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.

Mudita and the Angry Itch

It's a real burden to want to be happy all the time.  In fact, it's such a burden that we often think others should help us to shoulder it - we look to others to "make" us happy, which is a Sisyphean task (at best). Not only that, but it's a thankless task, because we feel so entitled to be happy that when others "make" us happy, we take it for granted.  It can easily be the case that we only tell others about it when they're not making us happy - this is our angry itch.

With this mindset of expecting others to make us happy and punishing them when we're unhappy, it's no surprise that it's such a burden and that repeated scratching doesn't really ease the itch.  We become the cruel taskmasters of others' impossible tasks.

The real shame is that others can make us happy easily, without our micro-management or prodding.  All we need to do is cultivate mudita, sometimes translated as empathetic joy.  It is the opposite of schadenfreude (taking pleasure in others' suffering).  Instead, we take pleasure in others' successes, happiness, good fortune, and enjoyment.  

Parents may understand this perhaps more easily than non-parents, because we have so many opportunities to witness our child's joy in something in a way that cuts through our frustrations.  I may want to leave the park and get on with what I think I should be doing, but seeing my daughter's delight at finding a rock in the sand cuts through my preoccupations and shows me the joy in each moment.

It is significant that the four divine abodes (lovingkindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity) are considered to be antidotes to three poisons (plus one).  Cultivating lovingkindness toward others counteracts irritation and aggression. Cultivating compassion toward others counteracts indifference.  Cultivating empathetic joy counteracts greediness and jealousy.  Cultivating equanimity counteracts worry about the past and future.

At some points in our path, we can have a very selfish attitude toward the four divine abodes.  "Why should I spend so much energy trying to feel good about others when I have so much work to do on myself first?"   This attitude is misplaced selfishness - it's trying to scratch the angry itch that we can't really reach.  If we truly wanted to be successfully selfish, meditating on lovingkindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity will help us to feel better about ourselves.  Specific to mudita, if we learn to feel and share in others' joys, we then have many people helping us to feel happy, and they are doing it without our making them feel they should!  It's like the students who park outside my house to "share" my wireless internet connection (because I don't password protect it).  They get what they want just by being near someone who has it.  You can be happy just by sharing in the happiness that is going on all around you all day.  Finally, that itch can be scratched, and no one has to work to reach it!

This post originally appeared on the Inderdependence Project blog.

Nirvana is Not Just a Band - The Third Noble Truth

In the last post, we discussed how we have conditioned emotional reactions to things that make us want them, want to avoid them, or not care about them (the Three Poisons).  These reactions are natural, but when we begin to believe that our reaction is Truth, or that we must react based on them without reflection, they usually cause us (and others) more suffering.  Yet, they can be overcome.  This is known as the Third Noble Truth - that we don't have to suffer.  In Buddha's words, "The extinction of greed, the extinction of hate, the extinction of delusion; this, indeed, is called Nirvana." (Translation by Nyanatiloka).

In the Titthiya Sutta mentioned last time, Buddha discussed how passion/grasping/wanting arises through the "theme of the attractive," how aggression/aversion arises by the "theme of irritation," and how ignorance/delusion arises due to "inappropriate attention."  He then goes further in this sutra to say that the three poisons can be kept from arising or abandoned once they have arisen.

1. Passion/clinging/grasping can be overcome through the "theme of the unattractive....For one who attends appropriately to the theme of the unattractive, unarisen passion does not arise and arisen passion is abandoned."
• When we are feeling that we want something, we tend to focus only on the positive aspects of it.  We then become unbalanced and are ultimately disappointed because it can't live up to our expectations, thus continuing the cycle of stress.  If instead, once we notice that we are attracted to something, we also pay attention to the potential negative aspects, then we can still want it but we won't become so unbalanced or disappointed.  
2. Aversion/aggression can be overcome through loving-kindness or good will.
• When we are irritated or angry, we similarly tend to focus only on the negative aspects of the situation or person.  We rehearse all the negative aspects and how we would like to respond harshly.  If we do act aggressively, the cycle continues.  If instead, once we notice that we are feeling irritated, we also pay attention to how the other people involved are also suffering, we can feel some compassion for their point of view.  We can even wish them well rather than harm, knowing that if they started feeling better, they would likely be less irritating to us, or at least the situation wouldn't escalate and get worse.
3. Ignorance/delusion can be overcome with appropriate attention.
• When we don't know or don't care about something, we don't pay it any attention.  Once we think we understand something, we stop paying good attention.  This ensures that we continue to delude ourselves into thinking that we understand it or that it's not worth our time.  If, instead, we approach the things we don't know or care about with a sense of curiosity, we are likely to find something interesting.

