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.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 10
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 Week’s Meditation Technique
Find the presence of awareness to be without focus. If you drift from presence of awareness, return – without comment or judgement. If mental events manifest – remain uninvolved. Let go and let be.
This is called ‘formless meditation’. At this stage, we no longer focus on breath. This is the technique of no-technique. With sufficient experience in returning it becomes possible to return – simply by noticing that we are elsewhere. There is no need to apply artificial methods. Having returned – we may, for a time, remain without distraction. We are aware in awareness itself, without attending to anything in particular.
Follow-up
Please try this week’s technique at least once before reading further.
* * *
All the techniques we have explored so far in this course are variants of the method called shi-nè, ‘peacefully remaining’.
• Counting both in-breaths and out-breaths
• Counting out-breaths only
• Following both in- and out-breaths with attention
• Following out-breaths only
• Formless meditation: remaining present without technique
These vary according to how forcefully the method intrudes on the stream of awareness. Counting is the most heavy-handed method – this week’s technique is the most subtle.
If you refer to the first post in this course, you will find that you have already engaged in formless meditation. As I mentioned at the time, this is the most difficult form of shi-nè. Nevertheless—coming to it with no expectations—you may have had glimpses of what is possible. Re-read your meditation notebook entries from that time and see how your experience has changed. You will probably feel encouraged by the progress you have made in the past two months.
Formless meditation can be elusive. The instructions amount to no more than ‘be here—now’. It may take a few more months before you feel confident in practising this regularly. Try repeatedly this week. If you find yourself completely lost in thought, return to a less subtle technique until your mind steadies.
It is worth persevering – because formless meditation provides the most complete experience of peaceful remaining. We no longer have the breath as a distraction – no longer employ it as a crutch – and can no longer use it as entertainment. We are left with nothing to do and nothing to hold onto. We choose to let go, and find ourselves in empty space.
How Much to Meditate
Generally, formless meditation is not practical without regular experience of meditation sessions of at least half an hour. It may take as much as an hour of patient shi-nè before wild thoughts settle out and your mind clarifies.
I have repeatedly increased the recommended sitting period. You may wonder if this will end. How much is enough?
That depends on your individual capacity, circumstances, and inspiration. Therefore any recommendations are merely general guidelines.
In half an hour your mind can settle in a way that is rarely possible in five minutes. Equally, there are insights to be discovered in an hour that are rarely found in thirty minutes periods. In a few weeks I will introduce ‘retreats’ in which you meditate with others for several hours a day. That facilitates transformations which rarely occur in daily practice.
If this seems an unreasonable time commitment – consider the time required to learn a musical instrument or become skilled in a sport. The practice time necessary is quite comparable.
It is possible for almost everyone to find 30-60 minutes a day for meditation – if necessary, by decreasing time devoted to activities to which we are less committed. If you are ‘too busy to meditate’ – investigate whether that busyness might be a strategy for avoiding seeing something that might confront you if you stopped doing for a few minutes.
Regardless of how long you sit regularly – it is useful, occasionally, to meditate for a substantially longer period. You may find an hour – or two – or three – on a weekend.
It is difficult to sit more than an hour continuously. If you can dedicate a longer period to meditation, break it into sessions of 30-60 minutes sitting meditation separated by rests of 10-15 minutes. During the rests, stretch your legs and engage in quiet, reflective activity, such as writing in your meditation notebook or taking a short walk.
Posture
Kneeling is an alternative to sitting that works well for some people – but not at all for others. To decrease the pressure on your knees, you need to raise and support your buttocks. You can place a zafu between your legs, sandwiched between your legs and buttocks, or edge-wise. Alternatively, you can use a ‘seiza bench’—often available where zafus are sold, and on the web. These support kneeling by providing a low seat underneath which your legs can rest freely. Either way, padding under your knees—a sheepskin or zabuton—is also essential.
Another sitting position is one in which you are supported by a gomtag. This position can be comfortable for several hours. Because the gomtag supports the back and knees, the knees can be above the hips – and you need not raise your pelvis. Gomtags can be purchased on the web. (They may be sold as ‘meditation straps’. ‘Yoga straps’ are not the same – and are unsuitable.) Alternatively, you can also sew your own from several layers of strong, thick fabric. The total length of the strap (before you sew the circle closed) should be twice the distance from the middle of your chest to your outstretched finger tips. The strap should be as wide as your hand is wide (including your thumb).
Obstacles & Antidotes
Forgetfulness becomes an increasing danger as the technique becomes more subtle. It can be surprisingly difficult to remember how to meditate. It is easy to omit important aspects; or, to approximate the technique. This results in merely sitting and thinking, whilst considering yourself to be meditating. When you realize you have lost the method – simply review the instructions.
It is easy to forget that you are meditating. If you meditate regularly, the method becomes automatic – but this risks going through the motions without returning to keen awareness. Avoid meditating on autopilot.
It is easy to forget why you are meditating. If you meditate often, it is easy to allow yourself to be distracted by fantasies– on the grounds that ‘I meditate plenty; I want to enjoy this story’. Review your motivation. Make an agreement with yourself to return to the fantasy – after the end of your meditation session.
Journey Into Vastness
What follows may sound ‘spacey’ or downright crazy. It can only be understood once you have had substantial experience of the gap between thoughts. If it reads as nonsense now – set it aside, and concentrate on the ‘nuts and bolts’ aspects of meditation. Often, this material suddenly makes sense weeks or months after reading it.
Last week’s practice—on avidity, repulsion, and disregard—may have revealed how many thoughts are about ‘me’. At the same time, shi-nè reveals that ‘I’ am not my thoughts – because awareness persists during the gaps between them. We see that thoughts come from nowhere and return to nothing. It becomes apparent that ‘I’ am not the origin or master of ‘my’ thoughts – they continue when ‘I’ refrain from acting to produce them. In fact, there is nothing personal about most thoughts. Though largely about ‘me’, they could be about any ‘me’ – countless other people have had nearly identical thoughts about themselves in similar situations.
We use thoughts to keep a grip on who we are and how we relate to our world. We want to experience ourselves as a solid, enduring, separate, continuous, well-defined ‘self’. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ We use thoughts to create strategies for justifying and aggrandising our selves, for armouring our selves against threats – and for shutting out anything that is irrelevant to our selves. These are avidity, repulsion, and disregard. They harden our identity, separating our selves from others.
In shi-nè—especially formless shi-nè—we get used to being insubstantial, transitory, indistinct, discontinuous, and undefined. Without thoughts propping it up – the boundary between ‘me’ and ‘everything and everyone else’ collapses.
