Starting with Samadhi

Is samadhi—the Pali/Sanskrit word used in Buddhism to refer to concentration—a good starting point for teaching meditation, and mindfulness meditation in particular? It is common for meditation instructors to ask their students to focus their attention on some object, such as the breath or body. A clear benefit of this approach is that many people are familiar with relaxation techniques that involve attention to the breath or body. However, one reason these techniques are so useful for relaxation is that they can be quite boring. Thus, they often produce sleepiness in the meditator, or restlessness in those feeling energetic and not inclined toward sleep. Moreover, asking someone to be mindful of just one aspect of experience is tantamount to asking them to endure repeated failure. Without a self-compassion practice to draw upon, this can be extremely disconcerting for beginning meditators. After all, the instruction to “Simply focus on the breath” sounds like it ought to be, well, simple. Add to the mix the inner turmoil and lack of self-efficacy felt by many therapy clients, and you’ve got a recipe for frustration and disappointment. At a minimum, I think the beginning meditator deserves to be apprised of the difficulty of the task he or she is about to undertake, and to be informed of its true purpose: the development of mental awareness and the ability to refocus the mind. If the immediate goal is relaxation/stress reduction, why not use breathing exercises or progressive relaxation instead of samadhi?

Today I shared this idea with a friend who finds meditation intolerably dull, and she thought that starting with something other than concentration would have been helpful to her, but then asked what I thought would make a better starting place. I need to give the question more thought. Since I started with Samadhi myself—and beat myself up for years about my lack of success, but also persisted because of the relaxing effect—it’s impossible for me to know how it would have felt to start with some other practice. My immediate guess is that a practice of self-compassion, mental noting, or simply saying “Yes” to whatever came up would have worked well for me. Of course, a hypothetical sample of one isn’t much to go on, and results may vary. I’ve heard from seasoned therapists that many people’s sense of their lack of self-worth is so ingrained that attempting a self-compassion exercise is an incredibly uncomfortable and unpleasant activity for them.

As a philosophical aside, I often wonder whether mindfulness of just one element of experience can be considered true mindfulness. I tend to think not, but I suppose it depends on the attitude in the mind. If I am practicing mindfulness of breathing, and I experience a sensation of pain in my leg, I can be accepting of the pain even as I redirect my attention back to the breath. My skepticism arises from the fact that, if the pain persisted for a significant length of time, I find it unlikely that I would be able to repeatedly redirect my attention without feeling that I was pushing away the pain. But that is really my limitation, not a limitation of the practice.

Clarity of Thought and Prose: Orwell and the English Language

“As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”


                                                                                                                                  - George Orwell

Until today, I don’t think I’ve ever read Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language in its entirety, and his thesis hit home like a slap to the neocortex, both with respect to what I read every day in the media and what I write myself. His essay also ties in nicely to a post I’ve been meaning to write for weeks explaining why I blog so infrequently even though I have a lengthy and ever-growing list of ideas for posts. It's gotten to the point where once-meaningful jottings like "Ajahn Sumedho and principles" and "The simplicity of awakened awareness" no longer connect to anything in my brain--though I think the latter phrase could be an excellent title for a blank post.

Orwell argues that instead of writing each sentence to express exactly what we want to say, and using fresh imagery to make our ideas clearer, we often write in abstractions and string together a series of shopworn phrases (e.g., shopworn phrases) and unnecessary, superfluous, and infelicitous jargon. In doing this we not only muddy our meaning to the reader, but to ourselves.

This is a tendency I’ve noticed in my own writing for quite a long time. I’ll often write some statement that sounds very powerful and persuasive, but when I consider its truth in concrete terms, I realize that it’s an overgeneralization. Typically, my response is to further complicate the statement by throwing in some qualifiers. At other times, when I try to clarify the meaning of some abstract statement, I realize that I’m not entirely sure what I meant to say in the first place. This happens quite often when I try to write about Buddhism. I realize that I’m using some term, such as awareness, in a vague way, and even if I understand the meaning I’m trying to convey, I wonder whether my language is consistent with that of more learned students of Buddhism. As an example, is my experience of metta substantially similar to theirs? Is the common term “lovingkindness” really an apt representation of the experience? If I said “warmth and friendly good wishes” instead, would anyone understand what I was talking about? If I just stick with the Pali term so that people can choose their own preferred translation, will they think I’m being pretentious? How quickly I’ve moved from the sincere desire to write clearly and truthfully to a concern about the opinions of others, and all without having gotten down a single sentence.

I often find it even more difficult to express experiential phenomena or self-insights in clear language. What feels profound comes across as trite or banal on the page. Simple language is easy to overlook or dismiss as oversimplification. Orwell argues that employing fresh metaphors is a good way to clarify and concretize our ideas. There’s a reason a book like Animal Farm has such a deep and enduring impact on the mind, yet coming up with original metaphors is serious work, at least for someone like me who is not primarily a visual thinker. Oh well. As Boxer said in Animal Farm, “I will work harder.”

