About This Course
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
This is the last week of the course.
Ways of Life
You may have read the past 16 emails with interest – but not yet started meditating. You may have meditated every day. You may have started meditating – become discouraged – and stopped. You may have meditated some weeks and not others.
If you have read this far – meditation has been part of your way of life for three months—even if only as a concept. Since the course ends here – this is the time to think seriously about what rôle you want meditation to play in your life.
Meditation is a tool which can change your way of life—without necessarily changing visible characteristics of your job, family, or daily routine—by changing your experience. How you choose to use meditation is closely connected to how you wish to live.
Beginner’s Mind
If you have not been meditating regularly – the complexity of the ‘toolkit’ provided by the past 16 emails may seem overwhelming. Concepts about meditation may now be an obstacle to actually meditating. Since meditation is a path beyond concepts – each time we sit down and begin, we must set them aside. We return to ‘beginner’s mind’, in which everything is possible—because we have no limiting preconceptions—and everything is simple.
It is hard to start meditating—if you have never attempted it before. It is hard—if after you have begun—you let your practice lapse. Let go of the weight of mixed feelings about meditation. Return to the simple instructions of week 1 or 2 – and just sit. Forget about progress. If you can meditate every day for a week – you are likely to see the world differently. It is like beginning an exercise programme when you are badly out of shape. It may feel wretched at first—and have no discernable benefits—but when you exercise regularly it becomes enjoyable. And – there is no way to become fit other than to exercise. There is no way to free your mind from neediness, aggravation, and confusion other than to meditate.
Your relationship with meditation will change over months and years. Simply continuing will gradually produce deeper understanding. Periodically you will experience entirely new ways in which meditation transforms your life. With meditation—in both the long and short term—the extent of the effect is proportional to the exertion of effort. The more you meditate—and the more dedicated your practice—the more you will feel the results.
Buddhism, Briefly
What you have previously heard about Buddhism may seem mostly irrelevant to you—if your chosen way of life involves love, career, family, creativity, or other passionate involvements in the world. Yet Buddhism contains many varied viewpoints and approaches.
Aro presents Buddhism as—simply—the unfolding implications of what is discovered in meditation – implications for passionately involved ways of life. Our essay ‘An uncommon perspective’ describes Aro’s unusual approach.
Buddhism is most commonly taught from a perspective which emphasises renunciation. Some Buddhist paths advocate withdrawal from the complexity and difficulties of ordinary life—abstaining from sense pleasures and emotional ties—ideally to become a monk or nun.
Aro’s approach—which is equally traditional—emphasises embracing passionate involvement as the essence of enlightened activity. Aro presents Buddhism as tools for creating ways of life that are vigorous, delight-filled, and liberating. We seek not to retreat from the world but to dance wholeheartedly with modern life – whether Western or Eastern.
Essential Buddhism does not belong to a specific culture even though it originated in the East. The nature of Mind addressed by essential Buddhism goes beneath ‘cultural software’ to the very ‘operating system’ of humanity – so it is as applicable now in the West as it was 2000 years ago in India.
The Aro path offers a structure for life-long learning. It provides a series of ‘phases’ which allow gradually increasing involvement as meditation and Buddhism become increasingly important in your way of life.
Preview
This is the end of the course – but it is not the end of this series of emails. Starting in a week, you will receive a weekly quotation from the book Roaring Silence, on which this course is based. Roaring Silence teaches meditation in greater depth and with a quite different style. Much of the book consists of transcripts of recorded discussions of its authors—the Lamas Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen—with students. You may find the quotes inspiring – and that they provide flashes of insight far beyond the pragmatic understanding this course has offered. If you would rather not receive these weekly quotations, you can unsubscribe at any time.
Valediction
There is always further to go with meditation. There is always a deeper level of practice and understanding available. There are always new insights to discover.
Whatever the place of meditation in your way of life—wherever your path takes you—fare well.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 16
About This Course
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
A Bag of Tricks
You have now learned many meditation techniques – main methods, variations, and antidotes to obstacles.
You will have found some of these more useful than others. People differ, and—with experience—you will find a mix of techniques that works. You will learn how and when to apply different methods, according to the ‘mental weather’ you experience during each meditation session. This deepening process of self-discovery continues for years.
Choose one or two primary shi-nè techniques as the foundation of practice. You can start each session with one technique—awareness of breath for instance—then move to alternatives according to your mind-state or current meditation goals. You might shift from breath awareness to formless meditation—if undistracted—or sing ‘Ah’ if you wish to developing skill in finding the presence of awareness in the dimension of sound. You can adjust your posture according to your energy level – or apply the antidote of head-jerks (see week 7). When strong emotions arise, apply the method of awareness of the corresponding physical feeling (week 11). You will learn how much to exert yourself – how to maintain the balance of gentleness and dedication.
The techniques you learn form a ‘bag of tricks’ or ‘tool kit’ from which you can pull particular methods as circumstances dictate.
The Tibetan meditation tradition teaches a vast array of extraordinary methods which are valuable in particular situations. For example:
• methods which can only be practiced alone; methods which require a large group;
• methods which require the strength and flexibility of a competition gymnast; methods which—though physical exercises—were devised by an elderly cripple for his own use;
• methods which can be completed in five seconds or less; methods which must be practiced twenty-four hours a day for many weeks continuously;
• methods which require mountains, running water, fire, or wind;
• methods which can only be employed on a cloudless day; methods which can only be employed in total darkness;
• methods employed in sleep (yes, this is possible);
• and, a great many others.
Shi-nè and lhatong together comprise a complete path – so nothing else is necessary. These other methods serve to greatly accelerate your progress with shi-nè and lhatong.
As your tool box expands beyond the basics – the advice of a qualified teacher becomes increasingly important. There is a danger, on the one hand, of skipping from one method to another whenever you encounter difficulties – or seeking entertainment. On the other hand you may get stuck in a rut with a comfortable method – when you would make faster progress by moving on to a method that is more challenging. This can be difficult to judge accurately yourself. An experienced teacher can work with you to find the best combination of methods for your current interests, circumstances, and skills.
Obstacles & Antidotes
This method counters distraction by providing a focus.
Close your eyes and visualise the Tibetan letter A as shown on this week’s picture page. It is luminous and composed of light. It appears in space in front of you. Find its position by extending your arm 45 degrees up and ahead of you and visualising the letter A at the distance of your fist. The A may appear about the size of your fist – but allow it to be whatever size it spontaneously takes. Hold your arm out until the visualisation becomes reasonably stable. Lower your arm and continue to find the presence of your awareness in the appearance of the A.
If you find the shape of the A strange or complex – draw it on paper several times before starting your meditation. That will help you remember it. The more often you practice drawing and visualising the A, the easier it will become.
You may find that the A moves about at first. Do not worry – just let it settle down on its own.
Focus sharply at first, but then relax your focus. Excessive effort may lead to unhelpful tension. If the A is not particularly vivid – just allow it to be a vague presence.
This week, try this visualisation for three five-minute intervals within each sitting session. That will be sufficient to learn it thoroughly. Later, you can apply it at any time you find yourself distracted.
Physical Pain
Pain is a distraction – so it is usually best to eliminate it when possible during meditation. That is not always possible – as when pain or discomfort is caused by injury or disease.
Physical pain can actually be helpful in meditation. Pain forces us to focus on it, which leads the mind away from thinking into sensation. It provides a simple, unambiguous opportunity to accept the world as it is. ‘Accepting’ does not mean ‘liking’. It means that—just for now—we will not try to change it.
Typically we resist pain so strongly that we do not really know what it is like. Be curious. You may be surprised by what you find if you sit with it for half an hour. Concepts about pain distort the experience. Often the true nature of a pain is quite different from what we imagine we have been feeling.
Often resistance produces tension which prolongs and intensifies pain. When we accept the sensation and allow our thoughts to drop, we relax. Often it becomes apparent that what we have been fighting, is actually fear that the pain will last forever – or anger that we have been hurt.
When we relax into physical pain and experience it accurately, we can—if the pain is not too intense—find calm and equanimity. This insight can be extended to emotional pain – and from meditation into everyday life.
Experiments With Energy
Caffeine and alcohol can be useful antidotes to energy problems in meditation. (If for health or other reasons you avoid them – there is no need to try these exercises.)
Caffeine not only wakes you up – in moderation it can help focus. Too much prompts jumbled, racing thoughts. Alcohol in moderation stills thoughts, cuts distraction, and relaxes obsessive and ambitious emotions. Too much produces stupor. This illustrates a general principle: the antidotes for too little energy may produce too much, and vice versa – so be careful in their application.
Take a glass and an opened bottle of good red wine with you to your evening meditation. Apply your usual meditation technique, but take a sip every minute or so. As you start to feel the effects, slow down. While maintaining the technique, observe without comment the sensations in your body. Observe the quality of your mind as you continue to take occasional sips. How does your experience of meditation change as you gradually feel increasing effects of the alcohol? Do not consume so much that it becomes difficult to maintain the technique.
Record what you have learned in your meditation notebook.
You can do the same experiment with coffee in the morning.
These experiments should not replace your usual meditation technique – but unlike some earlier experiments, they can be useful repeatedly.
Recommended Resources
The white A is one of the simplest visualisations. The primary visualisation method in Aro is taught in the book Wearing the Body of Visions, and in the weekend meditation retreat of the same name.
* * *
A meditation group meets regularly to meditate together. Many people find that participating in a meditation group makes it significantly easier to maintain their solitary daily practice. The group provides motivation, community, direction, support, sharing, and learning opportunities – and can lead to deep long-lasting friendships.
Meditation groups can be found in most towns. (The Aro contact page lists Aro meditation groups in dozens. You can easily find other groups on the web.) The only difficulty is that you may not find a group’s style of meditation practice to your taste – or you may not find the people personally compatible.
If you cannot find a suitable meditation group, consider starting your own. If you have friends interested in meditation – invite them to join you. Typically groups meet once a week—or once every two weeks—for an hour or two. Each meeting begins with a period of silent sitting meditation – as much as your members find comfortable. You might then have a discussion period. It can be useful to read a meditation book together and discuss a chapter at each meeting. Allow some time also for free-form discussion. End with another meditation period.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
A Bag of Tricks
You have now learned many meditation techniques – main methods, variations, and antidotes to obstacles.
You will have found some of these more useful than others. People differ, and—with experience—you will find a mix of techniques that works. You will learn how and when to apply different methods, according to the ‘mental weather’ you experience during each meditation session. This deepening process of self-discovery continues for years.