This can be disconcerting. We fear letting go of our separate, well-defined identity—even for a moment—because we imagine our lives would spiral out of control. It might seem that if we let go of our grip on ‘who I am’, ‘I’ would fall apart altogether, and we would not be able to function in everyday life. We pull back from the precipice of non-definition toward safe and familiar patterns to avoid disintegration.
When this space of non-self provokes apprehensiveness – a combination of gentleness and determination are required. (I will say more about working with fear in meditation in a couple of weeks.)
It is helpful to know that those who have explored non-definition find that there is nothing in it to fear. It does not lead to the inability to function in daily life. On the contrary, when we are less driven by thoughts—which are not truly ours in any case—we can act more spontaneously, authentically, and effectively. Life can flow from awareness rather than from fixed ideas. We do not lose our ‘selves’ – we discover that the solid, enduring, separate, continuous, defined self was an illusion all along – built of insubstantial thoughts.
Letting go of identity and allowing our boundaries to dissolve can be exhilarating rather than disconcerting. We realise that we have lived our lives in tiny dark prison cells called ‘me’ – which we built to insulate us from the world.
When we allow the walls to collapse – we step out into the vast, brilliant, open space of Reality, as it is.
Preview
Formless meditation is the pinnacle of shi-nè – but it is not the final destination of meditation. In future weeks we will explore other methods.
You have been meditating long enough now, that you may have started to experience strong emotions during meditation. This is a sign of progress – but it may not be pleasant. The next section of the course is devoted to methods for working with such feelings.
Recommended Resources
This week’s Journey Into Vastness discussion is an introduction to ‘emptiness and form’. These are the complimentary qualities of existence that are the heart of the Buddhist world-view.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
The Aro mentors can provide individualised meditation tutoring.
Support our charitable work—bringing the benefits of meditation to others—by becoming a Friend of Aro.
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 Week’s Meditation Technique
Find the presence of awareness to be without focus. If you drift from presence of awareness, return – without comment or judgement. If mental events manifest – remain uninvolved. Let go and let be.
This is called ‘formless meditation’. At this stage, we no longer focus on breath. This is the technique of no-technique. With sufficient experience in returning it becomes possible to return – simply by noticing that we are elsewhere. There is no need to apply artificial methods. Having returned – we may, for a time, remain without distraction. We are aware in awareness itself, without attending to anything in particular.
Follow-up
Please try this week’s technique at least once before reading further.
* * *
All the techniques we have explored so far in this course are variants of the method called shi-nè, ‘peacefully remaining’.
• Counting both in-breaths and out-breaths
• Counting out-breaths only
• Following both in- and out-breaths with attention
• Following out-breaths only
• Formless meditation: remaining present without technique
These vary according to how forcefully the method intrudes on the stream of awareness. Counting is the most heavy-handed method – this week’s technique is the most subtle.
If you refer to the first post in this course, you will find that you have already engaged in formless meditation. As I mentioned at the time, this is the most difficult form of shi-nè. Nevertheless—coming to it with no expectations—you may have had glimpses of what is possible. Re-read your meditation notebook entries from that time and see how your experience has changed. You will probably feel encouraged by the progress you have made in the past two months.
Formless meditation can be elusive. The instructions amount to no more than ‘be here—now’. It may take a few more months before you feel confident in practising this regularly. Try repeatedly this week. If you find yourself completely lost in thought, return to a less subtle technique until your mind steadies.
It is worth persevering – because formless meditation provides the most complete experience of peaceful remaining. We no longer have the breath as a distraction – no longer employ it as a crutch – and can no longer use it as entertainment. We are left with nothing to do and nothing to hold onto. We choose to let go, and find ourselves in empty space.
How Much to Meditate
Generally, formless meditation is not practical without regular experience of meditation sessions of at least half an hour. It may take as much as an hour of patient shi-nè before wild thoughts settle out and your mind clarifies.
I have repeatedly increased the recommended sitting period. You may wonder if this will end. How much is enough?
That depends on your individual capacity, circumstances, and inspiration. Therefore any recommendations are merely general guidelines.
In half an hour your mind can settle in a way that is rarely possible in five minutes. Equally, there are insights to be discovered in an hour that are rarely found in thirty minutes periods. In a few weeks I will introduce ‘retreats’ in which you meditate with others for several hours a day. That facilitates transformations which rarely occur in daily practice.
If this seems an unreasonable time commitment – consider the time required to learn a musical instrument or become skilled in a sport. The practice time necessary is quite comparable.
It is possible for almost everyone to find 30-60 minutes a day for meditation – if necessary, by decreasing time devoted to activities to which we are less committed. If you are ‘too busy to meditate’ – investigate whether that busyness might be a strategy for avoiding seeing something that might confront you if you stopped doing for a few minutes.
Regardless of how long you sit regularly – it is useful, occasionally, to meditate for a substantially longer period. You may find an hour – or two – or three – on a weekend.
It is difficult to sit more than an hour continuously. If you can dedicate a longer period to meditation, break it into sessions of 30-60 minutes sitting meditation separated by rests of 10-15 minutes. During the rests, stretch your legs and engage in quiet, reflective activity, such as writing in your meditation notebook or taking a short walk.
Posture
Kneeling is an alternative to sitting that works well for some people – but not at all for others. To decrease the pressure on your knees, you need to raise and support your buttocks. You can place a zafu between your legs, sandwiched between your legs and buttocks, or edge-wise. Alternatively, you can use a ‘seiza bench’—often available where zafus are sold, and on the web. These support kneeling by providing a low seat underneath which your legs can rest freely. Either way, padding under your knees—a sheepskin or zabuton—is also essential.
Another sitting position is one in which you are supported by a gomtag. This position can be comfortable for several hours. Because the gomtag supports the back and knees, the knees can be above the hips – and you need not raise your pelvis. Gomtags can be purchased on the web. (They may be sold as ‘meditation straps’. ‘Yoga straps’ are not the same – and are unsuitable.) Alternatively, you can also sew your own from several layers of strong, thick fabric. The total length of the strap (before you sew the circle closed) should be twice the distance from the middle of your chest to your outstretched finger tips. The strap should be as wide as your hand is wide (including your thumb).
Obstacles & Antidotes
Forgetfulness becomes an increasing danger as the technique becomes more subtle. It can be surprisingly difficult to remember how to meditate. It is easy to omit important aspects; or, to approximate the technique. This results in merely sitting and thinking, whilst considering yourself to be meditating. When you realize you have lost the method – simply review the instructions.
It is easy to forget that you are meditating. If you meditate regularly, the method becomes automatic – but this risks going through the motions without returning to keen awareness. Avoid meditating on autopilot.
It is easy to forget why you are meditating. If you meditate often, it is easy to allow yourself to be distracted by fantasies– on the grounds that ‘I meditate plenty; I want to enjoy this story’. Review your motivation. Make an agreement with yourself to return to the fantasy – after the end of your meditation session.
