“Meditation is not something that we do. Whether we know it or not, it is what we are.”
—Rupert Spira, The Transparency of Things: Contemplating The Nature of Experience
It can seem as if what Rupert Spira has just written can't possibly be true. In this post, I begin by sketching, in a very cursory way, a particular style of yogic meditation that has been imported into the West and, in consequence, has come to seem as if it's what meditation is full stop. In the following post, I'll set out a very different account of what, according to the Direct Path as expounded by Sri Atmananda, is to be understood by the phrase I’m, as a term of art, I’m introducing here: “meditation without practice.”
Meditation As A Discipline: Common Problems
Let's suppose that you've been introduced to some “deliberate mindfulness” meditation technique (in the words of Loch Kelly) or to some practice whose purpose is to bring one to one-pointedness. This could be termed “yogic meditation” or “concentration practice.”
Let me give you an example: you assiduously follow the breath, for instance, as it moves from navel to nostrils and from nostrils to navel. You are strongly encouraged, then, to keep your focus (in this case) on the breath and to set aside all other experiences. Other object-oriented one-pointed practices include Zen counting to 10, keeping your attention resting on the tip of your nose, silently repeating a mantra, labeling thoughts when they arise, experiencing the sensations inside of the nostrils, etc.
What common problems might you run into? There are many! In no apparent order:
Almost without fail, you start by drawing a firm line between “in” (here, the breath) and “out” (or everything else). This concept--“everything else”--codes the rest as obstacles, disturbances, temptations, etc. Accordingly, you may be fighting to maintain focus in the face of these mind-concocted disturbances.
You think that you need to have a special, quiet place in which to meditate. You may believe, too, that you need to do it in a certain posture. Thus, any other “set or setting” simply won't do.
You might believe that there's a sternly “right” and “wrong” way of doing it. Thus, the mind can be filled, at times, with doubt: “Am I doing it right? Could I be doing it better?”
You could be thrown into a love/hate relationship with it: you love it when it's humming along or when you've done it “100 days in a row.” And you hate it when it's hard, when the mind is agitated, when it's physically painful, and so on.
It can feel terribly impractical or solipsistic. Other things, like work or duties or “generating maximum social impact,” can seem vastly more important or salient or “needed.”
For many, this concentration-style practice can appear to be separate from everyday life and from ongoing activities. Your life, it seems, is split into two.
Apart from sitting in a group which may occur on a weekly basis, you regard sitting practice as something that you're supposed to do by yourself. Accordingly, it can feel lonesome, or--to sound this theme once more--it can give rise to guilt in cases where you'd rather not do it or in those where you're not “doing it enough.”
Concentration practices are, well, focused on one object. Concentrate! But the mind is not readily capable of sustaining its concentration on any one object for very long. Sure, concentration can improve and does vastly improve, yet one will ultimately find that concentration flags and that wandering mind summarily returns. One may wonder: “Isn't this a failure? Aren't I a failure?”
Since, it can be argued, concentration practices lay considerable emphasis on the power of the will (hence on making “right effort”), one can't help but notice that one's willpower wanes. And then what?
For secular meditators (I won't touch on the metaphysical doctrine in this post), there often arises a lack of motivation. “What's the point of sitting here? Of continuing to sit here? Maybe I'm calm enough.”
At the end of a meditation period, one often experiences calmness. However, upon standing up or later on in the day, one will notice that the cycle of suffering (samsara) will resume. One, bent on progress, may ask: “Am I making any progress at all? Weren't there 'calmer periods' then? Why is this time of my life more tumultuous? Obviously, meditation isn't ‘working.’”
Alluding To An Entirely Different Understanding Of Meditation
It wouldn't be wrong to say that all of these problems can be traced back to some ego-form or another. Nor would it be inapt to point to the fact that what is written above applies equally well to any other discipline that closely enough resembles this one. But these lines of thought may not land. Or one or both might, without intending to sound so, seem pat or glib.
A second line of inquiry, then, would be to ask whether there is such a thing as “meditation without practice.” What do those like Rupert Spira mean? To what could they, or Daoists for that matter, be referring? Is there really any sense to understanding the heart of meditation as being what we essentially are in lieu of being grasped as something we only sometimes and perhaps improperly do? And if such a thing exists, then what, really, does it taste like?
I'll take up at least some of these questions in the next newsletter.