Choose one or two primary shi-nè techniques as the foundation of practice. You can start each session with one technique—awareness of breath for instance—then move to alternatives according to your mind-state or current meditation goals. You might shift from breath awareness to formless meditation—if undistracted—or sing ‘Ah’ if you wish to developing skill in finding the presence of awareness in the dimension of sound. You can adjust your posture according to your energy level – or apply the antidote of head-jerks (see week 7). When strong emotions arise, apply the method of awareness of the corresponding physical feeling (week 11). You will learn how much to exert yourself – how to maintain the balance of gentleness and dedication.
The techniques you learn form a ‘bag of tricks’ or ‘tool kit’ from which you can pull particular methods as circumstances dictate.
The Tibetan meditation tradition teaches a vast array of extraordinary methods which are valuable in particular situations. For example:
• methods which can only be practiced alone; methods which require a large group;
• methods which require the strength and flexibility of a competition gymnast; methods which—though physical exercises—were devised by an elderly cripple for his own use;
• methods which can be completed in five seconds or less; methods which must be practiced twenty-four hours a day for many weeks continuously;
• methods which require mountains, running water, fire, or wind;
• methods which can only be employed on a cloudless day; methods which can only be employed in total darkness;
• methods employed in sleep (yes, this is possible);
• and, a great many others.
Shi-nè and lhatong together comprise a complete path – so nothing else is necessary. These other methods serve to greatly accelerate your progress with shi-nè and lhatong.
As your tool box expands beyond the basics – the advice of a qualified teacher becomes increasingly important. There is a danger, on the one hand, of skipping from one method to another whenever you encounter difficulties – or seeking entertainment. On the other hand you may get stuck in a rut with a comfortable method – when you would make faster progress by moving on to a method that is more challenging. This can be difficult to judge accurately yourself. An experienced teacher can work with you to find the best combination of methods for your current interests, circumstances, and skills.
Obstacles & Antidotes
This method counters distraction by providing a focus.
Close your eyes and visualise the Tibetan letter A as shown on this week’s picture page. It is luminous and composed of light. It appears in space in front of you. Find its position by extending your arm 45 degrees up and ahead of you and visualising the letter A at the distance of your fist. The A may appear about the size of your fist – but allow it to be whatever size it spontaneously takes. Hold your arm out until the visualisation becomes reasonably stable. Lower your arm and continue to find the presence of your awareness in the appearance of the A.
If you find the shape of the A strange or complex – draw it on paper several times before starting your meditation. That will help you remember it. The more often you practice drawing and visualising the A, the easier it will become.
You may find that the A moves about at first. Do not worry – just let it settle down on its own.
Focus sharply at first, but then relax your focus. Excessive effort may lead to unhelpful tension. If the A is not particularly vivid – just allow it to be a vague presence.
This week, try this visualisation for three five-minute intervals within each sitting session. That will be sufficient to learn it thoroughly. Later, you can apply it at any time you find yourself distracted.
Physical Pain
Pain is a distraction – so it is usually best to eliminate it when possible during meditation. That is not always possible – as when pain or discomfort is caused by injury or disease.
Physical pain can actually be helpful in meditation. Pain forces us to focus on it, which leads the mind away from thinking into sensation. It provides a simple, unambiguous opportunity to accept the world as it is. ‘Accepting’ does not mean ‘liking’. It means that—just for now—we will not try to change it.
Typically we resist pain so strongly that we do not really know what it is like. Be curious. You may be surprised by what you find if you sit with it for half an hour. Concepts about pain distort the experience. Often the true nature of a pain is quite different from what we imagine we have been feeling.
Often resistance produces tension which prolongs and intensifies pain. When we accept the sensation and allow our thoughts to drop, we relax. Often it becomes apparent that what we have been fighting, is actually fear that the pain will last forever – or anger that we have been hurt.
When we relax into physical pain and experience it accurately, we can—if the pain is not too intense—find calm and equanimity. This insight can be extended to emotional pain – and from meditation into everyday life.
Experiments With Energy
Caffeine and alcohol can be useful antidotes to energy problems in meditation. (If for health or other reasons you avoid them – there is no need to try these exercises.)
Caffeine not only wakes you up – in moderation it can help focus. Too much prompts jumbled, racing thoughts. Alcohol in moderation stills thoughts, cuts distraction, and relaxes obsessive and ambitious emotions. Too much produces stupor. This illustrates a general principle: the antidotes for too little energy may produce too much, and vice versa – so be careful in their application.
Take a glass and an opened bottle of good red wine with you to your evening meditation. Apply your usual meditation technique, but take a sip every minute or so. As you start to feel the effects, slow down. While maintaining the technique, observe without comment the sensations in your body. Observe the quality of your mind as you continue to take occasional sips. How does your experience of meditation change as you gradually feel increasing effects of the alcohol? Do not consume so much that it becomes difficult to maintain the technique.
Record what you have learned in your meditation notebook.
You can do the same experiment with coffee in the morning.
These experiments should not replace your usual meditation technique – but unlike some earlier experiments, they can be useful repeatedly.
Recommended Resources
The white A is one of the simplest visualisations. The primary visualisation method in Aro is taught in the book Wearing the Body of Visions, and in the weekend meditation retreat of the same name.
* * *
A meditation group meets regularly to meditate together. Many people find that participating in a meditation group makes it significantly easier to maintain their solitary daily practice. The group provides motivation, community, direction, support, sharing, and learning opportunities – and can lead to deep long-lasting friendships.
Meditation groups can be found in most towns. (The Aro contact page lists Aro meditation groups in dozens. You can easily find other groups on the web.) The only difficulty is that you may not find a group’s style of meditation practice to your taste – or you may not find the people personally compatible.
If you cannot find a suitable meditation group, consider starting your own. If you have friends interested in meditation – invite them to join you. Typically groups meet once a week—or once every two weeks—for an hour or two. Each meeting begins with a period of silent sitting meditation – as much as your members find comfortable. You might then have a discussion period. It can be useful to read a meditation book together and discuss a chapter at each meeting. Allow some time also for free-form discussion. End with another meditation period.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 15
About This Course
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Greetings. The purpose of meditation is not to take a daily break from our lives. The purpose is to transform our experience of life so that we would never wish to take a break from it. This week’s email explains methods for extending meditative awareness from silent sitting into action.
Meditation In Action
Shi-nè requires non-doing – but the implication of meditation for life is not passivity or inaction. From meditation we learn awareness, focus, enjoyment, flow, and spaciousness. We extend—into life—freedom from judgemental thinking and freedom from emotional conflict. This facilitates a lightness of being which allows us to live with grace, courage, inspiration, persistence, and confidence.
The essence of shi-nè is to return from distraction and to remain with the presence of awareness. The essence of meditation in everyday life is the same: to bring awareness to all activities.
The easiest place to begin is with bodily awareness. It is impossible to feel your body unless you are here, now.
The easiest time to start is as you finish sitting meditation. Let go of the sharp division between meditating and non-meditating. Emerge from meditation gradually and smoothly. Stand up slowly, paying attention to movements and sensations. Massage any pain or stiffness, and continue to find the presence of awareness in whatever sensation arises.
See how long you can maintain awareness as you begin your next activity. If possible – choose something solitary and non-verbal, such as cooking, cleaning, or physical exercise. Activities involving words are more likely to distract you from awareness.
Walking Meditation
Walking meditation is a bridge between formal sitting meditation and informal meditation in everyday activities. It is also useful if you want to meditate for long periods continuously. Alternating sitting and walking provides a way to relieve the stress on your body without ever leaving meditation entirely. Walking also serves as an antidote to both the tiredness and restlessness that can obstruct shi-nè.
Walking meditation is easiest in a quiet place without distractions or obstacles. An empty room large enough to walk in circles is suitable. Even better – an unobstructed natural setting such as a park. Walking meditation is valuable but more difficult in an urban setting.
Walk with your eyes looking downwards at about 45 degrees – but keep your head upright. Allow your gaze to move smoothly over the ground, rather than jumping from one point to the next. This is much easier if you allow your eyes to relax and defocus, so that your vision is slightly blurred.
Be aware of each part of your foot as it presses the ground in succession. Be aware of sensations: of your trousers brushing your legs, of the rhythmic contractions of leg muscles, of the slight brush of air against your skin.
This is easier if you walk at about half the normal speed.
When you find that you are distracted by thinking – return to find the presence of awareness in sensations.
Pay no particular attention to the objects around you – but be aware of your body moving through space. As a variation – feel that you are motionless and that space is gliding past you.
Try this for fifteen minutes every time you meditate this week. That is enough to get the flavour. With experience, you can engage in walking meditation for periods of seconds to hours – and any time you need to walk.
Meditation In Everyday Life
The method of informal meditation in everyday life is simply to be with your action – rather than distracted by thoughts and feelings about something else. This does not mean avoiding thinking. It means using thought when it is actually useful – and allowing useless thoughts to drop away. It means remaining aware that you are thinking – as you think.
It is easiest at first to let unnecessary thoughts go by returning to bodily awareness. This is possible in any situation. Be aware of breath. Be aware of sensations. Recall that you have a body – which seems to disappear when staring for hours at a screen, for example. Scan your body from foot to head—are you contracting any muscles unnecessarily? Needless muscular tension and needless mental tension reinforce each other. Let both go.
During the day, it is often possible to enter the momentary spaces between activities, in which we can stop – to let go and let be. This momentary practice—at bus stops, walking to a shop, or lying in the bath—infuses our experience with openness.
Allow the world to remind you to return to awareness. Open to your senses. Whenever you see a vivid colour or hear a distinctive sound – allow its presence. Experience and enjoy food – rather than chewing mechanically and thinking about work. Enjoy washing dishes, a chore many dislike – but which becomes pleasurable in the state of flow. When exercising, be with your body and breath. Wearing an iPod when running—or watching television at the gym—is counter-productive.
Observe the pointless doing that arises from nervous compulsion – the fear of emptiness. Take time to just be in stillness instead. Allow effective action to arise spontaneously from that space.
Obstacles & Antidotes: Vajra Posture
This strenuous exercise can have fatal consequences. Please do not attempt it if you have any doubt about your physical fitness – and certainly not if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, or are pregnant or menstruating.
Squat down on tip-toe. The balls of your feet should be touching. Your heels should be touching. Balance yourself by touching the ground in front of you with your fingertips.
Place your hands palms-down on your knees. Straighten your arms to push your knees downward a little. Spread your knees apart and straighten your back.
When you feel balanced – raise your hands above your head. Place the palms of your hands firmly together about an inch above your head. Your fingers should point directly upward.
Simultaneously attempt to push your hands up, and your elbows back – without separating your hands, or allowing your hands to rise further above your head. These two movements should be matched in effort so that they counteract each other – i.e. your hands and arms do not move. Keep your hands pointing straight upward. Increase the effort until your arms begin to judder.
