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.

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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.