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.


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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.