Now raise yourself until your legs form the same angle as your arms. Remain in that position until you collapse and fall back flat on the floor – with your arms at your sides. Remain in that posture until breathing and heart rate have returned to normal—not more than four minutes, or you may lose the resulting sense of alertness and freshness.
Throughout this exercise – just let go and let be. When you sit up again – continue with meditation. Repeat this practice as many times as feels comfortable.
This exercise is called the ‘vajra’ or ‘thunderbolt’ posture. Its principle is to cause total exhaustion extremely quickly. When totally exhausted – it is difficult to think. Vajra posture helps find the condition of no-thought. Because exhaustion is reached extremely quickly – recovery is also rapid. Vajra posture leaves you feeling energised, clear, and refreshed. Therefore it is valuable as an antidote both to racing thoughts and lethargy.
The book Roaring Silence explains vajra posture in considerably more detail – discussing both its esoteric aspects and practical antidotes to difficulties with it.
Recommended Resources
Meditative traditions include many physical exercises that complement sitting meditation. Aro teaches sKu-mNyé, a series of 111 exercises that range from easy—for anyone—to extremely strenuous. sKu-mNyé brings about nyams (non-ordinary meditation experiences) in which the presence of awareness is discovered in highly peculiar physical sensations.
The Aro meditation resources page provides a range of learning methods.
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Greetings. The purpose of meditation is not to take a daily break from our lives. The purpose is to transform our experience of life so that we would never wish to take a break from it. This week’s email explains methods for extending meditative awareness from silent sitting into action.
Meditation In Action
Shi-nè requires non-doing – but the implication of meditation for life is not passivity or inaction. From meditation we learn awareness, focus, enjoyment, flow, and spaciousness. We extend—into life—freedom from judgemental thinking and freedom from emotional conflict. This facilitates a lightness of being which allows us to live with grace, courage, inspiration, persistence, and confidence.
The essence of shi-nè is to return from distraction and to remain with the presence of awareness. The essence of meditation in everyday life is the same: to bring awareness to all activities.
The easiest place to begin is with bodily awareness. It is impossible to feel your body unless you are here, now.
The easiest time to start is as you finish sitting meditation. Let go of the sharp division between meditating and non-meditating. Emerge from meditation gradually and smoothly. Stand up slowly, paying attention to movements and sensations. Massage any pain or stiffness, and continue to find the presence of awareness in whatever sensation arises.
See how long you can maintain awareness as you begin your next activity. If possible – choose something solitary and non-verbal, such as cooking, cleaning, or physical exercise. Activities involving words are more likely to distract you from awareness.
Walking Meditation
Walking meditation is a bridge between formal sitting meditation and informal meditation in everyday activities. It is also useful if you want to meditate for long periods continuously. Alternating sitting and walking provides a way to relieve the stress on your body without ever leaving meditation entirely. Walking also serves as an antidote to both the tiredness and restlessness that can obstruct shi-nè.
Walking meditation is easiest in a quiet place without distractions or obstacles. An empty room large enough to walk in circles is suitable. Even better – an unobstructed natural setting such as a park. Walking meditation is valuable but more difficult in an urban setting.
Walk with your eyes looking downwards at about 45 degrees – but keep your head upright. Allow your gaze to move smoothly over the ground, rather than jumping from one point to the next. This is much easier if you allow your eyes to relax and defocus, so that your vision is slightly blurred.
Be aware of each part of your foot as it presses the ground in succession. Be aware of sensations: of your trousers brushing your legs, of the rhythmic contractions of leg muscles, of the slight brush of air against your skin.
This is easier if you walk at about half the normal speed.
When you find that you are distracted by thinking – return to find the presence of awareness in sensations.
Pay no particular attention to the objects around you – but be aware of your body moving through space. As a variation – feel that you are motionless and that space is gliding past you.
Try this for fifteen minutes every time you meditate this week. That is enough to get the flavour. With experience, you can engage in walking meditation for periods of seconds to hours – and any time you need to walk.
Meditation In Everyday Life
The method of informal meditation in everyday life is simply to be with your action – rather than distracted by thoughts and feelings about something else. This does not mean avoiding thinking. It means using thought when it is actually useful – and allowing useless thoughts to drop away. It means remaining aware that you are thinking – as you think.
It is easiest at first to let unnecessary thoughts go by returning to bodily awareness. This is possible in any situation. Be aware of breath. Be aware of sensations. Recall that you have a body – which seems to disappear when staring for hours at a screen, for example. Scan your body from foot to head—are you contracting any muscles unnecessarily? Needless muscular tension and needless mental tension reinforce each other. Let both go.
During the day, it is often possible to enter the momentary spaces between activities, in which we can stop – to let go and let be. This momentary practice—at bus stops, walking to a shop, or lying in the bath—infuses our experience with openness.
Allow the world to remind you to return to awareness. Open to your senses. Whenever you see a vivid colour or hear a distinctive sound – allow its presence. Experience and enjoy food – rather than chewing mechanically and thinking about work. Enjoy washing dishes, a chore many dislike – but which becomes pleasurable in the state of flow. When exercising, be with your body and breath. Wearing an iPod when running—or watching television at the gym—is counter-productive.
Observe the pointless doing that arises from nervous compulsion – the fear of emptiness. Take time to just be in stillness instead. Allow effective action to arise spontaneously from that space.
Obstacles & Antidotes: Vajra Posture
This strenuous exercise can have fatal consequences. Please do not attempt it if you have any doubt about your physical fitness – and certainly not if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, or are pregnant or menstruating.
Squat down on tip-toe. The balls of your feet should be touching. Your heels should be touching. Balance yourself by touching the ground in front of you with your fingertips.
Place your hands palms-down on your knees. Straighten your arms to push your knees downward a little. Spread your knees apart and straighten your back.
When you feel balanced – raise your hands above your head. Place the palms of your hands firmly together about an inch above your head. Your fingers should point directly upward.
Simultaneously attempt to push your hands up, and your elbows back – without separating your hands, or allowing your hands to rise further above your head. These two movements should be matched in effort so that they counteract each other – i.e. your hands and arms do not move. Keep your hands pointing straight upward. Increase the effort until your arms begin to judder.
Now raise yourself until your legs form the same angle as your arms. Remain in that position until you collapse and fall back flat on the floor – with your arms at your sides. Remain in that posture until breathing and heart rate have returned to normal—not more than four minutes, or you may lose the resulting sense of alertness and freshness.
Throughout this exercise – just let go and let be. When you sit up again – continue with meditation. Repeat this practice as many times as feels comfortable.
This exercise is called the ‘vajra’ or ‘thunderbolt’ posture. Its principle is to cause total exhaustion extremely quickly. When totally exhausted – it is difficult to think. Vajra posture helps find the condition of no-thought. Because exhaustion is reached extremely quickly – recovery is also rapid. Vajra posture leaves you feeling energised, clear, and refreshed. Therefore it is valuable as an antidote both to racing thoughts and lethargy.
The book Roaring Silence explains vajra posture in considerably more detail – discussing both its esoteric aspects and practical antidotes to difficulties with it.
Recommended Resources
Meditative traditions include many physical exercises that complement sitting meditation. Aro teaches sKu-mNyé, a series of 111 exercises that range from easy—for anyone—to extremely strenuous. sKu-mNyé brings about nyams (non-ordinary meditation experiences) in which the presence of awareness is discovered in highly peculiar physical sensations.
The Aro meditation resources page provides a range of learning methods.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 14
About This Course
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Greetings. This week’s post concerns the meditation method called lhatong. Because it is subtle, we will approach it via a more common experience—flow—to which lhatong bears a resemblance.
Flow
‘Flow’ is a state familiar to many musicians and athletes. It is sometimes called ‘being in the zone’. Flow is experienced by everyone – but may not be noticed. Typically it occurs in an activity that is difficult – but which you have practiced so extensively that you have become proficient.
Flow involves:
• a heightened and narrowed state of attention, so that you are aware of nothing outside the action;
• an absence of self-consciousness (‘losing your self in the music’);
• a sense of the merging of action and awareness, with the loss of distinction between the actor and the action;
• the feeling that the action is effortless, even when objectively it involves great exertion;
• absence of thought combined with presence of awareness;
• confidence, or absence of worry about losing control; and
• transformed perception of time, so that a moment may seem to last minutes, or hours pass like minutes.
Scientific studies have demonstrated that flow can result in dramatically improved practical performance. It is also enormously enjoyable – and people are happy roughly in proportion to the amount of flow they experience.
For most people—unfortunately—flow is transitory, infrequent, and unpredictable.
Just as non-thought cannot by produced by force – you cannot force flow. Non-thought is produced by patiently repeated, gentle non-doing. Flow is produced by patiently repeated, vigorous doing. You may discover flow when playing guitar, skiing, making love, or even playing a video game.
The good news is that shi-nè increases the frequency with which you experience flow – and makes it easier to remain in flow longer. This is because thinking about what you are doing immediately ends the flow experience. As long as you allow your fingers to play guitar by themselves, the music flows. The moment you think ‘wow, this is great’ or ‘the next bit is complicated’ – it falls apart. In fact, flow occurs when we allow action rather than acting deliberately. Action in flow is neither voluntary nor involuntary: it is choiceless but mindful.
Lhatong
Lhatong (pronounced lah-tong) is a state similar to flow, but found in meditation.
They differ in that:
• lhatong involves panoramic awareness of the physical and mental environment – rather than the narrowed focus of flow;
• you practice lhatong while sitting still – so there is no physical activity;
• lhatong allows thought where flow allows action.
They are similar in that both involve:
• absence of self-consciousness, or a merging of identity with the unfolding events;
• absence of deliberate action;
• effortlessness, confidence, and enjoyment.
Lhatong differs from ordinary thinking in that thought spontaneously appears in empty space. Ordinarily thoughts appear in ‘the mind’ of a thinker who produces them. In the lhatong experience – there appears to be no thinker. There is no one to interfere with thoughts – and no one to be distracted by them. They simply flow of their own accord.
Lhatong may occur unpredictably during shi-nè. It is also possible to encourage lhatong using a specific technique.
The Technique
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that most techniques other than shi-nè are applicable only in certain situations.
The technique for lhatong strictly applies only when your mind has settled sufficiently in formless shi-nè that no thoughts have appeared for several full minutes. Typically this occurs only after you have been practicing for at least an hour a day for several months – often several years. However, you can experiment with this technique any time your meditation is calm and relaxed, thoughts are slow and faint, and you are aware of gaps between them.
The technique is to alter your posture – in order to open yourself to the world. The world then provokes thoughts – which you allow to flow.
In the fully-opened lhatong posture:
• Your eyes are completely open and you gaze straight ahead.
• You raise your chin slightly to allow the raised gaze.