Journey Into Vastness
What follows may sound ‘spacey’ or downright crazy. It can only be understood once you have had substantial experience of the gap between thoughts. If it reads as nonsense now – set it aside, and concentrate on the ‘nuts and bolts’ aspects of meditation. Often, this material suddenly makes sense weeks or months after reading it.
Last week’s practice—on avidity, repulsion, and disregard—may have revealed how many thoughts are about ‘me’. At the same time, shi-nè reveals that ‘I’ am not my thoughts – because awareness persists during the gaps between them. We see that thoughts come from nowhere and return to nothing. It becomes apparent that ‘I’ am not the origin or master of ‘my’ thoughts – they continue when ‘I’ refrain from acting to produce them. In fact, there is nothing personal about most thoughts. Though largely about ‘me’, they could be about any ‘me’ – countless other people have had nearly identical thoughts about themselves in similar situations.
We use thoughts to keep a grip on who we are and how we relate to our world. We want to experience ourselves as a solid, enduring, separate, continuous, well-defined ‘self’. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ We use thoughts to create strategies for justifying and aggrandising our selves, for armouring our selves against threats – and for shutting out anything that is irrelevant to our selves. These are avidity, repulsion, and disregard. They harden our identity, separating our selves from others.
In shi-nè—especially formless shi-nè—we get used to being insubstantial, transitory, indistinct, discontinuous, and undefined. Without thoughts propping it up – the boundary between ‘me’ and ‘everything and everyone else’ collapses.
This can be disconcerting. We fear letting go of our separate, well-defined identity—even for a moment—because we imagine our lives would spiral out of control. It might seem that if we let go of our grip on ‘who I am’, ‘I’ would fall apart altogether, and we would not be able to function in everyday life. We pull back from the precipice of non-definition toward safe and familiar patterns to avoid disintegration.
When this space of non-self provokes apprehensiveness – a combination of gentleness and determination are required. (I will say more about working with fear in meditation in a couple of weeks.)
It is helpful to know that those who have explored non-definition find that there is nothing in it to fear. It does not lead to the inability to function in daily life. On the contrary, when we are less driven by thoughts—which are not truly ours in any case—we can act more spontaneously, authentically, and effectively. Life can flow from awareness rather than from fixed ideas. We do not lose our ‘selves’ – we discover that the solid, enduring, separate, continuous, defined self was an illusion all along – built of insubstantial thoughts.
Letting go of identity and allowing our boundaries to dissolve can be exhilarating rather than disconcerting. We realise that we have lived our lives in tiny dark prison cells called ‘me’ – which we built to insulate us from the world.
When we allow the walls to collapse – we step out into the vast, brilliant, open space of Reality, as it is.
Preview
Formless meditation is the pinnacle of shi-nè – but it is not the final destination of meditation. In future weeks we will explore other methods.
You have been meditating long enough now, that you may have started to experience strong emotions during meditation. This is a sign of progress – but it may not be pleasant. The next section of the course is devoted to methods for working with such feelings.
Recommended Resources
This week’s Journey Into Vastness discussion is an introduction to ‘emptiness and form’. These are the complimentary qualities of existence that are the heart of the Buddhist world-view.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
The Aro mentors can provide individualised meditation tutoring.
Support our charitable work—bringing the benefits of meditation to others—by becoming a Friend of Aro.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 9
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. I would like to start this week by saying a few words about me.
Thinking
Thoughts are always about some situation – remembered, elsewhere, or imagined. Yet most thoughts are – directly or indirectly – really about ‘me’. They are based on an underlying attitude of ‘I like this – I want to grab onto it’; ‘I don’t like that – I want to make it go away’; or ‘I don’t care about this. I will not waste my time on it – because it does not matter to me’. These three may be called avidity, repulsion, and disregard.
When we use thoughts to trick ourselves into imagining we are in a distant situation, we fall prey to avidity, repulsion, or disregard. We imagine we must act out in this imaginary world. We think about what to say or do there. The imaginary effects—good or bad—of our imaginary actions prompt another round of imagination. Without avidity, repulsion, or disregard, thoughts lose much of their power to distract us.
Thoughts are just thoughts. However compelling they seem at the time, they are completely insubstantial. They evaporate without leaving a trace. Thoughts are like clouds. From a distance they can appear solid and imposing – but close-up they are nothing but thin swirling fog. Meditation allows us to see thoughts close-up – and with practice, we find less and less there.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
As with last week, follow your out-breath. If you find you are often lost in thoughts, pay attention to both the in-breath and out-breath. If thoughts are particularly distracting, return—temporarily—to counting.
When you find that you are thinking – notice with bare attention whether the thought involves avidity, repulsion, or disregard. Allow the thought to drop, and resume your out-breath as its time comes.
The purpose of this technique is to see how many thoughts are about ‘me’ and ‘my’ relationship with other people and circumstances.
Often we relate with avidity, repulsion, and disregard to thoughts themselves – as well as to what these thoughts are about.
‘Bare attention’ means: do not go beyond simply noticing. Particularly, do not judge thoughts as good or bad according to whether they fit these patterns. Do not judge yourself according to how successful you are at noticing. Such judgements are themselves simply repulsion and avidity. Do not analyse thoughts with other thoughts. That may be a strategy for disregarding your actual present situation.
Posture: Practical Tips
It is not natural for humans to maintain a fixed sitting position for long periods. It makes our bodies tired and sore. Though it grows easier with time, it is useful to be able to meditate for a longer period than you can manage comfortably in a single position.
By switching among several positions during a long session, you can sit for longer. Sitting on the floor is usually harder on the knees—and sitting in a chair is harder on the back. If you alternate between the two – as your knees or back become uncomfortable – you may be able to sit two or three times as long.
In the next two emails in this series, I will introduce several additional meditation postures. It is useful to learn as many as possible so you can rotate them, easing different parts of your body with each. Each position also has particular advantages that make it useful in particular circumstances.
The siddha position—and some others—are asymmetrical. With these it is important to alternate which leg is in front. Otherwise in time you will become asymmetrical. Alternating your legs during a session is another way to relieve physical pressure.
When you change position, do so mindfully. Do not stop meditating, change position, and resume meditation. Make your movements slow and deliberate. Be aware of your bodily sensations as you rearrange. The process is part of your meditation – not an interruption of it.
During a long session—if your legs need a rest—you can adopt the rest position for a couple of minutes. This position allows your legs to stretch and relax while you remain on your cushion with an elongated spine, helping maintain meditative awareness. Draw your legs up, knees together, clasp your knees with your wrists, and interlace your fingers.
