Some Lessons of Meditation

Any recommended intros?

Dan, Mindfulness in Plain English by Gunaratana is a good primer. I also highly recommend finding a sangha if you make a habit of it.

This is why I can’t write fiction. The effort takes one into unnerving territory, beginning with facing oneself without defenses or illusions. Emotional work that leads to such upheaval is not compatible with a life lived constantly on some employer’s time clock. You make me wish there were time for it though.

Thank you for this post. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and PTSD. Electroencephalograms (QUEEG) show that my frontal lobes are in overdrive and just won’t take a rest for anything. Inside my head it’s like somebody left the radio playing. Since I can’t sit still I’ve been taking long walks and quieting the internal chatter and music by focusing on my surroundings. The effort has paid off and it’s becoming easier to identify the tapes that endlessly replay and shut them down when they reappear. Your post and the comments here come at a good time and provide both information and encouragement. Thank you again.

@drugstoreblonde…

My teachers generally make the point that true meditation is achieved in stillness of the body – the moving practices (while related) are a different game – the intent goes into the act of movement etc. Qi gong and yoga poses/sequences for example.

You might want to take a look at “chi running” for a take….. Personally I would recommend doing both stillness and movement practices. Each can inform the other.

@ Ian

Respect! Don’t see nearly enough on this out in the general info sphere…

I’ve found it impossible to completely shut down thinking for more than about an hour or so and even that is rare. What I find useful – aside from relieving stress – is that while we cannot absolutely control our thinking, we can guide it to a remarkable degree. I rather liken it to how cowboys dealt with a cattle stampede. They would get trampled standing in front of the herd, so they stayed on the edges and gradually turned the herd into circling until it got tired.

Directing one’s thoughts is often useful for problem solving in general and psychological issues in particular. Directed Dreaming can also be learned and useful if one understands how to interpret dreams.

The most interesting aspect for me is that while thinking can be shut down, perception isn’t necessarily turned off. I once walked for about 1 hour or more across highways & noisy, crowded, neon-lit streets in a completely non-thinking mode. One thing it taught me is that 99% of dealing with the world around me does not require thinking. I suspect what we call ‘thinking’ is a late-comer to the development of the species . I’ve always felt the biblical story of The Fall was man’s attempt to explain how we acquired the messy, misused thing we call consciousness, which is like a squirrel’s cage, kept spinning by our thinking.

Not saying he’s 100% right but Jayne’s “Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” is a interesting read..

When in my thirties i took a serious shot at learning Spanish, although i have yet to achieve solid fluency, i realized early in the process of the repetitiveness with which we use language in daily interaction. One generally expresses themselves through very few words placed in a few different orders to achieve basic i want i think communication. We are generally exceedingly simple. The verbs change tense the pronouns change to fit them. The subjects, nouns and the person addressed vary slightly the ideas are mostly repeated. It was a humbling realization.

(Thus the obsession of martial artists with no thought. It’s not no decision and it’s not the same, as best I can tell, as running completely on reflex/instinct (trained or otherwise.)

I once read a book about the Old West that was written by WPA writers interviewing people who were actually alive during the era. One interviewee discussed gunslingers, and he said that the chief difference between a gunfighter and a normal person was that the gunfighter had made the decision to kill long before he touched his gun – if he even thought about it at all – so there was no hesitation, whereas the rest of us would still go through the thought process even while drawing our weapons, thus the gunslinger always had an advantage in an otherwise even fight.

Don’t know why I wrote this out, I probably need to go lie down.

Concur completely.

And, while of course I don’t know you, after reading you all these years (“serious guy” who has not incidentally helped make the dismal science comprehensible for me) the advice you were given makes sense…

Sounds too difficult for me. I can almost never stop thinking.

do it for years .. learn the secret that those in the business of satsang don’t like to talk about .. nothing changes.

‘enlightened guru’?

Somebody needs to read the Guru Papers. I’d sooner believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

