Category Archives: direct experience

Your Meditation Practice

2 Replies

q-and-a.jpgIn the last post we looked at the Buddha’s insights into three core marks or characteristics of existence. The most important thing to know about them is that they can’t really be taught; they have to be arrived at experientially through the practice of meditation and the opening to our own inner wisdom. When insights arise, no matter how mundane they may seem (Oh, leaves fall off trees! Aha! Everything changes!) we can see how they fit into one of the three core insights: Impermanence, No Separate Self and/or the nature of Suffering. But we don’t force insights or have expectations about them. We simply cultivate the conditions for their natural arising through the practice of meditation and through having the deep intention to be present and compassionate in our lives.

So in this post, we are looking more closely at the practice itself. If you have a meditation practice, hooray! If you don’t, perhaps you will be inspired to start one. But wherever you are with the practice, you may have questions. Here are some questions students had about the practice. If you have others, please ask them by clicking on ‘Leave a reply’ above this post.

Q: Can I meditate in bed? I’d like to meditate first thing in the morning, but I’m so cozy under the covers, I don’t want to get up.
A: Yes, you can meditate in bed. But unless you are practicing in order to fall asleep, find an upright seated position on the bed. For this you will probably need extra pillows and a firm mattress. See for yourself if the position feels supportive enough. All the ‘rules’ about posture were formulated to allow the body to be comfortable for an extended time. If you can sit in a way that you are balanced on the sitz bones, the spine is naturally upright, and all the muscles can relax because the bones support the body, then feel free to meditate wherever you choose.
If for whatever reason you are not able to sit up, remember that lying down is one of the four positions of meditation described by the Buddha (sitting, standing, walking and lying down.)

Q: I’m having a hard time setting a regular time for myself to meditate. I’d like to meditate first thing in the morning, because if I don’t I might forget about it and miss meditating all day and at night I’m too tired. But I want to spend time with my husband before he leaves for work at 8:20. I don’t leave for work until quite a bit later.
A: The best time is always the time that fits most naturally into your schedule. In this case I would suggest meditating right after saying goodbye to your husband. With the place to yourself, it’s quite natural to think of doing this solitary practice. I would highly recommend not checking email or news beforehand as all the thoughts they bring up will make the meditation more challenging. And if coffee causes restlessness, just drink decaf, herbal tea or water instead.

Q: How long should I meditate?
A: Even five minutes a day will make a difference. And that’s an excellent way to get yourself started if you are new to the practice. You can add more time at each sitting or each week.
Most people find that between 20 – 40 minutes works well. Some people meditate twice a day, twenty minutes each time. I do 30 minutes, and more on days when I am leading  meditation. See for yourself what works best for you. I recommend using the Insight Timer app for convenience and to formalize the practice.

Q: Can I practice on my own or should I join a group?
A: Yes, practice on your own. And yes, join a group! They are two different complementary experiences: One you do every day; one you do probably once a week (and then there are extended retreats as well.) Together they provide what are called the Three Refuges: The buddha, the dharma and the sangha. The buddha is your own buddha nature, your practice and your accessing that inner wisdom. The dharma is the teachings you receive from a teacher. You can read books, but in class you have the opportunity to ask questions and get clarification which can make all the difference. The sangha is your community of practitioners. The support of others who are practicing meditation makes a big difference in your ability to stay with your own daily practice and to see the benefits of the practice in the lives of others as well as your own.

Q: How can I deal with external sounds?
A: Stay present with all your senses, including the sense of hearing. Whatever is causing the sound is ‘external’, but hearing is one of the senses we focus on as we meditate. Listening is an important part of the practice, not a distraction or an interruption. We set the intention to be silent, but that is not a demand that the world be quiet to let us meditate.
When you hear a sound, your thoughts and emotions naturally incline to entangle you in identification, judgments, etc. — perceiving the sound as an outside disturbance. Our practice is to train the mind to allow sound to simply be sound. Think of each sound as one small part of what I call ‘the symphony of now’, a never to be repeated concert of perhaps birdsong, doors, motors, voices, rain, wind, coughing, rustling, jackhammer, etc. When the mind gets entangled in thoughts about the sound — preferences, judgments, identifying, memories the sound reminds you of — come back to simply cultivating the spacious field of sensory awareness, allowing the sound to be purely a sound, and notice other sensations arising and falling away in that field as well.