There is a general theme in Buddhism (as seen above) that for every affliction, there is an antidote.  Once the antidote has been applied effectively, then what?  [Cue the Seattle grunge sound]

Nirvana!

There isn't only one way to understand Nirvana, and I can only speak from my experience.  Some people think of it similarly to the typical Christian idea of heaven, as a wonderful place your spirit can go once you die and escape from the cycle of samsaric death and rebirth.  As an American Buddhist, I have a hard time with this approach.  It strikes me that there is a more literal way to understand it.

The word nirvana means to blow out or extinguish, as one blows out a candle.  Alan Watts describes nirvana as a very literal blowing out, such as when we say "Phew!" to demonstrate our relief.  I think this is the secret to understanding Nirvana.

It's not a special place you go, it's not even a special state you achieve (like after achieving a college degree you have it forever).  It's actually a very ordinary state...it's the state of being present and not being ruled by the three poisons.  Remember Buddha's quote above, "The extinction of greed, the extinction of hate, the extinction of delusion; this, indeed, is called Nirvana."  When you are completely present and aware of what you're doing, not attached to any future outcome, not worried about what happened before, this is Nirvana.  This is indeed liberating.  This is "phew" contentment.  This is living with ease. This is productivity at work. This is where your loved ones feel loved by your presence. This is where great art is created.

But what does it mean to be liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth?  As an American Buddhist, I have difficulty thinking of this in the sense of reincarnation over countless lifetimes.  I think a more basic way is to realize that this is speaking about karma.  The concept of karma also has gathered lots of mystical meaning over the centuries, but at its root, it just means "action," as in action and reaction.  For any action you take, there will be a reaction.  If you act in a damaging way, you will reap the consequences of it in the future.  As long as we are ruled by the Three Poisons, we will continue to act in ways that have difficult consequences for ourselves and those around us.

We could also think about death and rebirth in this framework of our actions.  Consider, for example, if I am feeling aggressive and I spread a rumor about you, this action has consequences that ripple outwards into the future.  You become hurt by this.  Perhaps a year later you find out that I was the person who started the rumor.  At that point, although my original action is dead, it is reborn by you.  You are now thinking about it and harmed by it anew.  If you act out of aggression now, I become hurt.  This is my karma in the broader sense...my actions have returned to me as consequences.  My being hurt by you just reinforces the anger I had a year ago, and it is reborn...and the cycle continues.

If I had to guess, I'd say that 95% of the time (+/-5%, since I'm a scientist) that we are feeling a difficult emotion (sadness, anger, fear, shame, guilt, etc.), it is not because the difficult situation is happening then.  We ruminate over past and future imagined hurts and threats.  This keeps us locked into the karmic cycle of death and rebirth - we keep giving birth anew to these feelings.  This is samsara, the wheel of dukkha (discontent).  If we were able to apply the antidote, let it go, and refocus on what we're actually doing, we would achieve Nirvana in that moment.  Let me give a personal example.

Many years ago, I went through a terrible divorce that caused me serious damage.  In fact, from my perspective, the ruthless way in which it was done was designed to cause as much damage as possible.  As can be imagined, I spent many months in despair, anger, self-pity, blaming, rage, etc.  One "enlightenment" moment came one evening as I was washing the dishes.  I was crucifying myself with my strong emotions, thinking about what I should have said, what I'd like to do in my rage, etc.  On this evening, however, I stopped myself and said, "What am I doing right now?  I'm washing the dishes.  Does washing the dishes hurt me?  No."  I realized that all the suffering I was going through was being caused entirely by me at that time.  My ex wasn't there saying the things I was imagining.  Perhaps she had said them in the past, but she wasn't saying them at that moment.  Recognizing this, I let it go and paid my full attention to the dishes.  That is Nirvana.  My suffering ceased and I stopped thinking about doing things that would only increase my future suffering.

Nirvana is not a place we go.  It's not a special state that once we achieve we are always there (at least most humans can't).  Instead, it's a special state we can have at any time.  In fact, it's a state that we have all experienced any time you are so engrossed in a task that you are completely focused on all the details.  Learning how to get to Nirvana and stay there for longer and longer periods takes work and time.  And maybe...just maybe...once we're there, it will smell like teen spirit.