• You place your hands palms-down on your thighs, rather than palms-up in your lap (refer to week 8).
The more open your posture – the more thoughts are likely to permit distraction. So experiment with opening your eyes gradually – then raising your gaze – then your chin – and then repositioning your hands.
Do not allow your gaze to wander. The doing of eye movements breaks lhatong.
Obstacles & Antidotes: Nyams
A ‘nyam’ is any unusual experience that occurs in meditation. The states of non-thought, and of thoughts flowing spontaneously in empty space, are nyams. Other nyams include non-ordinary perception—what might be described as ‘hallucinations’ in other contexts—and various ‘altered states’. Nyams can be ecstatic, weird, or dreadful.
Nyams can be an obstacle if you react to their intensity with avidity, repulsion, or disregard. Grasping at blissful nyams risks turning you into a ‘seeker after nyams’ rather than a meditator. Nyams are not the goal of meditation – and like non-thought and flow they vanish if you pursue them. Fleeing, disrupting, or screening out confusing or frightening nyams shuts you off from the next stage of your natural spiritual development.
The antidote—as in all else—is to allow nyams to be as they are. Do not attempt to either produce or impede them. Experience them fully—enjoy them fleetingly and lightly when you can—and let them pass.
Nyams usually occur only when you have been meditating intensively for months. They are a sign of progress on the path – but they are not progress in themselves.
Nyams can be an obstacle if you take pride in them. Especially dangerous is mistaking them for ‘enlightenment’ or proof of great spiritual accomplishment. The antidote is the knowledge that nyams occur eventually for all persistent meditators. The types and frequency vary from person to person – but there is no significance to this.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
Practice shi-nè according to whichever technique seems appropriate for your mind-state.
If you find yourself undistracted and can maintain formless shi-nè – apply the lhatong technique.
If you find yourself distracted – sing the sound ‘Ah’—as follows.
Open your eyes fully. Fill your lungs by breathing first into your belly and then continuing to fill your chest. Sing ‘Ah’ at a comfortable deep pitch. Allow the sound to continue to the end of your breath – to attenuate gradually – and to disappear into silence. Repeat the sound with each out-breath. Continue until you no longer feel distracted – or for up to five minutes. Then resume shi-nè.
Allow your sense of being to be flooded by sound. Find the presence of your awareness in the experience of sound. Allow the distinction between yourself and sound to collapse.
Singing ‘Ah’ may allow the flow or lhatong experience. If you review the characteristics of flow – you may be able to see why.
Singing ‘Ah’ relaxes vocal energy. The resonance permeates being and dispels tensions created in attempts to establish concrete definitions of what you are.
Breathing first into your belly is a way of taking a full breath. Many of us habitually breath only into our chests because we habitually contract our stomach muscles unnecessarily. It may feel odd at first – but relaxing the belly to breathe fully has many benefits in life as well as in meditation.
The alternating conditions of sound and silence are analogous to the alternation of thought and non-thought – lhatong and shi-nè – form and emptiness. Listen to the stillness after the sound vanishes.
‘Ah’ is the sound of the Tibetan letter A – which has special significance in the Aro tradition. ‘A-ro’ means ‘the taste of the letter A’ in Tibetan. This week’s meditation technique may allow you to discover that taste.
Recommended Resources
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Aro Gar, P.O. Box 3066, Alameda, CA 94501, United States
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Greetings. This week’s post concerns the meditation method called lhatong. Because it is subtle, we will approach it via a more common experience—flow—to which lhatong bears a resemblance.
Flow
‘Flow’ is a state familiar to many musicians and athletes. It is sometimes called ‘being in the zone’. Flow is experienced by everyone – but may not be noticed. Typically it occurs in an activity that is difficult – but which you have practiced so extensively that you have become proficient.
Flow involves:
• a heightened and narrowed state of attention, so that you are aware of nothing outside the action;
• an absence of self-consciousness (‘losing your self in the music’);
• a sense of the merging of action and awareness, with the loss of distinction between the actor and the action;
• the feeling that the action is effortless, even when objectively it involves great exertion;
• absence of thought combined with presence of awareness;
• confidence, or absence of worry about losing control; and
• transformed perception of time, so that a moment may seem to last minutes, or hours pass like minutes.
Scientific studies have demonstrated that flow can result in dramatically improved practical performance. It is also enormously enjoyable – and people are happy roughly in proportion to the amount of flow they experience.
For most people—unfortunately—flow is transitory, infrequent, and unpredictable.
Just as non-thought cannot by produced by force – you cannot force flow. Non-thought is produced by patiently repeated, gentle non-doing. Flow is produced by patiently repeated, vigorous doing. You may discover flow when playing guitar, skiing, making love, or even playing a video game.
The good news is that shi-nè increases the frequency with which you experience flow – and makes it easier to remain in flow longer. This is because thinking about what you are doing immediately ends the flow experience. As long as you allow your fingers to play guitar by themselves, the music flows. The moment you think ‘wow, this is great’ or ‘the next bit is complicated’ – it falls apart. In fact, flow occurs when we allow action rather than acting deliberately. Action in flow is neither voluntary nor involuntary: it is choiceless but mindful.
Lhatong
Lhatong (pronounced lah-tong) is a state similar to flow, but found in meditation.
They differ in that:
• lhatong involves panoramic awareness of the physical and mental environment – rather than the narrowed focus of flow;
• you practice lhatong while sitting still – so there is no physical activity;
• lhatong allows thought where flow allows action.
They are similar in that both involve:
• absence of self-consciousness, or a merging of identity with the unfolding events;
• absence of deliberate action;
• effortlessness, confidence, and enjoyment.
Lhatong differs from ordinary thinking in that thought spontaneously appears in empty space. Ordinarily thoughts appear in ‘the mind’ of a thinker who produces them. In the lhatong experience – there appears to be no thinker. There is no one to interfere with thoughts – and no one to be distracted by them. They simply flow of their own accord.
Lhatong may occur unpredictably during shi-nè. It is also possible to encourage lhatong using a specific technique.
The Technique
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that most techniques other than shi-nè are applicable only in certain situations.
The technique for lhatong strictly applies only when your mind has settled sufficiently in formless shi-nè that no thoughts have appeared for several full minutes. Typically this occurs only after you have been practicing for at least an hour a day for several months – often several years. However, you can experiment with this technique any time your meditation is calm and relaxed, thoughts are slow and faint, and you are aware of gaps between them.
The technique is to alter your posture – in order to open yourself to the world. The world then provokes thoughts – which you allow to flow.
In the fully-opened lhatong posture:
• Your eyes are completely open and you gaze straight ahead.
• You raise your chin slightly to allow the raised gaze.
• You place your hands palms-down on your thighs, rather than palms-up in your lap (refer to week 8).
The more open your posture – the more thoughts are likely to permit distraction. So experiment with opening your eyes gradually – then raising your gaze – then your chin – and then repositioning your hands.
Do not allow your gaze to wander. The doing of eye movements breaks lhatong.
Obstacles & Antidotes: Nyams
A ‘nyam’ is any unusual experience that occurs in meditation. The states of non-thought, and of thoughts flowing spontaneously in empty space, are nyams. Other nyams include non-ordinary perception—what might be described as ‘hallucinations’ in other contexts—and various ‘altered states’. Nyams can be ecstatic, weird, or dreadful.
Nyams can be an obstacle if you react to their intensity with avidity, repulsion, or disregard. Grasping at blissful nyams risks turning you into a ‘seeker after nyams’ rather than a meditator. Nyams are not the goal of meditation – and like non-thought and flow they vanish if you pursue them. Fleeing, disrupting, or screening out confusing or frightening nyams shuts you off from the next stage of your natural spiritual development.
The antidote—as in all else—is to allow nyams to be as they are. Do not attempt to either produce or impede them. Experience them fully—enjoy them fleetingly and lightly when you can—and let them pass.
Nyams usually occur only when you have been meditating intensively for months. They are a sign of progress on the path – but they are not progress in themselves.
Nyams can be an obstacle if you take pride in them. Especially dangerous is mistaking them for ‘enlightenment’ or proof of great spiritual accomplishment. The antidote is the knowledge that nyams occur eventually for all persistent meditators. The types and frequency vary from person to person – but there is no significance to this.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
Practice shi-nè according to whichever technique seems appropriate for your mind-state.
If you find yourself undistracted and can maintain formless shi-nè – apply the lhatong technique.
If you find yourself distracted – sing the sound ‘Ah’—as follows.
Open your eyes fully. Fill your lungs by breathing first into your belly and then continuing to fill your chest. Sing ‘Ah’ at a comfortable deep pitch. Allow the sound to continue to the end of your breath – to attenuate gradually – and to disappear into silence. Repeat the sound with each out-breath. Continue until you no longer feel distracted – or for up to five minutes. Then resume shi-nè.
Allow your sense of being to be flooded by sound. Find the presence of your awareness in the experience of sound. Allow the distinction between yourself and sound to collapse.
Singing ‘Ah’ may allow the flow or lhatong experience. If you review the characteristics of flow – you may be able to see why.
Singing ‘Ah’ relaxes vocal energy. The resonance permeates being and dispels tensions created in attempts to establish concrete definitions of what you are.
Breathing first into your belly is a way of taking a full breath. Many of us habitually breath only into our chests because we habitually contract our stomach muscles unnecessarily. It may feel odd at first – but relaxing the belly to breathe fully has many benefits in life as well as in meditation.
The alternating conditions of sound and silence are analogous to the alternation of thought and non-thought – lhatong and shi-nè – form and emptiness. Listen to the stillness after the sound vanishes.
‘Ah’ is the sound of the Tibetan letter A – which has special significance in the Aro tradition. ‘A-ro’ means ‘the taste of the letter A’ in Tibetan. This week’s meditation technique may allow you to discover that taste.
Recommended Resources
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Aro Gar, P.O. Box 3066, Alameda, CA 94501, United States
Monday, September 27, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 13
About This Course
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Desire, Appreciation, & Generosity
Ravenous neediness is indiscriminate. We try to grab and consume everything to which we feel attracted. We view the world as defective in failing to provide what we want. We cannot be satisfied. We do not appreciate simple, subtle, tranquil pleasures. We want more of everything – all of the time. We try to fill emptiness by cramming in everything we can reach. Since emptiness is infinitely vast, this will never work.
In the radical aloneness of meditation, we discover our adequacy. We begin to find complete satisfaction in the enjoyment of the colour of a rug, the sound of a door closing, or the sensation of the floor against a foot. At such times, nothing seems missing or wrong. Gradually we can extend this feeling of sufficiency throughout life.