What questions do you have about your practice? If you have a question, probably many other readers do as well, so it’s a kindness to ask.

MORE INFORMATION ON MEDITATION

Freed from the Fortress

2 Replies

We have been looking at the freedom that rises out of the regular practice of meditation. These are not things we have to strive for or changes that we need to make in ourselves. These are the naturally arising benefits of spending say, a half hour each day in meditation. I mention all these freedoms not as commodities to be acquired or goals to be reached, but as gifts that you might notice receiving as you continue to practice.

We each receive these gifts in different orders, in different ways, to varying degrees, and there are probably many gifts that I cannot tell you about, because they are not my experience. All Buddhist teachings come from the direct personal experience of its teachers. There is an established framework of concepts and terms to help interpret the experience, but there must be the experience. It is through this encouragement of direct experience that Buddhism has stayed a living teaching rather than desiccated dogma. It’s like sourdough bread making. Buddha provided the initial starter, but each of us adds our own flour, our own practice and intention, to make the dharma dough fresh each day.

The Buddha ended his dharma talks by saying, “Don’t believe me. Go find out for yourself if this is true.” And every Buddhist teacher’s greatest hope is that students will question the ideas proposed in dharma talks, take them out into the world for a test drive, take them into their own lives, their own experience, their own hearts, and ask “Is this true?”

Teachers speaking from direct experience end up sharing their lives in anecdotes as grist for the mill of sharing the dharma. And the freedom I share with you today is certainly the one that is most intimate to me and that has probably made the biggest difference in my relationships with others. It is the story of being freed from the fortress of my defensiveness.

When we were first married forty years ago this week, Will told me I was the most defensive person he had ever met. It seemed that he couldn’t say anything without me bristling with hurt feelings.

It is hard for me to imagine now, yet I know it was true. If you had asked me about my childhood memories back then, I would recount every experience where my feelings had been hurt, where I had been humiliated, slighted or made to feel stupid.

I remember being teased, and it is easy to see in retrospect how I used all these experiences as building blocks for the fortress. Every comment that anyone made, no matter how benign or light-hearted or even loving, I took in and interpreted through complex filters that turned everything into slights, criticisms, or name calling that somehow made me wrong, stupid, naïve or ugly. Then every time someone DIDN’T say something, I would interpret that negatively as well. For me at that time, silence was not golden, it was leaden and toxic.

Thus experienced, it’s not surprising that my relationships with others were difficult. To befriend me was to walk through a mine field and try not set off any of the millions of land mines I had planted as tests of your love for me. Agh! That anyone bothered is amazing to me now.

How fortunate that I came upon meditation when I was still relatively young, in my twenties. And how surprised I was to suddenly see that fortress for what it was, and to watch as it crumbled away with regular meditative practice. Over the course of years as I continue to meditate, I still on occasion find more leftover bits of the fortress, lone walls standing with no foundation or purpose, but still sending little messages into my system that might, if I’m not noticing, prompt a habitual reaction. My awareness of them lets them disintegrate, at least for now. These walls are leftover unquestioned assumptions that, under the light of insight, can’t justify their existence. As long as I keep the light of insight shining, this freedom from defensiveness is a gift to myself and all around me. (Trust me!)

So what is it that actually happened to me? What is it that happens to meditators in general? Why does a simple practice of meditation produce such radical changes in our psyches? Scientific studies show some of the physiological changes that happen with meditation, including the raised levels of gamma waves. Studies show that during meditation, a flux in blood flow and activity excites certain neurons. The act of maintaining attention sustains activity in designated regions. The brain’s grey matter begins to grow, actually changing its physiological shape.

Of course scientists can’t put a value on whether this change is for the better. But as meditators, we know the value from our own felt experience of living our lives with the benefits of meditation.

Now, I didn’t know about the physiological aspects of any of this, but I suspected there was a chemical component. When I lived in San Francisco’s Haight–Ashbury in 1966, not surprisingly I had a few chemically-induced psychedelic experiences. I called my experience ‘losing my ego.’ In sharp contrast to my normal life as a typical disgruntled, critical, judgmental adolescent, suddenly I was simply delighted to be alive and engaged in the senses. I recognized the gift of life, the humor, the beauty, the complexity and the simplicity. In that state, I seemed to have none of the bristly, defensive qualities that usually plagued me.