Don’t Believe The Hype
See if you can notice—sometimes when you are not meditating—the ways in which thoughts are based on avidity, repulsion, or disregard. The three patterns often collapse of their own accord once you have noticed them. Without avidity, repulsion, and disregard, we may see the world as it is, rather than as it relates to our projects.
Thinking is not ‘bad’. It is often indispensable in practical understanding – producing brilliant creative works and profound abstractions. Yet it is odd how often people have strong opinions concerning situations about which they know little, which they have not experienced, and which do not affect them. Knee-jerk responses of avidity, repulsion, and disregard – blur our vision. We cannot see the world clearly when we filter it through ‘what’s in it for me?’. When we cannot see clearly, we cannot act effectively – and we cannot appreciate things as they actually are.
During meditation, we regard thoughts as meaningless gabble, like radio advertisements in unknown foreign languages.
Experiencing thoughts as insubstantial in meditation opens up a possibility in the rest of your life: you do not have to believe your own thoughts. Adopting this attitude provides the possibility of freedom from enslavement to thoughts – and from compulsively acting on what they tell you.
It is not helpful to question all thoughts intellectually. That could lead to paranoia. It is preferable to regard thoughts as we would regard advertisements. When we hear ‘Galacto Toothpaste makes your smile seven times brighter’ – argument is as unnecessary as making the purchase.
Obstacles and Antidotes
Opinions—negative or positive—about oneself are a common obstacle. The antidote: don’t believe the hype.
Most meditators sometimes feel ‘I can’t do this, because I am not smart enough / not spiritual enough / not disciplined enough / too emotional / too intellectual / too old / whatever’. Untrue. Anyone can meditate – because meditation is non-doing. It requires no particular skill – and therefore has no prerequisites. All it requires is persistence.
When discouraged or doubtful concerning meditation – recall the experience of recognising wandering mind and returning to awareness of breath. That is the essence of meditation. If you have experienced ‘returning’—even once—you can trust that meditation is possible for you.
If meditation goes smoothly for a while – you may also feel ‘This is great – I am great – I’m far ahead of those other people – soon I will achieve great things and everyone will notice how special I am and will be impressed and respectful’.
The antidote is to realise that the path to enlightenment is both lengthy and well-worn. Countless people have gone before us, beaten a track, and left sign-posts. Sometimes they may be seen ahead in the distance waving encouragingly. Progress along the path is great, but it does not make anyone special – because anyone can do it, and a great many have.
Preview
It is no coincidence that thoughts distract us. It is no coincidence that they sound like advertisements – when we listen carefully. It is almost conspiratorial. What are we trying to mask with these thoughts?
Recommended Resources
The Aro Membership programme provides personal guidance from an experienced meditation mentor.
The rôle of a mentor is rather like that of a piano teacher or ski instructor. You can learn to play piano, ski, or meditate –working alone from books and recordings. However, you will make more rapid progress with a tutor who: answers your practical questions as they arise; helps diagnose problems and suggests solutions; helps you decide when you have enough experience with a particular meditation technique to move forward, and can suggest possible next steps; provides encouragement when you feel stuck; and may occasionally suggest that you go just slightly deeper into practice than you had been expecting.
Membership can be arranged on a month-by-month basis and entails no commitment. Our web site provides a detailed description of the programme; or you may contact membership@arobuddhism.org.
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. I would like to start this week by saying a few words about me.
Thinking
Thoughts are always about some situation – remembered, elsewhere, or imagined. Yet most thoughts are – directly or indirectly – really about ‘me’. They are based on an underlying attitude of ‘I like this – I want to grab onto it’; ‘I don’t like that – I want to make it go away’; or ‘I don’t care about this. I will not waste my time on it – because it does not matter to me’. These three may be called avidity, repulsion, and disregard.
When we use thoughts to trick ourselves into imagining we are in a distant situation, we fall prey to avidity, repulsion, or disregard. We imagine we must act out in this imaginary world. We think about what to say or do there. The imaginary effects—good or bad—of our imaginary actions prompt another round of imagination. Without avidity, repulsion, or disregard, thoughts lose much of their power to distract us.
Thoughts are just thoughts. However compelling they seem at the time, they are completely insubstantial. They evaporate without leaving a trace. Thoughts are like clouds. From a distance they can appear solid and imposing – but close-up they are nothing but thin swirling fog. Meditation allows us to see thoughts close-up – and with practice, we find less and less there.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
As with last week, follow your out-breath. If you find you are often lost in thoughts, pay attention to both the in-breath and out-breath. If thoughts are particularly distracting, return—temporarily—to counting.
When you find that you are thinking – notice with bare attention whether the thought involves avidity, repulsion, or disregard. Allow the thought to drop, and resume your out-breath as its time comes.
The purpose of this technique is to see how many thoughts are about ‘me’ and ‘my’ relationship with other people and circumstances.
Often we relate with avidity, repulsion, and disregard to thoughts themselves – as well as to what these thoughts are about.
‘Bare attention’ means: do not go beyond simply noticing. Particularly, do not judge thoughts as good or bad according to whether they fit these patterns. Do not judge yourself according to how successful you are at noticing. Such judgements are themselves simply repulsion and avidity. Do not analyse thoughts with other thoughts. That may be a strategy for disregarding your actual present situation.
Posture: Practical Tips
It is not natural for humans to maintain a fixed sitting position for long periods. It makes our bodies tired and sore. Though it grows easier with time, it is useful to be able to meditate for a longer period than you can manage comfortably in a single position.
By switching among several positions during a long session, you can sit for longer. Sitting on the floor is usually harder on the knees—and sitting in a chair is harder on the back. If you alternate between the two – as your knees or back become uncomfortable – you may be able to sit two or three times as long.
In the next two emails in this series, I will introduce several additional meditation postures. It is useful to learn as many as possible so you can rotate them, easing different parts of your body with each. Each position also has particular advantages that make it useful in particular circumstances.
The siddha position—and some others—are asymmetrical. With these it is important to alternate which leg is in front. Otherwise in time you will become asymmetrical. Alternating your legs during a session is another way to relieve physical pressure.
When you change position, do so mindfully. Do not stop meditating, change position, and resume meditation. Make your movements slow and deliberate. Be aware of your bodily sensations as you rearrange. The process is part of your meditation – not an interruption of it.
During a long session—if your legs need a rest—you can adopt the rest position for a couple of minutes. This position allows your legs to stretch and relax while you remain on your cushion with an elongated spine, helping maintain meditative awareness. Draw your legs up, knees together, clasp your knees with your wrists, and interlace your fingers.
Don’t Believe The Hype
See if you can notice—sometimes when you are not meditating—the ways in which thoughts are based on avidity, repulsion, or disregard. The three patterns often collapse of their own accord once you have noticed them. Without avidity, repulsion, and disregard, we may see the world as it is, rather than as it relates to our projects.
