hurt, and suffer in many more ways than they. We are subject to a kaleidoscope of psychological and emotional states, and yet are often ignorant of how to respond to them. Thus we suffer tremendously. Blind to the habitual, mechanical nature of our responses to the things of this world, we don’t know just how confined we are until we practice opening the mind.
With mature meditation practice comes an inner appreciation of the ability of the mind to distance itself from the world in virtually all aspects.
Skillful meditation is practice in letting go. In letting go of the things we customarily cling to, we find a freedom we only tasted as children, or stepped into by sheer accident as a teenager walking along an isolated beach, or got a glimpse of while hiking alone in a national park. The miracle that can happen to us, the miracle awaiting us, is recognizing the workings of the prison that binds our life, and then walking the path out of this prison and into freedom. Freedom is the essence of the spiritual quest. For one who practices diligently, more and more openings appear through which freedom can be known, until finally all that unfolds in one’s life is timeless freedom. We realize this as the ultimate happiness—peace, enlightenment.
Q: When I have free time, I start thinking about going to my sitting corner to meditate. But once this idea has come to my mind, I feel tired. This often happens at night, after a day at the office. Am I tired or lazy?
A: You have to sort out this kind of problem for yourself. Certainly, it is important to be able to recognize the difference between tiredness and laziness so you can act accordingly.
Try to push through the energy lag, and see what comes of your effort. You will know if you are really tired, in which case you should take a short rest. The main thing is not to brood over this. In fact, not thinking about things beyond a quick, careful observation of them is one of the skills we learn through meditation practice.
Q: Why do I get a headache when I meditate?
A: Do you ever get headaches when you don’t meditate?
Q: . . . uh, yes.
A: There it is. You get headaches because you have a head.
Q: I am becoming intrigued with the practice of vipassana (insight meditation). Can you give me some guidance?
A: Maintain an attitude of humility as you investigate the mind. That is, try to see things as an intelligent, sensitive child would. What you need to understand deeply is obscured by your self-conceit and ignorance. Don’t become too fascinated with what you find, especially with thoughts. It is all right to be fascinated to the point of awe at the process of thoughts unfolding in the mind. This is skillful. But don’t become fascinated with thoughts in a way that you get stuck in them. Learn to be free enough to be able to let go of everything.
Your duty as a meditator is to simply get out of the way and let everything run down. Learn to discern the nature of wisdom so that you can cultivate it with confidence. Wisdom eradicates ignorance. The two are incompatible.
Q: What is the point of trying to sit when you know your mind is going to zoom all over the place and drive you crazy?
A: Good question. And an inevitable one. First, recognize that this crazy mind is sitting harmlessly on a cushion not bothering anyone—except you. Sitting quietly, you’re not going to be colliding into other people’s minds, which are also running wild and unharnessed. Take refuge in the wisdom of moving yourself out of danger.
While you are sitting with this crazy mind, you can observe it. This may feel uncomfortable, since you cannot control the mind. The mind is following its own nature—shooting out here, there, and everywhere. The mind doesn’t concern itself with what kinds of mischief it gets into.
But to emphasize again, you are sitting on your cushion alone with yourself. You’re not in the midst of society. This is an important distinction. Your mind will slow down and the spinning will cease, whereas the mind in the marketplace has no chance to cease spinning. It necessarily keeps bumping into things that trigger the proliferation of thoughts and create karma.
Be assured that the mind on the cushion will wind down. In a short while, say forty minutes, the spinning will be subdued. Sometime later, the chaos that comes from vagrant thoughts jumping into a hot, spinning mind will also cease. You will be sitting in the coolness of the peaceful mind.
Take refuge in knowing that sitting meditation is the best thing you can do to quiet and focus the mind. The quiet, focused mind has access to wisdom, and this wisdom will get you through every time.
There will be many times when the mind is spinning in such utter confusion that the only little bit of wisdom able to come through is the suggestion: “Go and just sit quietly.”
Follow that advice. Don’t try to add to it or do anything too fancy. Accept the confusion. Don’t be intimidated by the thought that you are just wasting time. You’re not. When that thought comes, simply reflect upon the fact that there is no time, whether you understand the reality of this statement or not.
The mind will automatically begin to settle down. When you sit, you slow down the confusion and chaos. The more often you train yourself this way, the faster the mind can respond to agitation and disturbance. If you don’t apply the brakes, the mind just spins further out into more madness.
Q: Isn’t the point of meditation to stop the mind? I’ve tried to do this, but it seems impossible.
A: We can’t really stop the mind. Occasionally, it will stop on its own. What we can do while the mind is whirling in perpetual motion is recognize that this is the mind’s very nature. As meditators seeking freedom, we can practice not getting stuck in anything that the mind happens to land upon.
What is meant by the phrase “stopping the mind” is precisely this ability to stop the mind short of its habit of holding and grasping. This is the mark of psychological freedom. Enlightenment is the freedom to let go of everything—immediately.
Q: Is there a reward for practicing meditation?
A: Yes, the best, the highest possible reward, the grand prize to end all prizes. Meditation, in whatever form, makes us more alert, aware, and clear—especially about oneself, whoever or whatever that is. That alertness, combined with wise contemplation, will lead to inner freedom, the ultimate prize.
We spend our days and nights focused on ourselves and our personal melodramas. This thicket of self-centeredness closes us off from the world around us, and we become the center of a small, mundane world. Sitting opens us up to the world. It provides the leverage to enter into, yet rise above the world.
There is only one world. But it appears radically different in both depth and scope through these two experiences. The one, our personal world, is conditioned by sense-perceptions, instincts, habits, time-space, and karma. The other world is free. We are free to observe, free to probe the unknown in whichever direction the way leads us. As human beings we have the opportunity to choose between these two.
Sit. Sit some more. When we begin to sit, we sit with ourselves. In the end, the universe sits in us.