t groan PERMALINK
July 2, 2014
‘enlightened guru’?
Somebody needs to read the Guru Papers. I’d sooner believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
~~~~~~~~~~
Interesting post. I’d be hard pressed to disagree. It begs the question; how does one not enlightened, know who is enlightened?
Krishnamurti is/was probably a most authentic teacher; but, I can’t say for a certainty because I don’t know. But if one follows the Buddha’s teachings; Krishnamurti’s are most like his dharma.
I’ll not engage an epistemological argument, but only bring this up for thought…
Question, always question; and if it is the right question, one may find an answer…

Hi Ian. Thanks for writing about meditation, something that has been very important to my life, but of which discussions are usually quite superficial. Your descriptions of your experiences sound very familiar to me. I’d like to make a couple points. First, I worry that your description of “an hour a day for six months” as the entry to meditation may scare off people who might otherwise find it useful. My teacher always said that duration is not super-important, just make it daily. If you can’t sit for 30 minutes, sit for 15; if not 10, then 5; etc. I have found that just stopping whatever you wanted to do, in order to sit there and apparently “do nothing” is usually harder than continuing to sit there once you have actually gotten started. (Well, unless it is for much longer than you have been used to.)

Second, I’d like to offer my understanding of “what it’s about.” Meditation is, as you write, about pausing to non-judgmentally observe your existence instead of getting caught up in it. What I have observed is that all the “parts” of what I had thought of as my existence — my thoughts, feelings, sensations, moods, etc. — have the same basic nature or character at their root. When you see that these parts of your life, including your death, are all part of the same unity, seen in that context, they are all fine as they are, as are all other people. My understanding of what it means to be enlightened (I am not) is that, at all times, you see your life and all other people and animals in that enlarged context.

There were moments, when I was a Catholic of a traditional tendency, that I felt utter peace. Typically when I was deep in prayer, either alone in a dark room or before the Eucharist in Church, I would find myself feeling a kind of warmth and vibrating. Its difficult to explain. The best analogy I can think think of is a sort of welling up of feeling. Almost like getting the shivers but accompanied by that warmth. It would vary in intensity.

After leaving the Church it was one of the few things that made me wonder about such things…

Somewhat off topic, I know. I’ve been meaning to get into meditation but its difficult. Time is primarily owned by my restaurant job and my attempts to get the fuck out of said restaurant and of course there’s always my laziness.

I swear, Mr. Welsh, you must be a damn genius. I’ve learned so much and got a kind of confidence just from reading and engaging with folks here.

Ian, I want to thank you for speaking frankly about all of this. For whatever reason, the Buddhists I know here and practice with are hesitant to speak of the various effects of meditation outside of the medicinal. I think in part it is to not discourage the newcomers, maybe in part an aversion to too much religiosity, but it is still a little isolating to have some of the strangeness occur during and after meditative periods, and not have anyone to talk frankly with about it.

This practice, my own primarily breathing and sitting with some visualization, is truly potent stuff. And like everything that seems to really heal rather than just treat the symptoms, it is painful at times.

I must say I am grateful to have finally found this missing part of the spiritual path. Something was missing, but I didn’t know what it was till I sat that first time. This seems to be the real deal, what I always imagined prayer should be.

Ian,
Thank you so much for this post and thanks to everyone taking part in the discussion.
Ian, your sincerity and dedication shine through. I am not sure that meditation always creates such difficulties so rapidly, but your comments are a good antidote for anyone hoping that meditation will bring only calm and peace. One should be aware that at some point, there often comes the phase that is like going into the closet where the skeletons are and turning on the lights.
Of course, if you meditate as many hours as you have been doing, things accelerate. And your willingness, your desire even, to grab the bull by the horns, rather than duck it, creates a big opening for further acceleration.

For beginners, there can be a great advantage to learning from people rather than a book. It does make it easier. No need to sign up for a lifetime of shared brown rice. Just folks to sit with who have been doing it a while. If one does consider taking on a teacher in a deeper way, look at the senior students. They are a better indicator of what being with that teacher can produce than the teacher herself or himself is.
When I started, I learned in a community that used movement to put us into a state in which it was easier to meditate. Typically 45 minutes of movement for 15 minutes of sitting quietly. It taught me what that quiet was like.
Also, the right kind of psychotherapy can help dealing with what comes up through meditation. I spent 1-1/2 years in a community that used a variety of therapy groups, including some intense encounter groups. After that, I could sit like a normal person.
Or to put it another way, we are blessed to live in a time when most who are able to read this blog have access to many different paths.
About enlightenment. From direct experience, there is definitely something there. Recognition within a good lineage is pointer toward enlightenment. Not 100% reliable of course. You are very right that not needing it to be true and also not needing it to be nonsense is the key.
In my experience, at least on my path, eventually it is not about the cessation of thought or even the cessation of out-of-control mental chatter. It is about something deeper. That deeper something is exceedingly difficult to sense through the mental noise, but once one gets to know that deeper something well enough, one can sense it even with the mind chattering on. (We don’t yet have quite the necessary terms for this. In the sentences above “sense” can be replaced with “be” and be as accurate.)
What does need to end is being so identified with our thoughts, so enmeshed in them, that we are puppets at their command. Then what needs to end is the sense of needing to do anything whatsoever about them.
Having said that, for most people, the initial experience of that something deeper can only come when the mind is silenced and it is natural to focus on that silence at first.
Also, being enlightened frees you from your thoughts and your personality, but it does not necessarily free everyone else from your personality. It is eminently possible to be enlightened and still be an asshole.
Finally, linking this all back to the more typical discussions here, among the many things we will be able to do when we finally free ourselves from our current social morass is to reach a level of greater maturity of enlightenment itself, as it becomes both more common and more of the world and of society and less cloistered.

all of this talk about being an enlightened soul, gets in the way of being enlightened

Ian, Buddha recognized that enlightenment or awakening to one’s Buddha nature was the cessation of suffering (“dukkha”) or attainment of Nirvana, as delineated in the 4 Noble Truths. He also recognized that all manifestations of the senses (including thoughts, the self, and the soul or “atman”) are empty of intrinsic existence, so in reality there is no enlightenment or even an “I” to become enlightened.

Being able to empty one’s mind of thoughts through meditation is certainly part of the path to enlightenment, but it is not enlightenment.

Buddha urged his followers to test his words, and not to accept them simply because he said them, so we can and should judge for ourselves whether he was enlightened or not (“Rely not on the teacher, but on the teaching”). Spiritual teachers do not need to claim to be “enlightened” to add credibility to themselves or their teachings, in fact, it is irrelevant and inconsequential. However, those that do claim “enlightenment” usually do so in a transparent attempt to add some credibility to an ego-driven guru status or increase material wealth.

So, yes, Buddhists should question whether or not the Buddha was enlightened or not. And, at least in this lifetime, I have yet to see an exception to Rule 1 of Determining Enlightenment.

Seriously Ian you need to read the Guru Papers unless of course this would be too threatening to your beliefs. The whole guru game and its inherent fallacies are clearly and definitively disproved.

Unfortunately if you buy into the guru->disciple (leader->follower) nonsense the realities the Guru Papers expose may be traumatic and more than a true believer is willing to acknowledge.