Thinking is not ‘bad’. It is often indispensable in practical understanding – producing brilliant creative works and profound abstractions. Yet it is odd how often people have strong opinions concerning situations about which they know little, which they have not experienced, and which do not affect them. Knee-jerk responses of avidity, repulsion, and disregard – blur our vision. We cannot see the world clearly when we filter it through ‘what’s in it for me?’. When we cannot see clearly, we cannot act effectively – and we cannot appreciate things as they actually are.
During meditation, we regard thoughts as meaningless gabble, like radio advertisements in unknown foreign languages.
Experiencing thoughts as insubstantial in meditation opens up a possibility in the rest of your life: you do not have to believe your own thoughts. Adopting this attitude provides the possibility of freedom from enslavement to thoughts – and from compulsively acting on what they tell you.
It is not helpful to question all thoughts intellectually. That could lead to paranoia. It is preferable to regard thoughts as we would regard advertisements. When we hear ‘Galacto Toothpaste makes your smile seven times brighter’ – argument is as unnecessary as making the purchase.
Obstacles and Antidotes
Opinions—negative or positive—about oneself are a common obstacle. The antidote: don’t believe the hype.
Most meditators sometimes feel ‘I can’t do this, because I am not smart enough / not spiritual enough / not disciplined enough / too emotional / too intellectual / too old / whatever’. Untrue. Anyone can meditate – because meditation is non-doing. It requires no particular skill – and therefore has no prerequisites. All it requires is persistence.
When discouraged or doubtful concerning meditation – recall the experience of recognising wandering mind and returning to awareness of breath. That is the essence of meditation. If you have experienced ‘returning’—even once—you can trust that meditation is possible for you.
If meditation goes smoothly for a while – you may also feel ‘This is great – I am great – I’m far ahead of those other people – soon I will achieve great things and everyone will notice how special I am and will be impressed and respectful’.
The antidote is to realise that the path to enlightenment is both lengthy and well-worn. Countless people have gone before us, beaten a track, and left sign-posts. Sometimes they may be seen ahead in the distance waving encouragingly. Progress along the path is great, but it does not make anyone special – because anyone can do it, and a great many have.
Preview
It is no coincidence that thoughts distract us. It is no coincidence that they sound like advertisements – when we listen carefully. It is almost conspiratorial. What are we trying to mask with these thoughts?
Recommended Resources
The Aro Membership programme provides personal guidance from an experienced meditation mentor.
The rôle of a mentor is rather like that of a piano teacher or ski instructor. You can learn to play piano, ski, or meditate –working alone from books and recordings. However, you will make more rapid progress with a tutor who: answers your practical questions as they arise; helps diagnose problems and suggests solutions; helps you decide when you have enough experience with a particular meditation technique to move forward, and can suggest possible next steps; provides encouragement when you feel stuck; and may occasionally suggest that you go just slightly deeper into practice than you had been expecting.
Membership can be arranged on a month-by-month basis and entails no commitment. Our web site provides a detailed description of the programme; or you may contact membership@arobuddhism.org.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 8
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
Motivation
Loss of motivation is a common obstacle. When you first begin to meditate, it is new, strange, and exciting – and promises extraordinary benefits. Later, meditation may seem an unpleasant chore, a waste of time, or even a selfish indulgence.
The primary antidote is inspiration – and this may be found in several places. Reading books about meditation, and its benefits for life, can re-inspire you. (Our web site has a page that recommends books from several traditions and perspectives.) The enthusiasm of other meditators—for example, in a class or weekly sitting group—can be infectious. Accomplished meditators—who exemplify the transformations meditation offers—may also inspire you. These sources help you understand how meditation produces its benefits. Testing that understanding in daily practice leads gradually to confidence that meditation functions pragmatically.
In reality, motivation inevitably fluctuates. Unavoidably, meditation is sometimes attractive, easy, and productive – and at other times proves difficult and unrewarding. The real problem arises if, when you do not feel motivated, you do not meditate. Then you do not see the benefits of meditation, and find even less motivation – and you may abandon meditation altogether. It is important, therefore, to sit even when you do not feel like it. As with athletic training, consistent effort over long periods brings results – even though at times it seems you are going backward. This discipline carries over into all areas of life. Sticking with meditation trains you to persist in long-term tasks.
Ultimately, dedication is found in your own life. Review your meditation notebook – particularly the entry from Week 1 in which you set down your reasons for starting to meditate. Do you still have those goals? Reflect on your life. What is most important to you? You have limited time to live. If you put off meditation now because it is frustrating – when will you ever begin? Meditation is hard – but life without meditation is also hard. If you have come this far in the course, perhaps you have started to see that life without meditation seems rather two-dimensional, constricted, and monotonous in comparison.
It is oddly easy—when meditating—to think ‘I will do it more seriously next time – this time is not the real meditation, so I can just go through the motions’. We are not endowed with ‘temporary trial lives’ that we can repeat once we have got the hang of it. This moment—each moment—is as real as your life will ever be. Do not waste it.
Meditate whole-heartedly. Throw yourself into it. Do not hold back. Effort generates its own energy. Become passionate. A meditation master once said: ‘Meditate as if your hair is on fire.’
Thinking
There is a Tibetan saying: ‘Meditation – isn’t. Getting used to – is.’ Meditation is a mode of non-doing. Meditation is a mode in which we get used to just being. It is difficult – because it is usual to spend all our lives doing things. Normally ‘not doing anything’ implies ‘not doing anything useful’. ‘Not doing anything’ relates to watching television; daydreaming; or absently flipping through catalogues.
In meditation, we train ourselves in actually not doing anything. We have no goals, no expectations. We allow whatever happens, to happen. We leave it alone. We are alert and experience it fully, but without classification, judgement, or comment. We are present – in the present. We let go of elaborate plans for unlikely future scenarios and anguished memories of past events that will not recur.
Then we can be where, when, who, and what we already are. We can enjoy the simplicity of being here, now.
I introduced this phrase in Week 1 – perhaps it means more to you now?
Non-doing in meditation does not suggest you should do any less than you have been in life. Meditation does not imply withdrawal from the world – except during the brief time each day you sit.
With experience in meditation it becomes apparent that in everyday life we have generally only ever been half-aware. We have been sleep-walking through life. Now you are learning to wake up – to experience life fully as it unfolds.
Obstacles and Antidotes
Having read about the possibility of dwelling in the gap between thoughts, you may be tempted to grab at gaps as they pass. This does not work. Gaps are produced by non-doing. Grasping obscures them. Gaps appear when there is no thought – but thoughts are not the enemy. There is nothing wrong with thinking, and attempting to force thoughts out, merely multiplies them. In time you will simultaneously experience thoughts and the empty space in which they appear.
