One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen.
One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?
EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
Yes? Like trying hard to get into that state of meditation. Then you notice that you're getting tense and stressed about it not working, realize that this is not helpful, get angry at yourself for doing it wrong, try harder to do it right this time, etc.
It's my favourite puzzle about meditation. You have to approach it sideways, but if you really try that it won't work. So you try hard not to that instead, which won't work either. It's kind of funny how focusing on your breath tends to work, but... don't hold that thought.
It's a contradiction, and that's okay. Get comfortable with it ;-)
FWIW a good trick is to be aware of your thoughts, watch the tension/stress/realisation/anger/effort arising, the sort-of ignore them because they're thoughts and look for the way your mind tenses moving between them, then do the opposite of that tensing or let the tensing move you to a feeling of (say) extreme love or connection because if you're going to feel something that is more pleasant than stress. These things come and go, as you illustrate. Once you don't lean into them they tend to just go away.
None of those things are doing meditation wrong, they're just things minds do. The mistake is in focusing on them instead of focusing on the process generating the changes.
When I started meditating, I actively tried to ignore my thoughts, which was exhausting. So when I couldn't, I'd engage and ruminate instead, which was just as tiring.
The approach that finally worked for me (and one I still use today, years later) I learned from a book by Adrian Wells called Metacognitive Therapy. It's not self-help, actually; it's a clinical manual for therapists, but I read it anyway. The idea, in my own words, is not to engage with the thought but simply to recognize it, almost like greeting it and saying goodbye in the same breath. A thought comes, and you say, "Hmm, okay, I just thought that. That was a thought. That's fine." And you move on.
Of course, the book goes much deeper than that, but this simple approach helped me enormously with rumination and anxiety around intrusive thoughts.
This is a great point. This is why I don’t meditate :)
It became clear to me at some point that meditation was another way I was creating some standard for good or bad, and comparing myself to it. Would be annoyed at myself if I weren’t “mindful enough” etc. I think even if you don’t have this tendency, but you’re still meditating with the intent to be in a certain state or arrange things a certain way, you’re still doing a minor version of this - how I was before, not good, how I am now, better.
What I do now instead of meditating is to just sit without doing anything on purpose. I don’t try to prevent myself from thinking or direct my intention in any way. So I just am as I am - maybe my mind wanders, maybe it doesn’t. This way there’s no contradiction. When I’m anxious, I’m anxious. When my mind wanders, it wanders. When I think about cheese, I’m thinking about cheese. If I think “I’m feeling kind of present right now”, then there’s “I’m feeling kind of present right now”. And before I know it, it’s something different
> but you’re still meditating with the intent to be in a certain state
Then don't. It's exactly the point to not do that. Meditation needs non-attachment imho. Because when you're attached (I need this to feel a certain way, something must happen) you can't really be observant of your thoughts and sensations, you're one with them.
Yeah that’s fair, that’s why I put the “or arrange things in a certain way” - imo wanting to be observant of thoughts and sensations is a choice one makes that implies a value judgement, i.e. that it’s “better” to to be observant of thoughts and sensations, which I don’t think is necessarily true. For instance if I consider the best conversations I’ve had, it’s because I was “lost” in conversation - just having the conversation, not even aware that that’s what I’m doing. To me being nonjudgmental doesn’t mean viewing something and having a neutral view of it (which is still a judgement), it’s being entirely free from judgement by not being apart from it. This way when you’re judging something (“ugh I don’t like this coffee”) there’s no problem with that either.
All that said I think if someone wants to choose to meditate, or to spend time being aware of feelings or whatever form of meditation they choose, they’re totally welcome to do that. And I agree that if you do that, it’s helpful to focus on the process rather than the outcome.
One way to look at it is that the act of meditation is just the exercise part; it helps you practice to “be with what is” in the rest of your life’s experience, which translates into “whatever happens within or around me, I always have choices of action and can decide on my actions from a place of silence, the eye of the hurricane, with sufficient space between where I am and my own emotions and feelings, body sensations, and other sensory input”.
A side note: the experience of meditation alone and in groups is very different. There’s a reason why people who are “serious about it” (or seriously interested) do it in community.
That is called dualistic mindfulness. The feeling of the self (the thought “oh I am trying to meditate”) is just another thought. Pay close enough attention, and that dissipates as well.
The practice described there is close to shamatha (calm abiding). Just sit and when thoughts arrive, simply label it as “thinking” without prejudice or attachment and carry on.
A common occurrence is the thought that oneself is thinking or labeling too much. This is close to the recursion / self-reference you are referring to. The practice thereof is to simply accept that (and your labeling of inner activity and all wrapped up in that) and carry on abiding. The inner chatter that you are not meditating well enough is a funny one.
No. You're allowed to direct your attention. The problem would be in how you approach it. If you strive then you're doing it wrong.
Liken it to brushing your teeth: you can't really judge it. You probably did it good enough. It's more important to keep doing it steadily every day than to evaluate progress.
If you take seriously the notion that enlightenment isn't some separate state or goal to be reached but simply the actualization of things as they are, I find the goal- and outcome-oriented drives tend to subside. Instead one is left with all the minutae of how things unfold, which seems inextricable from the goings-on of mind/perception/whatever. Paying close attention to those goings-on is pretty nice, IME.
Buddha addressed this idea directly. Your instinct that "getting comfortable with nothing" is still doing something turns out to be exactly right, and Buddhism doesn't deny it. Its answer is basically: yes, you use one kind of wanting (the motivation to practice) to loosen a deeper kind of wanting (craving a specific outcome), like using fire to burn down a house, then the fire has nothing left to burn.
Meditation, in the Therevada tradition at least, never claimed to be nothing, it uses doing to undermine it.
One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?
EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?