‘Avidity, repulsion, and disregard’ are often translated ‘attraction, aversion, and indifference’. However, to feel attracted is not itself a problem. Inevitably we like some things far more than others. In meditation, we separate the energy of appreciation from the accompanying thoughts. When this occurs we do not have to act on the mental advertising slogans that command us to acquire everything they claim is desirable. Freed from compulsion to consume – we can simply enjoy sensory pleasure and beauty. We can choose intelligently whether or not we act on impulses. We can select on the basis of what benefits ourselves and others, rather than how strongly we happen to feel in the moment.
Having seen our own neediness clearly, we see it in others. Naturally, we then wish to share enjoyment with them. This is ‘active compassion’ or ‘generosity’.
Depression
Although it may seem otherwise, depression generally does not just happen – it is something we do. Depression is a way of attenuating emotions we are unwilling to face. Rage, fear, and sadness are the most common targets. We clamp down on them and squeeze the energy out of them.
Unfortunately it is not possible to suppress negative feelings without also suppressing those that are positive. When we armour our hearts against pain, we also defend them from enjoyment. Killing anger or sorrow also turns us into emotional zombies.
In the downward spiral of depression, we try to use thought to address emotional pain – but this can never work. Thinking only addresses the circumstances that brought about the pain – it does not confront the pain itself. We just find thoughts running around in circles—slower and slower—as we deplete our energy. We fuzz into a state of bewilderment and—eventually—oblivious torpor.
We attempt to avoid pain by avoiding life. To shut down the bodily sensations of emotions, we must also shut down our other senses. In depression, colours wash out – everything turns grey. Music becomes mere sound. Everything tastes like cardboard.
Perversely, we may cherish some forms of pain because they confirm our identity and provide meaning. ‘I hurt, therefore I am.’ We may seek our pain to be validated and wear it proudly as a mark of worth.
Meditating with depression is difficult. We seem to have too little energy to sit and apply the technique. Shi-nè may be counter-productive: the quiet space it reveals is superficially similar to the lobotomised quiet of depression, and we may confuse the two. The method of separating thoughts from feelings does not directly apply: depression does not feel like anything—unless you count cold grey fog as ‘something’.
Depression seems endless as we approach paralysis. To address depression you must be willing to allow change; to let go of your identity as a depressed person; and to let in a little of the pain you are holding at bay. It is helpful to recognise that depression is not intrinsically a condition of too little energy but of too much. The energy of suppressed emotions is never actually destroyed – merely distanced.
The only way out of depression is to reawaken the ability to feel. The best method is to open to the senses. Be receptive to sights, sounds, textures, fragrances, and tastes. Allow yourself to uncoil gradually in sensory enjoyment. This involves overcoming inertia and the depressive damping of sensation. Physical exercise is especially useful. It breaks the slow, weak loops of depressive thought and opens you outward – thereby replenishing energy.
The value of meditation for depression is in helping uncover what is suppressed. Meditative alertness cuts the fog. It then enables you to apply the technique of separating the painful emotions that arise from their accompanying thoughts. To do this requires courage. If you have previously used the technique to transform anger or desire, you know that the pain will abate. If not, opening to pain requires a leap of faith.
Meditation allows us to strip off layers of armour – gently. Only by facing negative emotions can we relate to them intelligently – by releasing them from the straightjacket of conceptuality.
Greater willingness to feel emotionally negative gives us greater capacity to feel positivity.
Enormous creative energy is freed when we cease to employ energy against ourselves in the suppression of natural feelings.
Sadness
Sadness may be confused with depression – but they are different. Sadness is the natural response to loss – our own or others’. Unlike depression, sadness is a distinct sensation—an ache just below the ribcage—but this does not sap your energy.
Sadness is the slowest and often quietest of emotions—making it superficially similar to depression. To relate intelligently to sadness you must take the time to open to it. Depression results from refusing to experience sadness and going about your life as though it were not there. Failure to experience sadness accurately—skipping over details—can also result in its becoming a habit or solidified pattern. Just knowing that you are sad—and resigning yourself to it—is not the same as allowing it.
To be willing to experience sadness is a radical act. It is an expression of caring for loss – either our own, or others’. Voluntary vulnerability betokens an open heart. Openness to sadness—and recognition that it is as conceptually impersonal as all emotions—opens us to the suffering of others. Naturally we desire others to be free of it. This is active compassion.
Joy
Surprisingly, we are as unwilling—or more unwilling—to experience joy as we are to experience emotional negativity. We may allow ourselves to feel joy only when external conditions are exceptionally positive. To feel joy for no reason could seem precarious – as if it could lead to irresponsibility.
Meditation often uncovers joy hidden beneath other feelings. They may emerge together. It is not usual to feel sadness and joy simultaneously – but this becomes more common with experience of meditation. You may find yourself crying and laughing at the same time.
Sourceless joy is so rarely allowed that seeing it in you, may make others uncomfortable. Do not rush to squelch it for their convenience. That will do them no favours. Your joy—on the other hand—might wake them up.
Ordinary Heroism
With sufficient practice of allowing feelings, we become fully familiar with our habitual emotional patterns. They lose their power. Our illusions about ourselves die of hunger – because we stop feeding them with the energy of our emotional involvement. Gradually we unmask. We strip off the armour of identity we girded on in fear of revealing and experiencing what we are. Freed from emotional conflicts, our motivations simplify and our communication and activity become straightforward and direct.
Allowing feelings allows them to deepen. Eventually we experience all human qualities within ourselves. Then we know what it is simply to be – without reference to the personal history we once used to define ourselves.
At this point we discover ordinary heroism. We come to live with courage, gentleness, dignity, curiosity, humour, grace, honesty, spontaneity, commitment, appreciation, and authenticity.
Recommended Resources
Our web page on the purpose of meditation expands on many of the topics of this week’s email.
Aro is a not-for-profit charity dedicated to teaching meditation and a way of life that grows out from it. The Aro Friends programme is a way to support this work with a small financial contribution.
The Friends programme is also a way to learn more about the Aro path and see if it is a good ‘fit’ for you. It incorporates a variety of resources for coming to a deeper understanding of meditation in the Aro style. It also provides opportunities to experience the Aro community—and, if you choose, to participate in it—with minimal effort and no commitment.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Desire, Appreciation, & Generosity
Ravenous neediness is indiscriminate. We try to grab and consume everything to which we feel attracted. We view the world as defective in failing to provide what we want. We cannot be satisfied. We do not appreciate simple, subtle, tranquil pleasures. We want more of everything – all of the time. We try to fill emptiness by cramming in everything we can reach. Since emptiness is infinitely vast, this will never work.
In the radical aloneness of meditation, we discover our adequacy. We begin to find complete satisfaction in the enjoyment of the colour of a rug, the sound of a door closing, or the sensation of the floor against a foot. At such times, nothing seems missing or wrong. Gradually we can extend this feeling of sufficiency throughout life.
‘Avidity, repulsion, and disregard’ are often translated ‘attraction, aversion, and indifference’. However, to feel attracted is not itself a problem. Inevitably we like some things far more than others. In meditation, we separate the energy of appreciation from the accompanying thoughts. When this occurs we do not have to act on the mental advertising slogans that command us to acquire everything they claim is desirable. Freed from compulsion to consume – we can simply enjoy sensory pleasure and beauty. We can choose intelligently whether or not we act on impulses. We can select on the basis of what benefits ourselves and others, rather than how strongly we happen to feel in the moment.
Having seen our own neediness clearly, we see it in others. Naturally, we then wish to share enjoyment with them. This is ‘active compassion’ or ‘generosity’.
Depression
Although it may seem otherwise, depression generally does not just happen – it is something we do. Depression is a way of attenuating emotions we are unwilling to face. Rage, fear, and sadness are the most common targets. We clamp down on them and squeeze the energy out of them.
Unfortunately it is not possible to suppress negative feelings without also suppressing those that are positive. When we armour our hearts against pain, we also defend them from enjoyment. Killing anger or sorrow also turns us into emotional zombies.
In the downward spiral of depression, we try to use thought to address emotional pain – but this can never work. Thinking only addresses the circumstances that brought about the pain – it does not confront the pain itself. We just find thoughts running around in circles—slower and slower—as we deplete our energy. We fuzz into a state of bewilderment and—eventually—oblivious torpor.
We attempt to avoid pain by avoiding life. To shut down the bodily sensations of emotions, we must also shut down our other senses. In depression, colours wash out – everything turns grey. Music becomes mere sound. Everything tastes like cardboard.
Perversely, we may cherish some forms of pain because they confirm our identity and provide meaning. ‘I hurt, therefore I am.’ We may seek our pain to be validated and wear it proudly as a mark of worth.
Meditating with depression is difficult. We seem to have too little energy to sit and apply the technique. Shi-nè may be counter-productive: the quiet space it reveals is superficially similar to the lobotomised quiet of depression, and we may confuse the two. The method of separating thoughts from feelings does not directly apply: depression does not feel like anything—unless you count cold grey fog as ‘something’.
Depression seems endless as we approach paralysis. To address depression you must be willing to allow change; to let go of your identity as a depressed person; and to let in a little of the pain you are holding at bay. It is helpful to recognise that depression is not intrinsically a condition of too little energy but of too much. The energy of suppressed emotions is never actually destroyed – merely distanced.
The only way out of depression is to reawaken the ability to feel. The best method is to open to the senses. Be receptive to sights, sounds, textures, fragrances, and tastes. Allow yourself to uncoil gradually in sensory enjoyment. This involves overcoming inertia and the depressive damping of sensation. Physical exercise is especially useful. It breaks the slow, weak loops of depressive thought and opens you outward – thereby replenishing energy.
The value of meditation for depression is in helping uncover what is suppressed. Meditative alertness cuts the fog. It then enables you to apply the technique of separating the painful emotions that arise from their accompanying thoughts. To do this requires courage. If you have previously used the technique to transform anger or desire, you know that the pain will abate. If not, opening to pain requires a leap of faith.
Meditation allows us to strip off layers of armour – gently. Only by facing negative emotions can we relate to them intelligently – by releasing them from the straightjacket of conceptuality.
Greater willingness to feel emotionally negative gives us greater capacity to feel positivity.
Enormous creative energy is freed when we cease to employ energy against ourselves in the suppression of natural feelings.
Sadness
Sadness may be confused with depression – but they are different. Sadness is the natural response to loss – our own or others’. Unlike depression, sadness is a distinct sensation—an ache just below the ribcage—but this does not sap your energy.
Sadness is the slowest and often quietest of emotions—making it superficially similar to depression. To relate intelligently to sadness you must take the time to open to it. Depression results from refusing to experience sadness and going about your life as though it were not there. Failure to experience sadness accurately—skipping over details—can also result in its becoming a habit or solidified pattern. Just knowing that you are sad—and resigning yourself to it—is not the same as allowing it.