Paradoxically, strong motivation may also be an obstacle. Motivation is necessary to bring us to the cushion each day – but there it must stop. You must let go of desire for progress during the meditation period itself. Like all other thoughts and feelings, it is a distraction from just being if you hold onto it.
If you feel despair at lack of progress in meditation – put aside your goal. It is the obstacle. Instead, enjoy the experience of meditation – of just being – without expectations. Savour ordinary mental presence; forget about extraordinary anything. Extraordinary experiences are not the goal of meditation. They arise only capriciously.
If meditation seems like a chore – acknowledge that. It does not help to pretend you enjoy it when you do not. The aim of meditation is to make the rest of life more enjoyable. Sometimes meditation itself is enjoyable and sometimes it is not. However, it need never be a chore, because there is nothing to do. Simply rest your mind.
Posture
There are two hand positions used in our style of meditation.
The simpler one is to rest your hands on your thighs, palms down. In this position, your upper arms should hang freely, straight down from your shoulders, with no effort to pull them forward or back. The tendency is to place your hands too far forward on your thighs, which pulls your whole body forward into a slump.
The other position places both hands in your lap, palms up, one in the other, with your thumbs barely touching. For this position, you should allow your shoulders to float outward, backward, and downward. That opens the chest and prevents contraction and—again—slumping. This position takes some getting used to. I recommend making the effort because it is traditionally best for shi-nè. The palms-down position is best for a different meditation method I will describe in a few weeks.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
Follow your breath—as previously—but look for the presence of awareness only in your exhalation. Allow inhalation merely to happen. Allow yourself to dissolve into emptiness with each exhalation. If you find that you have drifted from presence – simply return to presence and remain. If thoughts arise, allow them to dissolve into emptiness with each exhalation.
Aim for 20-30 minutes.
Recommended Resources
A community of meditators is a great support – providing inspiration, understanding, and fellowship. The choice of a community is a highly personal one, based on the ‘fit’ between your personality and interests and the community’s.
If you have found this course to your taste so far, you and Aro may be a good ‘fit’. On our web site there is an overview of the Aro path and what it offers in various phases of involvement.
Our Members programme provides personal guidance from an experienced meditation mentor.
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
Motivation
Loss of motivation is a common obstacle. When you first begin to meditate, it is new, strange, and exciting – and promises extraordinary benefits. Later, meditation may seem an unpleasant chore, a waste of time, or even a selfish indulgence.
The primary antidote is inspiration – and this may be found in several places. Reading books about meditation, and its benefits for life, can re-inspire you. (Our web site has a page that recommends books from several traditions and perspectives.) The enthusiasm of other meditators—for example, in a class or weekly sitting group—can be infectious. Accomplished meditators—who exemplify the transformations meditation offers—may also inspire you. These sources help you understand how meditation produces its benefits. Testing that understanding in daily practice leads gradually to confidence that meditation functions pragmatically.
In reality, motivation inevitably fluctuates. Unavoidably, meditation is sometimes attractive, easy, and productive – and at other times proves difficult and unrewarding. The real problem arises if, when you do not feel motivated, you do not meditate. Then you do not see the benefits of meditation, and find even less motivation – and you may abandon meditation altogether. It is important, therefore, to sit even when you do not feel like it. As with athletic training, consistent effort over long periods brings results – even though at times it seems you are going backward. This discipline carries over into all areas of life. Sticking with meditation trains you to persist in long-term tasks.
Ultimately, dedication is found in your own life. Review your meditation notebook – particularly the entry from Week 1 in which you set down your reasons for starting to meditate. Do you still have those goals? Reflect on your life. What is most important to you? You have limited time to live. If you put off meditation now because it is frustrating – when will you ever begin? Meditation is hard – but life without meditation is also hard. If you have come this far in the course, perhaps you have started to see that life without meditation seems rather two-dimensional, constricted, and monotonous in comparison.
It is oddly easy—when meditating—to think ‘I will do it more seriously next time – this time is not the real meditation, so I can just go through the motions’. We are not endowed with ‘temporary trial lives’ that we can repeat once we have got the hang of it. This moment—each moment—is as real as your life will ever be. Do not waste it.
Meditate whole-heartedly. Throw yourself into it. Do not hold back. Effort generates its own energy. Become passionate. A meditation master once said: ‘Meditate as if your hair is on fire.’
Thinking
There is a Tibetan saying: ‘Meditation – isn’t. Getting used to – is.’ Meditation is a mode of non-doing. Meditation is a mode in which we get used to just being. It is difficult – because it is usual to spend all our lives doing things. Normally ‘not doing anything’ implies ‘not doing anything useful’. ‘Not doing anything’ relates to watching television; daydreaming; or absently flipping through catalogues.
In meditation, we train ourselves in actually not doing anything. We have no goals, no expectations. We allow whatever happens, to happen. We leave it alone. We are alert and experience it fully, but without classification, judgement, or comment. We are present – in the present. We let go of elaborate plans for unlikely future scenarios and anguished memories of past events that will not recur.
Then we can be where, when, who, and what we already are. We can enjoy the simplicity of being here, now.
I introduced this phrase in Week 1 – perhaps it means more to you now?
Non-doing in meditation does not suggest you should do any less than you have been in life. Meditation does not imply withdrawal from the world – except during the brief time each day you sit.
With experience in meditation it becomes apparent that in everyday life we have generally only ever been half-aware. We have been sleep-walking through life. Now you are learning to wake up – to experience life fully as it unfolds.
Obstacles and Antidotes
Having read about the possibility of dwelling in the gap between thoughts, you may be tempted to grab at gaps as they pass. This does not work. Gaps are produced by non-doing. Grasping obscures them. Gaps appear when there is no thought – but thoughts are not the enemy. There is nothing wrong with thinking, and attempting to force thoughts out, merely multiplies them. In time you will simultaneously experience thoughts and the empty space in which they appear.
Paradoxically, strong motivation may also be an obstacle. Motivation is necessary to bring us to the cushion each day – but there it must stop. You must let go of desire for progress during the meditation period itself. Like all other thoughts and feelings, it is a distraction from just being if you hold onto it.
If you feel despair at lack of progress in meditation – put aside your goal. It is the obstacle. Instead, enjoy the experience of meditation – of just being – without expectations. Savour ordinary mental presence; forget about extraordinary anything. Extraordinary experiences are not the goal of meditation. They arise only capriciously.
If meditation seems like a chore – acknowledge that. It does not help to pretend you enjoy it when you do not. The aim of meditation is to make the rest of life more enjoyable. Sometimes meditation itself is enjoyable and sometimes it is not. However, it need never be a chore, because there is nothing to do. Simply rest your mind.
Posture
There are two hand positions used in our style of meditation.
