Meditation for People Who Don't Like to Meditate (pt. 2)

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.

1. Choose a focus
2. Become distracted
3. Recognize that you've become distracted
4. 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

The Spirituality of Superhero Action Figures ...

Since I was a little kid, I have loved comic books.  It was Marvel figures in my childhood -- Captain America, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange (Master of the Mystic Arts), the Silver Surfer, Black Panther, Thor ... the whole bunch who've been lighting up the silver screen for the past decade or so.  In my young adulthood, and later, I was more captivated by the other hero universe -- DC -- with its Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, et al..  (I had actually stopped paying much attention to comics and comic book heroes during college, but then a friend gave me a copy of Frank Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns, and I've been a bit more than hooked ever since.)

Much has been made of the role Star Wars plays as modern day mythology, particularly the first three films.  (It's known, for instance, that George Lucas studied with Joseph Campbell, the pre-eminent scholar of comparative mythology, and intentionally followed Campbell's structure of the Monomyth -- the Hero's Journey -- when constructing his story.)  It is also widely acknowledged that superhero stories function as a modern mythology as well, and, more that they function as a reflection of our cultural zeitgeist -- superheroes as "cultural barometer."

As I've noted elsewhere, one of the things I love about reading comic books, something that grows out of reading about the same figures over time, are the numerous ways that these characters are "made real" by their writers and artists.  Every character has quirks that make them more than just a powered person in spandex, and over time you can see these characterizations become more nuanced.  If you read a comic long enough, you can watch its characters grow, mature, change.  And in the hands of some of the real pros, there are a myriad little details of interaction that are delightful gifts that reward those of us who've stayed with them.  While any one issue of any one comic book title may consist of little more than "a slugfest," as they're sometimes derided, over time it becomes clear that they really are a form of what we might call, "expansive storytelling."  Just as the story of "The Boy Who Lived" plays out over the more than 2,000 pages of the seven primary Harry Potter books (and the roughly 18 hours of the movies), and the story of the One Ring is told over the 1,200 or so pages of Tolkien's masterpiece, so too the stories of these comic book heroes and heroines have grown and developed over time.  (Superman premiered in 1938, the Bat-Man first appeared in 1939, and Wonder Woman showed up a scant two years later.)

Given all of this, it should not be surprising that I have quite a comic book collection.  I also collect action figures.  (My collection is probably something in the range of 350-400 comics, and somewhere a little over 200 figures.)

In the new anthology about spiritual practices I edited for Skinner House books, Faithful Practices:  everyday ways to feed your spirit,  I wrote a chapter about a practice that feeds my soul, "Playing With My Dolls."  I note that I'm not one of those people who leave their comics bagged in plastic, requiring you to wear gloves if you take it out, nor do I have my figures boxed and safe from scratches and fingerprints that might lower their value.  I read (and re-read) my comics, and I play with my figures.  I also make scale models in which to pose the figures, because I also take photographs of them.  [As I write this, my action figure photo album on Flickr has over 800 pictures in it.]

I write in my chapter more about what this practice consists of -- in practical terms -- but I also list seven characteristics that I find in my photography of action figures that I think are common to all spiritual practices.  If there's something you do that brings you joy, that feeds your soul, that helps you to be more alive, check it against this list of attributes.  If you find that it has elements of more than a few of them, you may well have a spiritual practice on your hands!

• Commitment:  A spiritual practice, as opposed to a mere "spiritual hobby," is something that you have made a commitment to.  Runner don't always want to go out into the cold and the rain, they'd often rather stay in bed, but they're committed to their running, so they put on their shoes and go out.  Is this thing you do something that you keep coming back to whether or not it's frustrating or challenging?
• Regularity:  Using the metaphor of learning to play an instrument, a person can make a sound on an instrument they pick up haphazardly, from time to time.  A person who takes their instrument out regularly, with some consistency, is much more likely to make some kind of progress.  Is the thing you do something that you do on a regular basis -- daily, weekly, monthly?
• Interior Circularity:  I made up this term, but it points to the experience of different aspects of a practice reinforcing one another.  For example, entering your meditation space respectfully leads you to engage in your meditation more seriously.  Your experience(s) in your meditation make you want to return to your cushion the next day, or later that day.  Are there elements in this thing that you do which, in and of themselves, inspire you to do the thing?
• Flexibility:  Although this would seem to contradict the qualities of commitment and regularity, I have found that I am more likely to engage a spiritual practice that I can, at least in part, fit into my ever changing life.  Yes, regularly and commitment are important, and both the desire and the ability to dip my toe in the waters of my practice seems to me to be important, too.  Is the thing you do something that you can do in some way whenever the mood strikes?
• Separate From Daily Life:  When I'm in my workshop working on building, say, the fourth iteration of a 1:12 scale Batcomputer, or making minor adjustments to the tilt of a figure's head in a photo, I find that the rest of the world "drops off."  The ten thousand things that pull me this way and that, the million-and-one voices that call out to me for attention, quiet down, and in that quiet I am more able to hear that "still, small voice," that "voice of quiet stillness," which some call God.  Is the thing you do something that takes you out of the hustle and bustle of your day-to-day?
• Yet Not Entirely Separate:  There is a critique made of some religious/spiritual folk that they are all pious and holy in church on Sunday, or are filled with loving kindness when kneeling on their prayer rug, yet who seem to forget all about that during the other 23 hours of the day, and six days of the week.  I have action figures in my house and in my office at church, not just out in the workshop.  I watch superhero movies, and read comic books.  There are reminders of my practice throughout my life, and there are aspects of it that are integrated into my daily life.  Is that true of whatever it is you do that you're thinking might be a spiritual practice?
• Joy:  I really enjoy "playing with my dolls."  I'm aware that lots of folks might think it odd -- my teenage sons keep me well aware of that.  Yet I really love it.  Even when it's frustrating, even when I'm faced with a hurdle I don't know how to overcome, I return to the workshop again and again because it doesn't just make me happy to do so -- it brings me real joy.  How about you?

There is a popular notion that "anything you do can be a spiritual practice," and that's true.  That's true especially if you remember those two central words, "can be."  The seven characteristics of spiritual practices that I've just listed are certainly not the only ones, yet I recognize that they are present in my practice of building "sets" and taking pictures of action figures, and it's in that recognition, and through my intentional cultivation of them, that what might otherwise simply be a hobby becomes a way to feed my spirit.

Pax tecum,

RevWik