To be willing to experience sadness is a radical act. It is an expression of caring for loss – either our own, or others’. Voluntary vulnerability betokens an open heart. Openness to sadness—and recognition that it is as conceptually impersonal as all emotions—opens us to the suffering of others. Naturally we desire others to be free of it. This is active compassion.
Joy
Surprisingly, we are as unwilling—or more unwilling—to experience joy as we are to experience emotional negativity. We may allow ourselves to feel joy only when external conditions are exceptionally positive. To feel joy for no reason could seem precarious – as if it could lead to irresponsibility.
Meditation often uncovers joy hidden beneath other feelings. They may emerge together. It is not usual to feel sadness and joy simultaneously – but this becomes more common with experience of meditation. You may find yourself crying and laughing at the same time.
Sourceless joy is so rarely allowed that seeing it in you, may make others uncomfortable. Do not rush to squelch it for their convenience. That will do them no favours. Your joy—on the other hand—might wake them up.
Ordinary Heroism
With sufficient practice of allowing feelings, we become fully familiar with our habitual emotional patterns. They lose their power. Our illusions about ourselves die of hunger – because we stop feeding them with the energy of our emotional involvement. Gradually we unmask. We strip off the armour of identity we girded on in fear of revealing and experiencing what we are. Freed from emotional conflicts, our motivations simplify and our communication and activity become straightforward and direct.
Allowing feelings allows them to deepen. Eventually we experience all human qualities within ourselves. Then we know what it is simply to be – without reference to the personal history we once used to define ourselves.
At this point we discover ordinary heroism. We come to live with courage, gentleness, dignity, curiosity, humour, grace, honesty, spontaneity, commitment, appreciation, and authenticity.
Recommended Resources
Our web page on the purpose of meditation expands on many of the topics of this week’s email.
Aro is a not-for-profit charity dedicated to teaching meditation and a way of life that grows out from it. The Aro Friends programme is a way to support this work with a small financial contribution.
The Friends programme is also a way to learn more about the Aro path and see if it is a good ‘fit’ for you. It incorporates a variety of resources for coming to a deeper understanding of meditation in the Aro style. It also provides opportunities to experience the Aro community—and, if you choose, to participate in it—with minimal effort and no commitment.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 12
About This Course
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Greetings
How has your last week of meditation been?
You may have found that the new technique seemed to make everything worse. If so – it is because meditation has brought hidden emotions to the surface. In the short term, that might seem undesirable – but it is only when you see emotions clearly that you can live congruently. It is better to know your feelings than to be ridden by them unconsciously.
Emotions
In shi-nè we see that thoughts come and go. The same is true of emotions – although they generally persist longer.
Emotions are intolerable when they seem to persist indefinitely. When gripped by hopeless desire or depression, it seems that we will always feel that way. This illusion is reinforced by our refusal to allow emotions to be as they are. Because we express, repress, or dissipate emotions, we do not experience them passing on their own. Few emotions, in fact, are strong enough to last more than a few hours in meditation. When allowed, they eventually exhaust themselves. One reason it is valuable to practice occasionally for periods of more than an hour is to watch emotions arise, strut about furiously, and then subside into nothingness.
It is because diverse emotions come and go, that they conflict. It is because they come and go, that acting upon transient emotions causes trouble. If we could depend on loving or hating something indefinitely – it might be different. Drastic actions to acquire or eradicate might function – but we regret hurtful statements when anger has passed. We often find that our lust for a new pair of boots fades some time after purchase.
Posture
During a long meditation session – particularly when you are tired and achy – it can be useful to perform a quick mental scan of your body to check and freshen your sitting position. Traditionally meditators memorise a seven-point checklist that goes something like this:
1. My legs are relaxed and comfortable.
2. My spine is upright and elongated. My chest is open, my belly soft, and my back strong.
3. My shoulders are released backward—not hunched forward—and are even with each other.
4. My upper arms fall vertically from my shoulders. My hands are relaxed and comfortable.
5. My head floats upward from my spine. My chin is slightly tucked toward my chest, so that the back of my neck relaxes and straightens out.
6. My tongue is relaxed and lightly touches my hard pallet, with my lips and teeth slightly open.
7. My eyes are slightly opened and my gaze is angled diagonally downward.
Each point is the antidote to a physical difficulty. However, what is most important to remember is the overall principle: any still, comfortable, relaxed, and alert posture is ideal for meditation.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
This week and next, continue the method of last week. Practice shi-nè; be aware of the charge on thoughts; transfer attention to bodily sensations when you find emotions.
Regard emotions impersonally. ‘I am angry’ equates ‘me’ with ‘anger’, and I become my emotion. Anger has me – rather than my having it. ‘Anger is happening now’ sounds odd – but is more accurate. When we see that emotions rise and fall in the empty space of awareness they no longer rule us. Attend to this space in which emotions occur. It becomes evident that we contain—and are larger than—our emotions.
Anger
With all emotions, the method is similar – but more can be said of each emotion in particular.
Thoughts of self-justification and blame usually accompany anger. We actively persuade ourselves that we are entirely in the right – and the person with whom we are angry, is entirely wrong. That intensifies the emotion. Letting go of those thoughts in meditation allows anger to begin to subside. It may also reveal that neither party was entirely right or wrong.
Blaming depends on seeing the parties as solid, clear-cut ‘selves’ with well-defined, consistent intentions. Meditation reveals that our own thoughts, emotions, motivations, and plans change constantly and are—in a sense—impersonal rather than created by ourselves. The same is true for everyone else – including those who harm us. They are driven by the insane ape of incoherent emotion and the insistent advertising slogans of thought.
Recognizing this – there is no longer any basis for hatred. Hatred is anger prompting the desire to cause harm. There is no point harming a horse ridden by an insane ape – or even in harming the ape. Recognizing this – it gradually becomes possible to forgive everyone for everything.
Horses ridden by insane apes remain dangerous. Forgiveness does not imply that we allow ourselves to be trampled. Forgiving harm done does not imply that it was justifiable – only that we have the skill to avoid churning up our own emotions by endlessly reminding ourselves of the injustice.
When hatred is dissolved, we can employ anger to concentrate—to see situations clearly—and to act to prevent harm to ourselves, rather than to cause harm to the other.
Anger often masks fear. Sometimes we deliberately make ourselves angry to avoid feeling the underlying fear. When angry—in meditation and at other times—be alert for signs of fear. If it is the cause of anger, it is best to observe the root fear directly.
Obstacles & Antidotes
Frustration, irritation, and impatience are weak forms of the same energy as anger.
These are an obstacle when you think that meditation should be going faster than it is. When nothing happens and you feel it is past time for results, annoyance at meditation or at yourself might tempt you to stop meditating.
Re-configure impatience as determination. Rather than pushing away the source of irritation – fierce energy can overcome obstacles. When meditation has become routine, frustration may help you see yourself practising on autopilot. Then you can resolve to sharpen your technique.
Antidotes become obstacles when over-employed. The complementary danger is becoming obsessed with precision and with returning ever more quickly from distraction. Gentleness in meditation consists in not trying to measure up to an arbitrary standard of perfect technique. The fear that ‘I am not good enough’ underlies this obstacle. Ask yourself: Where did this standard come from? What is the root of that fear?
Fear
After you break through the barrier of superficial thoughts, fear may replace boredom as a primary obstacle. Like boredom, fear is an officious signpost: ‘Do not look here – on pain of discovering who you are!’ The antidote is the same: stare into the fear – find that this ‘obstacle’ is an open door – and walk through it.
Fear in meditation may be the ‘ordinary’ fear of unfortunate future events; fear of emptiness; or fear of emotions.
Ordinary fear prompts obsessive, unhelpful visualisation of what may go wrong. The antidote is to remind yourself that it is not happening now. Return to the present. That includes the sick feeling – but not the imagined bad situation.
When ordinary fear is examined – it often transpires that we are more afraid of how we will feel if the bad event occurs, than of the event itself. It is useful to see this: correctly identifying the object of fear is half way to overcoming it.
Fear prompts avidity, repulsion, and disregard. Fear of loss leads to clinging and hoarding. Fear of being harmed leads to pre-emptive aggression. Fear of emptiness prompts us to construct our own prison cells. We build walls to enclose a tiny safe territory and keep ourselves from straying into the vast unknown. Fear of emotions leads to hiding them from ourselves and others.
We may falsely suppose that we have—within ourselves—a bottomless well of fear and rage; insecurity and neediness; loneliness and compulsion; anxiety and suspicion; and, confusion and depression. We fear that if we open the lid, these will boil out and overwhelm us. We see this problem as irresolvable – so that it is best to suppress, freeze, or ignore negative feelings. Unfortunately, that cuts off our wellspring of energy and leaves us half-alive.
Let disowned emotions gradually rise to the surface in meditation. Be gentle: do not dive down looking for them – nor drag them up—but allow them to emerge in their own time. This takes months or years – but in time you will find the bottom.
Meditation provides a space to approach difficult emotions gradually and learn that they cannot control you. You can, after all, stop at any time. As buried thoughts and feelings surface, regard them impersonally, without pushing or pulling at them. Be curious about each emotion: what would it be like to experience it fully? If you allow intense emotional sensations to ‘do their worst’ – you will find that they cannot harm you. Discovering this counteracts fear. Eventually nothing remains lurking in the depths which can dismay you.
Recommended Resources
This course has room for only a basic introduction to the meditative approach to emotions. The book Spectrum of Ecstasy, by Aro Lamas, explores the topic in depth. It shows how meditation can transform neurotic, conflicted emotions into joyously unproblematic equivalents.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Greetings
How has your last week of meditation been?
You may have found that the new technique seemed to make everything worse. If so – it is because meditation has brought hidden emotions to the surface. In the short term, that might seem undesirable – but it is only when you see emotions clearly that you can live congruently. It is better to know your feelings than to be ridden by them unconsciously.
Emotions
In shi-nè we see that thoughts come and go. The same is true of emotions – although they generally persist longer.
Emotions are intolerable when they seem to persist indefinitely. When gripped by hopeless desire or depression, it seems that we will always feel that way. This illusion is reinforced by our refusal to allow emotions to be as they are. Because we express, repress, or dissipate emotions, we do not experience them passing on their own. Few emotions, in fact, are strong enough to last more than a few hours in meditation. When allowed, they eventually exhaust themselves. One reason it is valuable to practice occasionally for periods of more than an hour is to watch emotions arise, strut about furiously, and then subside into nothingness.
It is because diverse emotions come and go, that they conflict. It is because they come and go, that acting upon transient emotions causes trouble. If we could depend on loving or hating something indefinitely – it might be different. Drastic actions to acquire or eradicate might function – but we regret hurtful statements when anger has passed. We often find that our lust for a new pair of boots fades some time after purchase.