The simpler one is to rest your hands on your thighs, palms down. In this position, your upper arms should hang freely, straight down from your shoulders, with no effort to pull them forward or back. The tendency is to place your hands too far forward on your thighs, which pulls your whole body forward into a slump.
The other position places both hands in your lap, palms up, one in the other, with your thumbs barely touching. For this position, you should allow your shoulders to float outward, backward, and downward. That opens the chest and prevents contraction and—again—slumping. This position takes some getting used to. I recommend making the effort because it is traditionally best for shi-nè. The palms-down position is best for a different meditation method I will describe in a few weeks.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
Follow your breath—as previously—but look for the presence of awareness only in your exhalation. Allow inhalation merely to happen. Allow yourself to dissolve into emptiness with each exhalation. If you find that you have drifted from presence – simply return to presence and remain. If thoughts arise, allow them to dissolve into emptiness with each exhalation.
Aim for 20-30 minutes.
Recommended Resources
A community of meditators is a great support – providing inspiration, understanding, and fellowship. The choice of a community is a highly personal one, based on the ‘fit’ between your personality and interests and the community’s.
If you have found this course to your taste so far, you and Aro may be a good ‘fit’. On our web site there is an overview of the Aro path and what it offers in various phases of involvement.
Our Members programme provides personal guidance from an experienced meditation mentor.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Meditation Techniques - Week 7
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
Thoughts & Clouds
Initially, in meditation, it seemed that the stream of thoughts was continuous. With increasing experience, thought-addiction diminishes and you begin to notice moments of ‘gap’ between thoughts. When you cease to pursue thoughts – rather than forming a continuous train, they start to appear individually as figures against a background of empty space. During the next few weeks, we will transfer attention from observing thoughts to observing the space within which they arise.
This space is initially only visible as brief moments of ‘gap’ or silence. With continuing practice, gaps lengthen. The nature of the space becomes increasingly visible. It becomes evident that this creative space—from which thoughts arise—is always present. Even when thoughts appear continuously you will be aware of the space within which they occur.
With practice, you find yourself in increasing periods of non-thought or empty space. If you maintain alertness, you are not non-existent or unconscious in that space – but simply stripped bare of referential coordinates. There is no past or future history – or geography of circumstance. You find that without thought, you are still fully present – but you are no one in particular. Even: no thing in particular – you simply are – here, now, without definition. You may experience this as liberating and exhilarating – or as vaguely vertiginous, slightly alarming, or peculiarly familiar and natural. There is a profound intimacy in this nakedness, in which you discover the nature of reality – when all the details of life story disappear.
Awareness is like the sky. Thoughts are like clouds. At times – dark thunderheads roil the sky. At times – high, white, calm clouds drift across the sky. At times – the empty sky is brilliantly blue. Whatever appears in the sky – its nature is unchanged. Above the clouds, there is always vastness – and clouds do not appear other than in the sky.
Mind is like the ocean. Whether the surface is turbulent with massive waves – or glassy and reflects the empty sky – beneath there are thousands of fathoms of still water.
If you explore the main Aro web site you will see many pictures of skies and oceans. These analogies for meditation are the reason.
Posture: Fine Points
The term ‘posture’ is misleading if it suggests an ideal model to which you should conform. If you are still, comfortable, relaxed, and alert – your posture is ideal. When you are not, these recommendations may help.
To be perfectly motionless is neither possible nor desirable. Attempting it leads to rigidity, discomfort, and tension. ‘Still’ means that you are not deliberately doing anything with your body. If you leave it alone, it remains in regular slight motion of its own accord. Breathing entails motion. Your body continually automatically re-balances itself to compensate.
Your head is a heavy weight that sits at the top of your spine. Earlier I explained that the spine needs to be balanced in the pelvis. You might think of the experience of balancing a pencil on your fingertip. As long as it is nearly vertical, you need to make only tiny motions to keep it that way. If it starts to fall over, you need a large corrective motion. Now imagine attaching a large, asymmetrical weight to the top end of the pencil. Balancing is much more difficult. So the large, asymmetrical weight of your head plays a big rôle in your spinal balance.
To find the right head position, tuck the chin back slightly toward your neck and down slightly toward your chest. This allows the muscles of the back of the neck to relax. If you touch the back of your neck, you should feel that the curve there has largely flattened out. You should feel the top back of your head reaching upward.
Allowing your head to droop too far forward interferes with alertness and tends to put you to sleep. Pulling the head too far back promotes restless thought. If you find you have too little or too much energy, check your head position.
Relax your face. Emotions cause facial tension: for example, worry tightens the brows. Less well known is that tension in particular parts of the face also causes the corresponding emotions. Deliberately unfurrowing your brow releases worry. When you are despondent, smiling actually can make you happier.
Relax your jaw. Relax your tongue. Let it rest lightly against the gum of your upper jaw. Your teeth should be slightly parted. Your lips can be lightly touching or slightly opened.
The direction of your gaze, and how much light enters, affects mental activity. Generally, angle your gaze downward in the direction of the tip of your nose. Open your eyes just enough that some light enters but your eyelashes prevent you from seeing anything clearly. If you have too little energy, raise your gaze or open your eyes a little more. If you have too much, lower your gaze or close your eyes further.
Subtle differences in posture may have significant effects on your mental and emotional state. Observing these over a period of weeks, months, and years – you gradually learn which postural changes to make in order to affect your mind and heart as you wish.
If you have difficulty attaining stillness, comfort, relaxation, and alertness – advice from an expert can help. A meditation teacher can work with you to diagnose problems and find a way of sitting that works for you. Even if your posture works well for you, a teacher may offer subtle, helpful insights into the mind-body connection.
Physical Antidotes
You can adjust your energy level up or down by sharp head motions. (Please do not employ these antidotes if you have any problem with your head, neck, or back.)
Drowsiness, vagueness, or depression may be overcome by fully relaxing the muscles at the back of the neck, so your chin falls to your chest – and then suddenly jerking your head all the way back. Repeat this exercise three times with a brief pause between.
Similarly, excess energy may be overcome by fully relaxing the muscles at the front of your neck, so your head falls loosely backward – and then suddenly jerking your head all the way forward. Again, repeat thrice.
Use discretion: too sharp a jerk might hurt your neck, and an insufficiently decisive movement may have little effect.
When your mouth is unpleasantly dry, close it. If it fills with saliva, open it partially. Breathing through your mouth will dry it.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
Continue the practice of following the breath from last week.
Transfer your attention from observing thoughts to observing the space within which thoughts arise.
Return to counting only when you repeatedly find yourself lost in long trains of thought.
Aim for twenty minutes a day.
A question to ponder
What do you lose when you are lost in thought?
Preview
Next week’s main topic is motivation: where it originates, why it is important, and what to do when it is lacking.
