What can Mindfulness Meditation do for you?

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.

Why Be Afraid of Meditation?

I sometimes help to lead a mindfulness and meditation group, although I am not a formally trained meditation instructor.  We are currently going through a six-week introductory session about Buddhist basics, and it seemed like it might be of benefit to a broader audience to post some of the issues here.

Why are you interested in meditating?  What made you start?  People in our group had answers such as wishing to connect the mind and body, to gain peace and calm, to connect with the subconscious, to lessen the hold that thoughts have on us, and to cope with suffering.  It interests me that each of these answers has an aspect of noticing that the "normal" state of being can be unsatisfactory, and that there is an aspiration to work with that (as well as a belief that Buddhist meditation may provide a helpful path).  With such noble goals, why do we often fear meditation?

One of my teachers, Ethan Nichtern, says that in his experience, people are really glad that he meditates.  We want to have meditated, but we often feel discomfort about actually sitting down to do it.

I certainly felt this at one point in my practice about seven years ago.  I had just gone through a difficult divorce, and although I knew that participating in the local sangha that was just beginning would help me, I also was terrified.  I went to one of the leaders (a Unitarian minister) to try to understand.  There wasn't a good way to explain in words the terror I felt, but I knew that meditation would bring me into contact with what might be an endless pit of pain.  He assured me that it would, but that it wouldn't be anything I couldn't withstand and ultimately work with.  He was right. Nonetheless, for that first year or so, most sessions I sat there with tears streaming quietly down my face for reasons I couldn't explain.  So I certainly understand that although we may want to have meditated, there is often resistance to doing it.

Some of this resistance can come from our own misperceptions.  Some common ones include:

1. The belief that there is a "right" way to meditate.  There are many postures and many styles of meditation, each of which has a function.  We're often (especially as beginners) too worried about getting it wrong. 
2. The belief that the goal of meditation is to empty your mind.  It is clear when one first sits in meditation trying to count breaths that we can hardly stop our minds for even four breaths.  But in fact, the goal is not to stop thinking.  There are different methods of meditation, only one of which focuses on trying to settle the mind.  Other methods actually use the mind actively.  The ultimate goal is not to stop thinking, but to stop believing that our thoughts are the same as reality.  They are thoughts about reality, not reality itself.
3. The belief that the goal is to get rid of something we dislike, such as our temper, our sadness, our addictions, or our ex-partners (I suppose moving to a monastery might actually be successful at that last one...).  In fact, the goal is to learn to become skillful with all parts of our lives - to become skillful with what is, and not with the story we tell ourselves about it.

These misconceptions can hamper our enthusiasm to meditate, because if we expect them to be accurate, we can't help but be disappointed when we try to achieve them.

Beyond misconceptions, however, meditating is difficult.  Why?  It should be simple.  There are really only three steps to a basic breathing meditation.  (1) Sit.  Easy enough for most of us.  (2) Breathe.  Good, you're already doing that.  Two-thirds of the way there!  (3) Now, do nothing else.

...That third one is always the tricky bit.   

Meditation goes against our conditioning in many ways.  

• First, we tend to spend most of the day in our heads, telling ourselves stories about what just happened, what we want to happen, how we should feel about something, and planning for how to make it happen.  Meditation tries to get us to step back from the story, because the story is not really what's right there in front of us.  
• Second, we spend the day feeling like we should multi-task, and we often get rewarded for doing it.  Meditation tries to get us to focus on only one one thing for an extended period of time, without constant distractions.  
• Third, we generally seek excitement and stimulation and avoid discomfort, which is like closing off part of who we are.  Meditation tries to get us to see all of who we are and learn to be comfortable with it. 
•  Finally, many of us spend a lot of the day trying not to really feel our emotions.  Meditation tries to get us to be in touch with what is really happening in our lives, including our feelings about it.

Stephen Batchelor is quoted as saying: 

The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected - precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command.

We routinely practice dissatisfaction and distraction, all day long (really, how much do you think negative thoughts and complain about your job, partner, body aches, friends, co-workers, and other annoyances in a day?).  Basic meditation can help to begin to break these habits, and some types of meditations actually work to give practice with joy, comfort, compassion, and ease.

Live in joy, 

In love, 

Even among those who hate. 

Live in joy,

In health,

Even among the afflicted. 

Live in joy,

In peace,

Even among the troubled. 

Look within.

Be still.

Free from fear and attachment,

Know the sweet joy of the way.

from the Dhammapada, translated by Thomas Byrom

Healing the Mind for Lasting Happiness

The last two posts have discussed where we mistakenly seek happiness (outside ourselves), and how we often seek types of happiness that can't last, to which we cling which ultimately causes more suffering.  Yet, happiness is possible even if we can't change our outside circumstances or have previously been traumatized.

Consider how fragile the body is.  You can get a simple paper cut, and if it isn't cared for properly, it can get infected and you can die from it.  You can sprain or break your ankle and end up with a permanent disability.  Although true, the body is also remarkably resilient.  If properly cleaned and cared for, such as putting a splint on the ankle, the body can heal the most horrible wounds.

Does the mind have a similar ability to heal its wounds?  It can certainly be injured.

The sprained ankle keeps getting worse even while it is trying to heal itself if you don’t splint it and you keep repeating the actions that damaged it.  Similarly, the mind can’t heal properly if you keep doing the same things over and over.  Unfortunately, this is what we usually do.  

Have you noticed how problems seem to repeat in your lives, especially with our families and the relationships we care the most about?  We maintain the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that keep us locked into an unhealthy pattern, continually re-injuring ourselves.  We can either practice these thoughts, feelings, and reactions, and therefore strengthen the bad habits, or we can practice with them and gain insight, wisdom, and ease.

Meditation is the splint for our injured minds – it helps to clean the wound.  It provides support for changing the habits, which gives the mind the rest, the time, and the stability it needs to begin to fully heal.  But just like a sprained ankle, the mind does not heal immediately.  It can be re-injured easily.  Like the ankle, even after it is healed, it may always be weaker in one direction.  By knowing that, however, you can take steps to keep it from getting re-injured in that direction.  

We spend a lot of our time practicing dissatisfaction, so it's no surprise we have gotten so good at it.  Meditation not only can help to break that pattern, but to retrain new positive patterns.  It is important for new meditators to realize that there are many types of meditation, and there is a progression that can be followed.  At first, we usually focus on breathing or calming meditations (sometimes called shamatha or mindfulness meditations).  These can certainly help us to reduce our feelings of stress.  But ultimately that's not really enough.  We really want to get to a place where we don't get stressed out but feel a sense of calm and ease even when stressors are present.  Mindfulness is just the first step to that goal, although it is a necessary one because it helps us to achieve the clarity and stability to go to the next steps.  Contemplative meditations (sometimes called vipassana or insight meditations) help us to retrain our habitual reactions.  Meditation, however, is still only one third of the Buddhist path, which also includes ethics and philosophical/psychological practices.

Deep down, we know that seeking happiness outside ourselves will never be fully successful.  Buddhism has many techniques, practices, and paths to help us find the ability to live with ease through all of our stresses.  The goal becomes having a deep sense of well-being even as we experience the full range of human emotions, rather than trying to reject "negative" feelings and grasp after ecstatic feelings.  Not every approach will be right for everyone, but that's one of the great things about Buddhism - you are encouraged not to believe in anything until you try it to see if it works for you.