One of the arms of the Buddhist Eightfold Path is "Right View." There are many meanings to this, but one that I find under-utilized is the idea that when we set out on the path, it is useful to have a "view" to where we are going. It's like looking at the map before we set out. It's also useful once you've been on the path for a while, because then you can take stock of where you've been. In this context, I want to consider some ways of thinking about what the goals of Mindfulness Meditation are.
Broadly speaking, there are two styles of meditation practice - Familiarizing and Cultivating. Mindfulness meditation focuses primarily on the first of these.
It is important to start the journey by familiarizing yourself with your mind and emotions. How can you change or improve something until you understand how it works? If my car isn't running smoothly, just wishing for it to work won't help. Buying new seat covers or putting an inspirational CD in the CD player won't make it run more smoothly. By knowing how the car works, we can focus our efforts to the place that can actually make a difference. Similarly, we need clarity about our circumstances and ourselves to be able to make a difference, but often when things aren't going the way we want, we get caught up in blaming and feeling that it "shouldn't be this way," and then we make a bigger mess.
Mindfulness meditation starts us on the path to understanding how our minds work. As we gain familiarity, it also begins to cultivate three properties: Tranquility, Stability, and Clarity.
Tranquility is often one of the goals people explicitly have when they begin meditating - they want to slow the mind down and have some sense of peacefulness or stress reduction. It is worth noting that people often also have the belief that the goal is to stop thinking. This is not correct. The mind will always think - that's what it does. The goal is to not be so hooked by the thoughts.
As we slow the thoughts down, we begin to be better at focusing our attention intentionally rather than being so easily distracted by the next thought. This increased stability is sometimes called one-pointed focus.
As we gain stability and tranquility, we also begin to gain some clarity by seeing deeper into our true natures.
The classic analogy in Buddhism is if you scoop a glass of water out of a muddy river, it is undrinkable at first. There is too much sediment floating around in it, and no amount of effort will change that. You can't get the mud to settle out by shaking it hard or trying to force it to the bottom. Instead, if you let it sit quietly, the impurities will slowly settle to the bottom of the glass, leaving the water tranquil and clear.
The goal of meditation, therefore, is not to get rid of thoughts, but instead (1) to understand how our thoughts are constantly changing, impermanent, and empty, (2) to stop believing them as if they are "true," and (3) to stop believing that your thoughts are you. These realizations lessen the control that your thoughts have over you, and opens up the way that you can begin to change.
Another way we can think about Mindfulness Meditation is that the focus is always on being present. But what do we mean by that?
There are at least three different aspects of "being present" in Buddhist practice. The most basic and stereotypical is a heightened state of focus. You can test this by staring at an object or space on the wall. You may notice as you focus on it that the rest of the room may darken, blur, or get wiggly. This one-pointed focus is ironically equally a rejection of all other things that are also present. You can, however, learn to focus on the target yet also notice all of the things in the periphery, noticing the full environment. Therefore, heightened focus doesn't necessarily have to just be about one object (such as the breath), although it's often beneficial to start here.
The second way of being present is noticing a heightened vividness, vibrancy, clarity, and specificity of your experience. I notice this most clearly doing walking meditations, where I am astounded by the colors, the vividness, and the detail that exists in the world. Each leaf and blade of grass is distinct and clear and interesting.
The third way of being present is focusing on the Karmic momentum of each moment and being present in the "gap." Ethan Nichtern describes this as "where the past is creating a tremendous momentum of feeling and impulse, but we haven't yet figured out how we're going to react to it....it's the awkward vulnerability between impulse and action." That is, based on all of our past conditioning and all of the present causes and provocations and emotions, we experience some feeling. We usually react to these feelings with habitual responses, but what if we didn't? What if we instead were present with feeling the momentum of the moment? (This is the gap between steps 7 and 8, or between 8 and 9 of the 12 Nidanas for those of you who want to be Buddhist geeks.)
So these are three more aspects we gain from Mindfulness Meditation.
What takes our mindfulness away? Strong emotions and habits -- the momentum of the past and all of our conditioning and the present causes. As discussed in a previous post, we tend to react to each new stimulus with either grasping, pushing it away, or ignoring it. These are the Three Poisons of greed, aggression, and ignorance. Every time we act based on one of these feelings, we strengthen our habitual responses, so we can no longer see the gap between feeling and our habitual reaction to the feeling.
Once triggered, emotions have strong energy. One technique that Buddhism teaches to help us deal with these emotions is that of antidotes. For each of the afflictive emotions, there is a series of things one can meditate on to counter them (see here, for example). Note that the core assumption underlying this approach is one of change. We are trying to break the powerful link of our habits.
Once we have achieved some level of tranquility, stability, and clarity, we can begin to work with our minds and our habit energies, but Mindfulness Meditation isn't really designed to change them.
We usually enter a spiritual pathway and practice in order to change something about ourselves. We want to reduce our suffering, to find ease in the midst of turmoil, to be of more benefit to others, etc. Yet, Mindfulness Meditation doesn't get us too far down that path, but it's the first step on the path. Other meditation techniques focus specifically on changing our habitual responses.