Recommended Resources
This course is based on the book Roaring Silence, written by Aro Lamas. Roaring Silence covers the same material in greater depth. For example, it expands considerably on the analogies of sky and ocean. Beyond that, its main topic is the implications of meditation for life. This email course, focussed on technique, barely discusses that critical subject. Our web page for the book has a summary and links to Amazon.
One place to find help with posture—and other aspects of meditation—is the Aro contacts page. There are experienced Aro teachers in more than 25 locations world-wide.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
The Aro Members programme provides personal guidance from an experienced meditation mentor.
Support our charitable work—bringing the benefits of meditation to others—by becoming a Friend of Aro.
To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation
Thoughts & Clouds
Initially, in meditation, it seemed that the stream of thoughts was continuous. With increasing experience, thought-addiction diminishes and you begin to notice moments of ‘gap’ between thoughts. When you cease to pursue thoughts – rather than forming a continuous train, they start to appear individually as figures against a background of empty space. During the next few weeks, we will transfer attention from observing thoughts to observing the space within which they arise.
This space is initially only visible as brief moments of ‘gap’ or silence. With continuing practice, gaps lengthen. The nature of the space becomes increasingly visible. It becomes evident that this creative space—from which thoughts arise—is always present. Even when thoughts appear continuously you will be aware of the space within which they occur.
With practice, you find yourself in increasing periods of non-thought or empty space. If you maintain alertness, you are not non-existent or unconscious in that space – but simply stripped bare of referential coordinates. There is no past or future history – or geography of circumstance. You find that without thought, you are still fully present – but you are no one in particular. Even: no thing in particular – you simply are – here, now, without definition. You may experience this as liberating and exhilarating – or as vaguely vertiginous, slightly alarming, or peculiarly familiar and natural. There is a profound intimacy in this nakedness, in which you discover the nature of reality – when all the details of life story disappear.
Awareness is like the sky. Thoughts are like clouds. At times – dark thunderheads roil the sky. At times – high, white, calm clouds drift across the sky. At times – the empty sky is brilliantly blue. Whatever appears in the sky – its nature is unchanged. Above the clouds, there is always vastness – and clouds do not appear other than in the sky.
Mind is like the ocean. Whether the surface is turbulent with massive waves – or glassy and reflects the empty sky – beneath there are thousands of fathoms of still water.
If you explore the main Aro web site you will see many pictures of skies and oceans. These analogies for meditation are the reason.
Posture: Fine Points
The term ‘posture’ is misleading if it suggests an ideal model to which you should conform. If you are still, comfortable, relaxed, and alert – your posture is ideal. When you are not, these recommendations may help.
To be perfectly motionless is neither possible nor desirable. Attempting it leads to rigidity, discomfort, and tension. ‘Still’ means that you are not deliberately doing anything with your body. If you leave it alone, it remains in regular slight motion of its own accord. Breathing entails motion. Your body continually automatically re-balances itself to compensate.
Your head is a heavy weight that sits at the top of your spine. Earlier I explained that the spine needs to be balanced in the pelvis. You might think of the experience of balancing a pencil on your fingertip. As long as it is nearly vertical, you need to make only tiny motions to keep it that way. If it starts to fall over, you need a large corrective motion. Now imagine attaching a large, asymmetrical weight to the top end of the pencil. Balancing is much more difficult. So the large, asymmetrical weight of your head plays a big rôle in your spinal balance.
To find the right head position, tuck the chin back slightly toward your neck and down slightly toward your chest. This allows the muscles of the back of the neck to relax. If you touch the back of your neck, you should feel that the curve there has largely flattened out. You should feel the top back of your head reaching upward.
Allowing your head to droop too far forward interferes with alertness and tends to put you to sleep. Pulling the head too far back promotes restless thought. If you find you have too little or too much energy, check your head position.
Relax your face. Emotions cause facial tension: for example, worry tightens the brows. Less well known is that tension in particular parts of the face also causes the corresponding emotions. Deliberately unfurrowing your brow releases worry. When you are despondent, smiling actually can make you happier.
Relax your jaw. Relax your tongue. Let it rest lightly against the gum of your upper jaw. Your teeth should be slightly parted. Your lips can be lightly touching or slightly opened.
The direction of your gaze, and how much light enters, affects mental activity. Generally, angle your gaze downward in the direction of the tip of your nose. Open your eyes just enough that some light enters but your eyelashes prevent you from seeing anything clearly. If you have too little energy, raise your gaze or open your eyes a little more. If you have too much, lower your gaze or close your eyes further.
Subtle differences in posture may have significant effects on your mental and emotional state. Observing these over a period of weeks, months, and years – you gradually learn which postural changes to make in order to affect your mind and heart as you wish.
If you have difficulty attaining stillness, comfort, relaxation, and alertness – advice from an expert can help. A meditation teacher can work with you to diagnose problems and find a way of sitting that works for you. Even if your posture works well for you, a teacher may offer subtle, helpful insights into the mind-body connection.
Physical Antidotes
You can adjust your energy level up or down by sharp head motions. (Please do not employ these antidotes if you have any problem with your head, neck, or back.)
Drowsiness, vagueness, or depression may be overcome by fully relaxing the muscles at the back of the neck, so your chin falls to your chest – and then suddenly jerking your head all the way back. Repeat this exercise three times with a brief pause between.
Similarly, excess energy may be overcome by fully relaxing the muscles at the front of your neck, so your head falls loosely backward – and then suddenly jerking your head all the way forward. Again, repeat thrice.
Use discretion: too sharp a jerk might hurt your neck, and an insufficiently decisive movement may have little effect.
When your mouth is unpleasantly dry, close it. If it fills with saliva, open it partially. Breathing through your mouth will dry it.
This Week’s Meditation Technique
Continue the practice of following the breath from last week.
Transfer your attention from observing thoughts to observing the space within which thoughts arise.
Return to counting only when you repeatedly find yourself lost in long trains of thought.
Aim for twenty minutes a day.
A question to ponder
What do you lose when you are lost in thought?
Preview
Next week’s main topic is motivation: where it originates, why it is important, and what to do when it is lacking.
Recommended Resources
This course is based on the book Roaring Silence, written by Aro Lamas. Roaring Silence covers the same material in greater depth. For example, it expands considerably on the analogies of sky and ocean. Beyond that, its main topic is the implications of meditation for life. This email course, focussed on technique, barely discusses that critical subject. Our web page for the book has a summary and links to Amazon.
One place to find help with posture—and other aspects of meditation—is the Aro contacts page. There are experienced Aro teachers in more than 25 locations world-wide.
See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.
The Aro Members programme provides personal guidance from an experienced meditation mentor.
Support our charitable work—bringing the benefits of meditation to others—by becoming a Friend of Aro.
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