Posture
During a long meditation session – particularly when you are tired and achy – it can be useful to perform a quick mental scan of your body to check and freshen your sitting position. Traditionally meditators memorise a seven-point checklist that goes something like this:
1. My legs are relaxed and comfortable.
2. My spine is upright and elongated. My chest is open, my belly soft, and my back strong.
3. My shoulders are released backward—not hunched forward—and are even with each other.
4. My upper arms fall vertically from my shoulders. My hands are relaxed and comfortable.
5. My head floats upward from my spine. My chin is slightly tucked toward my chest, so that the back of my neck relaxes and straightens out.
6. My tongue is relaxed and lightly touches my hard pallet, with my lips and teeth slightly open.
7. My eyes are slightly opened and my gaze is angled diagonally downward.
Each point is the antidote to a physical difficulty. However, what is most important to remember is the overall principle: any still, comfortable, relaxed, and alert posture is ideal for meditation.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
This week and next, continue the method of last week. Practice shi-nè; be aware of the charge on thoughts; transfer attention to bodily sensations when you find emotions.
Regard emotions impersonally. ‘I am angry’ equates ‘me’ with ‘anger’, and I become my emotion. Anger has me – rather than my having it. ‘Anger is happening now’ sounds odd – but is more accurate. When we see that emotions rise and fall in the empty space of awareness they no longer rule us. Attend to this space in which emotions occur. It becomes evident that we contain—and are larger than—our emotions.
Anger
With all emotions, the method is similar – but more can be said of each emotion in particular.
Thoughts of self-justification and blame usually accompany anger. We actively persuade ourselves that we are entirely in the right – and the person with whom we are angry, is entirely wrong. That intensifies the emotion. Letting go of those thoughts in meditation allows anger to begin to subside. It may also reveal that neither party was entirely right or wrong.
Blaming depends on seeing the parties as solid, clear-cut ‘selves’ with well-defined, consistent intentions. Meditation reveals that our own thoughts, emotions, motivations, and plans change constantly and are—in a sense—impersonal rather than created by ourselves. The same is true for everyone else – including those who harm us. They are driven by the insane ape of incoherent emotion and the insistent advertising slogans of thought.
Recognizing this – there is no longer any basis for hatred. Hatred is anger prompting the desire to cause harm. There is no point harming a horse ridden by an insane ape – or even in harming the ape. Recognizing this – it gradually becomes possible to forgive everyone for everything.
Horses ridden by insane apes remain dangerous. Forgiveness does not imply that we allow ourselves to be trampled. Forgiving harm done does not imply that it was justifiable – only that we have the skill to avoid churning up our own emotions by endlessly reminding ourselves of the injustice.
When hatred is dissolved, we can employ anger to concentrate—to see situations clearly—and to act to prevent harm to ourselves, rather than to cause harm to the other.
Anger often masks fear. Sometimes we deliberately make ourselves angry to avoid feeling the underlying fear. When angry—in meditation and at other times—be alert for signs of fear. If it is the cause of anger, it is best to observe the root fear directly.
Obstacles & Antidotes
Frustration, irritation, and impatience are weak forms of the same energy as anger.
These are an obstacle when you think that meditation should be going faster than it is. When nothing happens and you feel it is past time for results, annoyance at meditation or at yourself might tempt you to stop meditating.
Re-configure impatience as determination. Rather than pushing away the source of irritation – fierce energy can overcome obstacles. When meditation has become routine, frustration may help you see yourself practising on autopilot. Then you can resolve to sharpen your technique.
Antidotes become obstacles when over-employed. The complementary danger is becoming obsessed with precision and with returning ever more quickly from distraction. Gentleness in meditation consists in not trying to measure up to an arbitrary standard of perfect technique. The fear that ‘I am not good enough’ underlies this obstacle. Ask yourself: Where did this standard come from? What is the root of that fear?
Fear
After you break through the barrier of superficial thoughts, fear may replace boredom as a primary obstacle. Like boredom, fear is an officious signpost: ‘Do not look here – on pain of discovering who you are!’ The antidote is the same: stare into the fear – find that this ‘obstacle’ is an open door – and walk through it.
Fear in meditation may be the ‘ordinary’ fear of unfortunate future events; fear of emptiness; or fear of emotions.
Ordinary fear prompts obsessive, unhelpful visualisation of what may go wrong. The antidote is to remind yourself that it is not happening now. Return to the present. That includes the sick feeling – but not the imagined bad situation.
When ordinary fear is examined – it often transpires that we are more afraid of how we will feel if the bad event occurs, than of the event itself. It is useful to see this: correctly identifying the object of fear is half way to overcoming it.
Fear prompts avidity, repulsion, and disregard. Fear of loss leads to clinging and hoarding. Fear of being harmed leads to pre-emptive aggression. Fear of emptiness prompts us to construct our own prison cells. We build walls to enclose a tiny safe territory and keep ourselves from straying into the vast unknown. Fear of emotions leads to hiding them from ourselves and others.
We may falsely suppose that we have—within ourselves—a bottomless well of fear and rage; insecurity and neediness; loneliness and compulsion; anxiety and suspicion; and, confusion and depression. We fear that if we open the lid, these will boil out and overwhelm us. We see this problem as irresolvable – so that it is best to suppress, freeze, or ignore negative feelings. Unfortunately, that cuts off our wellspring of energy and leaves us half-alive.
Let disowned emotions gradually rise to the surface in meditation. Be gentle: do not dive down looking for them – nor drag them up—but allow them to emerge in their own time. This takes months or years – but in time you will find the bottom.
Meditation provides a space to approach difficult emotions gradually and learn that they cannot control you. You can, after all, stop at any time. As buried thoughts and feelings surface, regard them impersonally, without pushing or pulling at them. Be curious about each emotion: what would it be like to experience it fully? If you allow intense emotional sensations to ‘do their worst’ – you will find that they cannot harm you. Discovering this counteracts fear. Eventually nothing remains lurking in the depths which can dismay you.
Recommended Resources
This course has room for only a basic introduction to the meditative approach to emotions. The book Spectrum of Ecstasy, by Aro Lamas, explores the topic in depth. It shows how meditation can transform neurotic, conflicted emotions into joyously unproblematic equivalents.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 11
About This Course
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Greetings
This week, and the next two, we will explore emotions in meditation.
Meditation can be relaxing – but it also reveals what is – which includes the full range of emotions. That is a sign of progress. You have penetrated superficial thoughts.
Some traditions see emotions as obstacles – and therefore provide antidotes. Others—including Aro—welcome the opportunity to embrace emotions within meditation. Strong emotions make meditation more difficult – but also more powerful. They naturally have a strong concentrating effect, so working with them accelerates progress.
Learning a better way to relate to emotions in meditation can transform our experience of everyday life. That ‘better way’ is to view emotions in the context of shi-nè.
This Week’s Meditation Method
Practice shi-nè according to whichever technique is suitable to your mind-state: counting, awareness of breath, or formlessly. When a thought arises—rather than immediately dropping it—observe for a moment the emotional texture or ‘charge’ that accompanies it. When you return to presence, maintain awareness of any continuing bodily sensations that accompanied the emotion. For example, if there was an undertone of anger in the thought, you may experience heat and pressure in the chest or forehead. Fear may be accompanied by nausea.
Shi-nè is taught as the first meditation method in Aro because others techniques depend on viewing situations from the standpoint of emptiness – the open space that shi-nè reveals. Shi-nè is also taught first because it is possible to apply it in some form in almost any situation. Other meditation methods we teach only apply under certain circumstances.
This week’s method is useful only when you have emotions strong enough to feel in the body as physical sensations. However, attempting it can also uncover buried feelings. For that reason, please avoid this method if seriously depressed, or suffering from other mental dysfunction.
Emotions
Typically, we express, repress, or dissipate strong emotions. These are the strategies of avidity, repulsion, and disregard. We may express emotions by acting on them – but that often results in trouble for ourselves or others. We may repress them by denying or burying them. Unfortunately, keeping emotions buried is unpleasant and tiring – and hidden emotions may grow monstrous in the dark. They can burst out at awkward times. We may dissipate emotions by busying ourselves with distracting activities into which we can channel the unwanted energy. Careers, hobbies, entertainments, and ‘good works’ may all be dissipations – although of course they have other functions. Dissipation is the least harmful of the three options – but it wastes our lives by diverting us from the authentic actions we would take if we were willing to face our emotions. Often inauthentic activity wastes other people’s time as well.
There is a fourth possibility: to experience our emotions fully without acting on them. Although difficult at first, this alternative spares ourselves and others the consequences of desperate, harmful actions, the psychological damage of emotional repression, and the waste and interference of dissipation.
This week’s meditation method trains us to simply be with emotions – not expressing, repressing, or dissipating them. We develop this capacity during meditation, when we do not have to act and are not constantly provoked by others’ actions. With experience, we can apply the method in difficult life situations.
Sitting with emotions can be painful. It must be approached with strength and gentleness. We do not allow our emotions to run us, or to run us off the meditation cushion – but we do not become hostile either. The method is to regard emotions with respectful interest. We neither slam the door in their face, nor invite them in for tea and a cosy chat. Whether we like or dislike them, we allow them to be as they are—at least for the duration of the meditation session.
By allowing emotions—without commentary—we see them clearly. Emotions consist of thoughts plus bodily energy. This meditation method separates the two. We let the thoughts go – but we remain aware of the physical sensation. In the gaps between thoughts then, the feeling begins—of itself—to assume its natural form.
Posture
The magician position is the same as the siddha position, except that the foot of the outer leg is drawn up onto the inner leg’s calf. This improves the balance and stability of the posture. It is more stable—and feels more symmetric—but requires greater flexibility. Once you are comfortable with the siddha position, try the magician position occasionally and gently. Gradually it will become easy.
The lotus position is the ‘iconic’ symbol for meditation. However, is not the only ‘proper’ position, or even the best. For certain meditation methods it is essential. For shi-nè, all the positions I have described are equal. The lotus position does have one practical advantage. You can sit comfortably in the position on a flat surface—if you can be comfortable in it at all—which means that you do not need a support. You can therefore meditate anywhere at any time.
The lotus position requires great flexibility in the hips. If you are not sufficiently flexible, it can lead to serious injury. Forcing yourself into the position may be only slightly painful – but maintaining it against resistance for a long meditation session leads to knee surgery. You can approach the lotus position safely using a specific series of stretching exercises. Consult a yoga teacher if you want to learn them.
Obstacles & Antidotes
Feeling tired or sleepy when meditating is common. That may be because you are, in fact, tired or sleepy – but not always. Notice how you feel ten minutes after the end of your meditation session. If you remain tired or sleepy – the feeling was genuine. Meditation has simply revealed what was there.