But there's a paradox present here. We know that we're really just a quivering mess. We don't want to be a quivering mess. But to be the kind of person we wish we were, we have to stop being a quivering mess. But since we are such a mess, we're not the kind of person we want to be. So how can we break out of this conundrum? The way out is to practice capacities that you already have, such as compassion, joy, and love.
This moves us into the next style of meditation technique - those that focus on cultivating rather than familiarizing. We use these techniques to help grow something that already exists in us. The next post will begin to examine meditation techniques on what are called the Brahma-viharas, or the four heavenly abodes.
These thoughts adapted from talks given by Ethan Nichtern and Alan Watts, among others. Image sources: Here, here, here, and here.
It is important to start the journey by familiarizing yourself with your mind and emotions. How can you change or improve something until you understand how it works? If my car isn't running smoothly, just wishing for it to work won't help. Buying new seat covers or putting an inspirational CD in the CD player won't make it run more smoothly. By knowing how the car works, we can focus our efforts to the place that can actually make a difference. Similarly, we need clarity about our circumstances and ourselves to be able to make a difference, but often when things aren't going the way we want, we get caught up in blaming and feeling that it "shouldn't be this way," and then we make a bigger mess.
Mindfulness meditation starts us on the path to understanding how our minds work. As we gain familiarity, it also begins to cultivate three properties: Tranquility, Stability, and Clarity.
Tranquility is often one of the goals people explicitly have when they begin meditating - they want to slow the mind down and have some sense of peacefulness or stress reduction. It is worth noting that people often also have the belief that the goal is to stop thinking. This is not correct. The mind will always think - that's what it does. The goal is to not be so hooked by the thoughts.
As we slow the thoughts down, we begin to be better at focusing our attention intentionally rather than being so easily distracted by the next thought. This increased stability is sometimes called one-pointed focus.
As we gain stability and tranquility, we also begin to gain some clarity by seeing deeper into our true natures.
The goal of meditation, therefore, is not to get rid of thoughts, but instead (1) to understand how our thoughts are constantly changing, impermanent, and empty, (2) to stop believing them as if they are "true," and (3) to stop believing that your thoughts are you. These realizations lessen the control that your thoughts have over you, and opens up the way that you can begin to change.
Another way we can think about Mindfulness Meditation is that the focus is always on being present. But what do we mean by that?
There are at least three different aspects of "being present" in Buddhist practice. The most basic and stereotypical is a heightened state of focus. You can test this by staring at an object or space on the wall. You may notice as you focus on it that the rest of the room may darken, blur, or get wiggly. This one-pointed focus is ironically equally a rejection of all other things that are also present. You can, however, learn to focus on the target yet also notice all of the things in the periphery, noticing the full environment. Therefore, heightened focus doesn't necessarily have to just be about one object (such as the breath), although it's often beneficial to start here.
The third way of being present is focusing on the Karmic momentum of each moment and being present in the "gap." Ethan Nichtern describes this as "where the past is creating a tremendous momentum of feeling and impulse, but we haven't yet figured out how we're going to react to it....it's the awkward vulnerability between impulse and action." That is, based on all of our past conditioning and all of the present causes and provocations and emotions, we experience some feeling. We usually react to these feelings with habitual responses, but what if we didn't? What if we instead were present with feeling the momentum of the moment? (This is the gap between steps 7 and 8, or between 8 and 9 of the 12 Nidanas for those of you who want to be Buddhist geeks.)
So these are three more aspects we gain from Mindfulness Meditation.
What takes our mindfulness away? Strong emotions and habits -- the momentum of the past and all of our conditioning and the present causes. As discussed in a previous post, we tend to react to each new stimulus with either grasping, pushing it away, or ignoring it. These are the Three Poisons of greed, aggression, and ignorance. Every time we act based on one of these feelings, we strengthen our habitual responses, so we can no longer see the gap between feeling and our habitual reaction to the feeling.
Once triggered, emotions have strong energy. One technique that Buddhism teaches to help us deal with these emotions is that of antidotes. For each of the afflictive emotions, there is a series of things one can meditate on to counter them (see here, for example). Note that the core assumption underlying this approach is one of change. We are trying to break the powerful link of our habits.
Once we have achieved some level of tranquility, stability, and clarity, we can begin to work with our minds and our habit energies, but Mindfulness Meditation isn't really designed to change them.
But there's a paradox present here. We know that we're really just a quivering mess. We don't want to be a quivering mess. But to be the kind of person we wish we were, we have to stop being a quivering mess. But since we are such a mess, we're not the kind of person we want to be. So how can we break out of this conundrum? The way out is to practice capacities that you already have, such as compassion, joy, and love.
This moves us into the next style of meditation technique - those that focus on cultivating rather than familiarizing. We use these techniques to help grow something that already exists in us. The next post will begin to examine meditation techniques on what are called the Brahma-viharas, or the four heavenly abodes.
These thoughts adapted from talks given by Ethan Nichtern and Alan Watts, among others. Image sources: Here, here, here, and here.
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