But even as great as it was, at some point I would turn to a friend and say, “Remind me not to do this again.” I could feel the extreme and unnatural strain on my body, suddenly flooded with an overload of mind-altering chemicals.

A pivotal point for me was one ‘trip’ when I had a vision of a mountain with many paths going up it. Some of the paths were vertical, some gently switch backing up the mountain. Some were rocky, some lush — all different, but all eventually went to the top of the mountain. I observed people on these paths, earnestly plodding, one footstep after the other. It looked boring, and I noticed that I was already at the height of the top of the mountain, already experiencing what they were seeking. But then I noticed that they were on solid ground and I was in a balloon that was deflating and descending. I may have been experiencing the benefits of this heightened perspective where I could see the wholeness of life, the interconnection and rejoice in that awareness, but I was losing altitude rapidly. There was no way I could sustain my mountain top experience. I realized the only thing to do was to set the intention to climb the mountain myself.

So I have been climbing the mountain ever since, first on a path fueled by an eclectic variety of teachers and books, then for a while with Dances of Universal Peace, then a more intensive period of group and independent meditation that resulted in my book Tapping the Wisdom Within, and for the past couple of decades I have been plodding along on the Buddhist path. I have found it to be a path that is well-traveled over the past 2500 years, but always fresh, not worn out. I travel in silence but feel surrounded by a loving and supportive sangha (community) of practitioners, with teachers who, if I get lost, shine a light on the path so I can find my way again.

Do I feel the way I did when I was tripping? Sometimes. One time on a retreat I even had some of the visual effects I remember while walking in the woods, not the patterning but the luminosity of life shining so brilliantly, even in the shadows; that same day I remember hearing a symphony in the clattering sounds of utensils on dishes and chairs scraping in the dining hall. On my most recent retreat I became intensely aware of the mystery of all that is, how so much is hidden, and it’s absolutely okay. I relaxed into the delights of the don’t know mind.

But these experiences are so much better than those brief trips from back in the day, because these are naturally arising rather than ingested, and my body is comfortable, wholesome and cared for. Even when I don’t have that same intense experience, I feel the awareness, the clarity and the sense of connection. In my daily life this has become a constant presence, this feeling of being very present. I can trust in these gifts of joyous awareness as long as I continue to meditate on a daily basis. I am on the mountain path, and it hasn’t been boring at all!

Thanks to dedicated meditation practice, I no longer see myself as the object of others perceptions but as the universal life force expressing itself through this perspective from this particular point in space and time. When I do think of myself as a unique and separate being, I feel compassion for my humanness as I would for any other unique and separate being I know or see in the world. I am more in touch with my child self than before, and therefore more in touch with creativity, fresh eyes, carefree laughter and pure pleasure.

The fortress of my defensiveness has crumbled, for there is nothing left to defend. Instead there are all these universally shared experiences and traits to be curious about, and the shared joys and challenges of this human experience. The fear of being judged seems to have fallen away. I admit I have not been put to any real test. I am surrounded by the kindest of family members, friends and colleagues who have no intention to harm me. But I subject my creative work to critique, my speeches to evaluation, and my commercial writing and design work to committee, so I have many opportunities to get my feelings hurt or receive confirmation of any negative belief I might hold about my lack of ability. Now if people love something I do, I thank them but don’t feel the same kind of relief I used to feel. When people have negative comments, I appreciate their interest, their creative assessment, and consider their comments seriously, but don’t feel they have attacked me in any way. What a difference! Now I have a sense of collaborating to increase clarity and connection through these various forms of expression. Much more fun!

Being freed from the fortress of my defensiveness is a sweet surrendering of all that had seemed so vitally important for my own survival. I thought I had to be smart, pretty, clever, talented, skillful, savvy, knowledgeable, etc. in order to be acceptable. In order to be loved. What a set up for misery that was! I didn’t stop to notice that what I loved about people, the traits I found most endearing, were often the least ‘perfect’ aspects, and certainly the least striving.

Freed from the fortress of my defensiveness, I am happier, safer, more supported and enriched. I am acceptable in my imperfection. I am fine with saying “I don’t have a clue!” I am fine with being totally uncool. Because cool or uncool, in this moment I am free.