You may discover, however, that you feel energetic again. In that case, it may seem that meditation has been making you tired and sleepy. In reality, this damping of energy is an ‘escape clause’ that enables you to avoid unpleasant or frightening emotions that might arise in meditation. That could be a feeling or thought. It could also be the threatening state of no-thought.
If you are genuinely tired, rest. If you find you are dulling yourself as an avoidance mechanism, rouse your energy and silently confront what you have been avoiding.
Restless energy can also be avoidance. Obsessive planning or fantasies can hold off unwanted feelings – or emptiness. Stirring up one emotion may be a way to avoid feeling another. In such cases, redirect the energy into the meditation technique. Employ the energy to nourish precision and diligence. Turn your ambition to returning more often to the presence of awareness – and to remaining longer.
The Insane Ape
When emotions are separated into thought and sensation, they simplify and clarify. The sensation may remain intense, but it feels clear. What was a boiling cauldron of bile, transforms into a cool, clear, free-flowing waterfall—still volatile but no longer toxic. With practice, that energy may be positively harnessed.
Emotions become problematic when they are driven into complexity and conflict with one another through thinking. In the Tibetan tradition, it is said that to be at the mercy of conflicting emotions is like being a horse ridden by an insane ape. The ape demands you turn left, raking your flanks with its spurs – whilst also forcing you right, jerking the metal bit in your bleeding mouth.
We become our own insane riders when we judge emotions: ‘I shouldn’t want to hurt my spouse whom I love’ or ‘I shouldn’t feel miserable because I am well-off’ or ‘I ought to want to see him more often’ or ‘I am a spiritual person so I should not want so many things – so much’. In mediation, we lessen inner conflict by dropping such thoughts and returning to simple awareness. We allow chaos and confusion – but we do not add to it by trying to fix it.
Obstacles & Antidotes
Coming face-to-face with emotions is difficult—although, as with all else in meditation, it becomes easier with practice. It calls for a balance of determination and kindness toward yourself. If you turn away as soon as the going gets rough, you will make no progress. If you force yourself ahead when fear or pain seems intolerable, you will revolt and refuse to meditate. You can find your own balance point only by experimentation.
When feelings are just too strong to continue with this method – first, try returning to shi-nè. As soon as you feel the emotion – drop it and return to your breath. Allow your mind to calm in the quiet space of shi-nè.
If you cannot maintain shi-nè, try something different rather than cursing and gritting it out. I particularly recommend vigorous physical exercise, which—like shi-nè—cuts through obsessive thinking and releases excess energy in a constructive way.
If you cannot help acting on a destructive emotion, try to maintain some memory of meditative awareness – as you do so. Try to allow a gap between being provoked and your next action. In that empty space you may find clarity – and thus the possibility of choice.
Recommended Resources
This week’s meditation technique is a simplified approximation to one from the Tibetan tradition, called trèk-chod. Trèk-chod is taught in Aro in the evening class series entitled Spectrum of Being. It is also taught on weekend-long retreats: Embracing Emotions as the Path and Reality – The Vivid, Vivacious, and Volatile Vision.
Find upcoming Aro events near you.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Greetings
This week, and the next two, we will explore emotions in meditation.
Meditation can be relaxing – but it also reveals what is – which includes the full range of emotions. That is a sign of progress. You have penetrated superficial thoughts.
Some traditions see emotions as obstacles – and therefore provide antidotes. Others—including Aro—welcome the opportunity to embrace emotions within meditation. Strong emotions make meditation more difficult – but also more powerful. They naturally have a strong concentrating effect, so working with them accelerates progress.
Learning a better way to relate to emotions in meditation can transform our experience of everyday life. That ‘better way’ is to view emotions in the context of shi-nè.
This Week’s Meditation Method
Practice shi-nè according to whichever technique is suitable to your mind-state: counting, awareness of breath, or formlessly. When a thought arises—rather than immediately dropping it—observe for a moment the emotional texture or ‘charge’ that accompanies it. When you return to presence, maintain awareness of any continuing bodily sensations that accompanied the emotion. For example, if there was an undertone of anger in the thought, you may experience heat and pressure in the chest or forehead. Fear may be accompanied by nausea.
Shi-nè is taught as the first meditation method in Aro because others techniques depend on viewing situations from the standpoint of emptiness – the open space that shi-nè reveals. Shi-nè is also taught first because it is possible to apply it in some form in almost any situation. Other meditation methods we teach only apply under certain circumstances.
This week’s method is useful only when you have emotions strong enough to feel in the body as physical sensations. However, attempting it can also uncover buried feelings. For that reason, please avoid this method if seriously depressed, or suffering from other mental dysfunction.
Emotions
Typically, we express, repress, or dissipate strong emotions. These are the strategies of avidity, repulsion, and disregard. We may express emotions by acting on them – but that often results in trouble for ourselves or others. We may repress them by denying or burying them. Unfortunately, keeping emotions buried is unpleasant and tiring – and hidden emotions may grow monstrous in the dark. They can burst out at awkward times. We may dissipate emotions by busying ourselves with distracting activities into which we can channel the unwanted energy. Careers, hobbies, entertainments, and ‘good works’ may all be dissipations – although of course they have other functions. Dissipation is the least harmful of the three options – but it wastes our lives by diverting us from the authentic actions we would take if we were willing to face our emotions. Often inauthentic activity wastes other people’s time as well.
There is a fourth possibility: to experience our emotions fully without acting on them. Although difficult at first, this alternative spares ourselves and others the consequences of desperate, harmful actions, the psychological damage of emotional repression, and the waste and interference of dissipation.
This week’s meditation method trains us to simply be with emotions – not expressing, repressing, or dissipating them. We develop this capacity during meditation, when we do not have to act and are not constantly provoked by others’ actions. With experience, we can apply the method in difficult life situations.
Sitting with emotions can be painful. It must be approached with strength and gentleness. We do not allow our emotions to run us, or to run us off the meditation cushion – but we do not become hostile either. The method is to regard emotions with respectful interest. We neither slam the door in their face, nor invite them in for tea and a cosy chat. Whether we like or dislike them, we allow them to be as they are—at least for the duration of the meditation session.
By allowing emotions—without commentary—we see them clearly. Emotions consist of thoughts plus bodily energy. This meditation method separates the two. We let the thoughts go – but we remain aware of the physical sensation. In the gaps between thoughts then, the feeling begins—of itself—to assume its natural form.
Posture
The magician position is the same as the siddha position, except that the foot of the outer leg is drawn up onto the inner leg’s calf. This improves the balance and stability of the posture. It is more stable—and feels more symmetric—but requires greater flexibility. Once you are comfortable with the siddha position, try the magician position occasionally and gently. Gradually it will become easy.
The lotus position is the ‘iconic’ symbol for meditation. However, is not the only ‘proper’ position, or even the best. For certain meditation methods it is essential. For shi-nè, all the positions I have described are equal. The lotus position does have one practical advantage. You can sit comfortably in the position on a flat surface—if you can be comfortable in it at all—which means that you do not need a support. You can therefore meditate anywhere at any time.
The lotus position requires great flexibility in the hips. If you are not sufficiently flexible, it can lead to serious injury. Forcing yourself into the position may be only slightly painful – but maintaining it against resistance for a long meditation session leads to knee surgery. You can approach the lotus position safely using a specific series of stretching exercises. Consult a yoga teacher if you want to learn them.
Obstacles & Antidotes
Feeling tired or sleepy when meditating is common. That may be because you are, in fact, tired or sleepy – but not always. Notice how you feel ten minutes after the end of your meditation session. If you remain tired or sleepy – the feeling was genuine. Meditation has simply revealed what was there.
You may discover, however, that you feel energetic again. In that case, it may seem that meditation has been making you tired and sleepy. In reality, this damping of energy is an ‘escape clause’ that enables you to avoid unpleasant or frightening emotions that might arise in meditation. That could be a feeling or thought. It could also be the threatening state of no-thought.
If you are genuinely tired, rest. If you find you are dulling yourself as an avoidance mechanism, rouse your energy and silently confront what you have been avoiding.
Restless energy can also be avoidance. Obsessive planning or fantasies can hold off unwanted feelings – or emptiness. Stirring up one emotion may be a way to avoid feeling another. In such cases, redirect the energy into the meditation technique. Employ the energy to nourish precision and diligence. Turn your ambition to returning more often to the presence of awareness – and to remaining longer.
The Insane Ape
When emotions are separated into thought and sensation, they simplify and clarify. The sensation may remain intense, but it feels clear. What was a boiling cauldron of bile, transforms into a cool, clear, free-flowing waterfall—still volatile but no longer toxic. With practice, that energy may be positively harnessed.
Emotions become problematic when they are driven into complexity and conflict with one another through thinking. In the Tibetan tradition, it is said that to be at the mercy of conflicting emotions is like being a horse ridden by an insane ape. The ape demands you turn left, raking your flanks with its spurs – whilst also forcing you right, jerking the metal bit in your bleeding mouth.
We become our own insane riders when we judge emotions: ‘I shouldn’t want to hurt my spouse whom I love’ or ‘I shouldn’t feel miserable because I am well-off’ or ‘I ought to want to see him more often’ or ‘I am a spiritual person so I should not want so many things – so much’. In mediation, we lessen inner conflict by dropping such thoughts and returning to simple awareness. We allow chaos and confusion – but we do not add to it by trying to fix it.
Obstacles & Antidotes
Coming face-to-face with emotions is difficult—although, as with all else in meditation, it becomes easier with practice. It calls for a balance of determination and kindness toward yourself. If you turn away as soon as the going gets rough, you will make no progress. If you force yourself ahead when fear or pain seems intolerable, you will revolt and refuse to meditate. You can find your own balance point only by experimentation.
When feelings are just too strong to continue with this method – first, try returning to shi-nè. As soon as you feel the emotion – drop it and return to your breath. Allow your mind to calm in the quiet space of shi-nè.
If you cannot maintain shi-nè, try something different rather than cursing and gritting it out. I particularly recommend vigorous physical exercise, which—like shi-nè—cuts through obsessive thinking and releases excess energy in a constructive way.
If you cannot help acting on a destructive emotion, try to maintain some memory of meditative awareness – as you do so. Try to allow a gap between being provoked and your next action. In that empty space you may find clarity – and thus the possibility of choice.
Recommended Resources
This week’s meditation technique is a simplified approximation to one from the Tibetan tradition, called trèk-chod. Trèk-chod is taught in Aro in the evening class series entitled Spectrum of Being. It is also taught on weekend-long retreats: Embracing Emotions as the Path and Reality – The Vivid, Vivacious, and Volatile Vision.
Find upcoming Aro events near you.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
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