Last week I began to write a bit about meditation. I noted that there seem to be three kinds of folks when it comes to meditation -- those who've tried to meditate but ran into too many challenges, people who've never tried to start a meditation practice because they thought the would run into too many challenges, and those who have a meditation practice (no matter how spotty) and who are committed to deepening it.
When asked about the challenges people have run into, answers tend to fall into three categories: not enough time, can't quite our restless minds, and it's hard to keep the practice alive because nothing seems to be happening (i.e., it's boring). Having looked in the last post at the question of time, I want to address the issue of what Buddhists sometimes call "monkey mind."
Everybody knows that meditation is about sitting still and quieting the mind so that you are not distracted by the usual inner monologue(s), right? That's the point, isn't it? A quiet, serene mind?
Well ... I don't really think so. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that those distractions are actually essential for meditation. Rather than a problem, they are at the heart of the practice.
I have studied a number of different meditation techniques over the years. (I've even practiced some!) And just like I believe that there are core elements in prayer that transcend any religious tradition's particular dressing, I believe that there are four phases in any meditative practice.
- Choose a focus
- Become distracted
- Recognize that you've become distracted
- Choose to return to the focus
1. Choose a focus: in some traditions you count your breath, one count for each in-breath and each out-breath -- "breathe in, one; breathe out, two; breathe in, three; breathe out, four" -- continuing until you've reached ten, and then start over. In other traditions, the focus is a word or a phrase, a mantra. Sometimes you're encouraged to look at a candle flame, or an icon. Yet despite the apparent differences between traditions, nearly all at least begin by suggesting that you focus your mind on something. Zen practitioners sometimes refer to this as, "feeding the hungry tiger," because besides being like a money (jumping from thing to thing) our minds are also like tigers which, if they don't get something to eat, become voracious. Just emptying the mind of all thoughts, then, is a pretty advanced technique. We novices need something on which to focus the mind, so that we can then let everything else go. (Another metaphor could be that the focus we use is like the rodeo clown that gets the attention of the bull so that the other people in the ring can get free.) In choosing a focus, we are choosing to engage with an exercise.
2. Become distracted: This is the part of the practice of meditation that causes a lot of people to quit, or not to begin in the first place. Because we have this notion that meditation is about having a still and quiet mind, the fact that our minds seem to become even more cacophonous when we try to meditate is incredibly frustrating. Some people believe that they just aren't able to meditate because they just can't get their minds to quiet down. "Breathe in, one; breathe out, two; breathe in ... what am I going to cook for dinner tonight? Did I remember to close the door? Oh why didn't I stand up to my boss this morning? Oh crap ... Breathe in, one; Breathe ... I'm a lousy meditator. I can't do this. What's the point? Breathe in, one ..." Some of us get further along in our counting than this, others don't even get this far, but the monkey mind always seems to reassert itself. This isn't failure, though. If we didn't get distracted, we'd have nothing to work with.
3. Recognize that we've become distracted: This is key. If in our meditation we didn't have this opportunity to recognize when we've become distracted, there would be no practice. It'd be like going to the gym without ever picking up a weight or getting on the stair climber. At a certain point we realize that we've forgotten our decision to focus on one thing as a way of allowing all of our other thoughts to drop off. We can, of course, berate ourselves when we discover that our mind has wandered, and many of us do. This is why some of us quit trying to meditate. On the other hand, we can see this recognition of our distractedness as a good thing. It is a major step toward that goal of a still and quiet mind.
4. Decide to return to your focus: As I said, we could choose to self-flagellate when we recognize that we've strayed "from our meditation," or we can accept this as part of the practice, each part of which is essential. If we could choose a focus and then actually stay focused with no other thoughts intruding on our single-pointedness, we wouldn't actually be meditating. And whether you need to return to your focus one hundred times during your practice or just once (right at the even because you hadn't even noticed that you'd been distracted the entire time!), each phase of this four-phase pattern is necessary.
Whatever the goal of meditation may be, as understood through the lens of any particular tradition's teachings, that practice itself fundamentally consists of these four steps: choose to focus your mind on one thing so that you're fully and intentionally aware of it; lose track of that one thing in the flurry of the thousand and one things that we're usually swimming in; become aware that we've stopped being fully aware of what we've decided to do during this time; and make the conscious choice to return to our original focus.
One more thought -- there is a meta-dimension to this four-fold schema. If you, like me, find your practice to be ... spotty ... take hope. The fact that you can't seem to maintain a daily meditation practice is analogous to the difficulty of maintaining focus. Let's say you decide to meditate daily. And you do, for a while. But then life encroaches and you soon realize that you haven't meditated for days or weeks. (Or, as has been true for me more than once, months.) This is like choosing a focus and then becoming distracted. So, just as within a particular period of meditation, notice that you've become distracted, and when you recognize that you've not meditated in a while, choose right then to return to your original decision to engage this practice. See the parallel? Make a conscious choice; loose sight of that decision; recognize that you've forgotten your commitment; recommit yourself.
So ... there's a way of looking at the distractions of your hyper-active minds that might just eliminate that as a hurdle to engaging in a meditation practice. (Or that can support you in sticking to it.) On Friday we'll tackle the last of the most frequently named challenges -- boredom, the experience that nothing seems to be happening.
Pax tecum,
RevWik
