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.

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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.