"Letting" Go

"If you let go a little you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace."
                                                                               - Ajahn Chah

Buddhist practitioners often talk about letting go, but what does that phrase really mean? I've often thought it was a little misleading, as though all we have to do is get out of the way and "let" mental phenomena go, and they will simply disappear of their own accord. Of course, this does seem to be how things go much of the time, even if we're not being mindful: the moving finger of the mind writes, and, having writ, moves on. However, this doesn't seem to be the way it works when it comes to things we actually want to let go of. Much like Dick Cheney, these mental states seem to hang on with tenacity, with no help from us. Letting them stay, and being with them with lovingkindness seems to be the best we can do.

The other night was one of those fortuitous occasions when the process seemed to work rather differently for me, so I thought it would be worth exploring the experience in more depth. The main thing I noticed is that my mind was repeatedly caught in the idea of letting go. Also, even though I wasn't consciously trying to force any thoughts out of my mind, there was still a subtle pressure toward emptiness. With that recognition, my mind was able to take a backward step that allowed all ideas and stories, including the pressure itself, to drop away. Without the mind's attachment to them, thoughts seemed to dissipate of their own accord before they were even fully formed. Although the experience did not provide any insights about how to be present with difficult mental states, it was a welcome reminder of just how much letting go is possible.

Robert Wright

Although I'm always skeptical of journalists who present themselves as intellectuals--and, frankly, of media elites in general--I've enjoyed Robert Wright's work since his days writing "The Earthling" column at Slate well over a decade ago. Accordingly, I was interested to learn that he has been dabbling in Buddhism for over ten years, has been blogging about it at the Atlantic's website, and is now writing a book about it.

Longing for Stillness

The clouds move through our Valley
Drizzle then perfect sunshine.
Balancing the elements.
The sky too big for our own smallness.

Coming to this place with these simple instructions.
The vulnerability of this human intimacy challenged.
This breathing into our own darkness.
Somehow being alone in our own arrogant selfishness.

This sitting, allows the chaos of our world to gently yield.
Reaching out through the years.
Finding some grace; some medicine.
That shakes the heart; and loosens our grasp.

Stepping out of a life so long ignored.
Dipping back into one's uncertainty,
forgetting the strength in our own bones.
magnifying the prayer of this mysterious groudlessness.
Softening, for some final blow.

Having beaten the judger in ourselves 1000 times.
Only to crack the old” selfishness” .
What seemed like a battle becomes a symphony.
Holding this simple, wild, unfettered heart.

Our world open to the great stillness.

                                                                 - John Travis

Sloth and Torpor, Incognito

One of my favorite Buddhist phrases is “sloth and torpor”, the translation of the third of the five hindrances to meditation. I was listening to a talk by Joseph Goldstein that touched on this topic. Though typically associated with sleepiness or dullness, he notes that at a deeper level sloth is simply the deep-seated tendency of the mind to retreat from difficulties. He also points out that sloth and torpor frequently masquerade as self-compassion: When we are tired or bored, instead of investigating those states, we often respond to a kindly voice inside us saying, “Let me be good to myself. A nap would be just the thing right now.” Perhaps because I believe Western adaptations of mindfulness practice have too often given short shrift to compassion—and to self-compassion in particular—I have frequently fallen prey to this vice in my own practice. As an antidote, I find it helpful to remind myself that true self-compassion is a willingness to be with what’s unpleasant.

When it comes to effort, there is always a balancing act. If we try too hard to be mindful, the effort itself can become a distraction, yet we can also fall too easily into daydreams and rumination. Goldstein suggests that skillful effort occurs when the mind is relaxed and open, whereas unskillful effort can be recognized by a forcing of the mind. This distinction sounds quite appealing to me, yet when it comes to everyday life, I frequently find myself resorting to cajoling.

Nomads

“O longing mind,
dwell within the depth
of your own pure nature.
Do not seek your home elsewhere.
Do not confine your innate infinity
within the mansions of finitude.
Your naked awareness alone, O mind,
is the inexhaustible abundance
for which you long so desperately.”

                                - Sri Ramakrishna

My favorite cartoon is titled “The Worst Thing about Being a Nomad”. It depicts a family traveling through the desert with camels, and the children are asking “Are we there yet?” When it comes to our basic nature, we are all nomads. We are constantly seeking out various forms of temporary refuge, and our minds are forever on the move, skittering away from the present moment. At the same time, we are also nomads in a deeper sense: each of us carries our real home with us wherever we go, and we can rediscover it any time we can “dwell within the depth of our own pure nature.”