Meditation Without Bullshit
Books by Black Swallowtail Publishing
Aaron S. Elias:
Meditation Without Bullshit: A Guide for Rational Men
Aaron Sleazy:
Minimal Game: The No-Nonsense Guide to
Getting Girls
Club Game: The No-Nonsense Guide to Getting Girls in Clubs and Bars
Sleazy Stories: Confessions of an Infamous
Modern Seducer of Women
Meditation Without
Bullshit
A Guide for Rational Men
Aaron S. Elias
Black Swallowtail Publishing
Copyright © 2018 by Aaron S. Elias
http://www.aaronselias.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. The sole exception are brief quotes for use in reviews.
The cover image is based on Stairway to Heaven (2017) by Alexander Day, which has been released under version 2.0 of the Creative Commons Attribution license. This book furthermore contains a reproduction of a drawing by Sananda Lal Ghosh, taken from the first edition of Paramahamsa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi (1946). Yogananda's book is in the public domain.
Revision 1.0
ISBN 978-3-942017-05-3
To A. S. Y.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Preliminaries A Fresh Approach to Meditation
The Long Path Ahead
Benefits of Meditation
Practice Prerequisites
Meditation Stripped-Down
Getting Started
Getting Started for Real
Meditative States
Real-Life Meditation and Mental Hygiene
Appendix Serious Meditation
Effects of Serious Meditation
Preface
The popularity of the New Age movement can be easily explained by the natural aversion of the common herd towards critical thinking. However, for anyone with a rational bone in his body, anything coming out of that corner is of little appeal. In the case of meditation, this is an unfortunate state of affairs. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, this book attempts to present meditation in a clear and methodological manner that is suitable for everyone with a strong dislike of the spirituality business.
I have written this book primarily for men who are interested in meditation but not receptive to how meditation is commonly taught. This is precisely where I am coming from as well. I do not want to systematically exclude women, however. Quite the opposite is the case. Yet, I have found that women are a lot more tolerant towards fluffy spiritual concepts, no matter how far-fetched they may be. On the other hand, men seem to be easily put off when confronted with spiritual language, rituals that do not make much sense, or meditation gurus who are overly concerned with fostering a cult of personality.
My first encounter with meditation has been distinctly negative. As a teenager, I had come across video footage of a Japanese Zen monastery. I found it intriguing to learn that monks dedicate a very large part of their waking hours to meditation, with the goal of cultivating a clear mind. However, as I went through a few places that offered meditation in the city I was living in, I was exposed to a culture and worldview that seemed rather foreign, to put it mildly. I encountered cult-like group dynamics, people talking about chakras, the third eye, and the obvious need to donate money to keep their little cult group going. In one group, nobody was able to properly sit in the lotus position. In another, people ended the evening by going to a bar and getting drunk. In a third, it seemed meditation was merely an extended prelude to smoking weed and trying to hook up.
As off-putting as those encounters may have been, my personal experience with meditation has always been very positive. I quickly drew the conclusion that meditation is a viable way of learning how to lead a more focused life. Of course, this does not mean that you have to shed all worldly desires. My encounters with practitioners, on the other hand, could not have been more negative. I only met one group that was serious, incidentally in a monastery in the South of Germany. In order to stay afloat, they offered Zen retreats that were marketed to middle managers and executives. My encounters with the monks running that place were eye-opening. Seldom have I met people as serene as those. However, as I was unwilling to join the monastery, unable to pay for the expensive weekend courses they offered, and dissatisfied with the various spiritual groups I had easy access to, I had to find my own way.
At the time of writing, I have more than twenty years of practicing my own variant of meditation under my belt. I managed to reach an unusual level of calmness and detachment. People frequently remark how centered, calm and unfazed I appear. Mental clarity is rather beneficial indeed. In this book, I am going to share my personal practice, point out pitfalls I encountered, and provide you with a roadmap.
I am reluctant to put a label on my version of meditation. It is inspired by Zen meditation, zazen, but it is significantly less ritualistic. My initial exposure to meditation was via shikantaza, which is a variant of zazen. Yet, due to my highly analytical background, I stripped it of any resemblance of New Age thinking and superstitions. If you so will, you are welcome to refer to my school as Meditation Without Bullshit. Please excuse the profanity, but considering what people in the spirituality business hawk, bullshit is the most fitting description of it. I hope to rectify that situation to some degree with my book.
Aaron S. Elias
Acknowledgements
Many people have been directly or indirectly involved in the creation of this book. Ever since I first publicly spoke about meditation, which was about a decade ago, I noticed that there was significant interest. I thought it might make sense to write a book on my approach to meditation. Lack of spare time kept me from working on it for years. Yet, ever since I announced that I have been working on a draft of such a book, people kept emailing me. Thanks to you guys this book never slipped my mind.
I have had the opportunity to teach meditation, either in dedicated seminars or as part of teaching yoga. For the latter, I have likewise developed a stripped-down version that is much more akin to a relatively high-intensity bodyweight exercise routine. For about two years, I taught meditation in this setting. Thank you all for having been willing participants.
Others have been more directly involved. Primus inter pares, I thank Edward Cottrill for his extensive feedback. I also received helpful comments from Corley Atherton, Chris Griffith, and my lovely girlfriend A. S. Y.
Introduction
Meditation is an excellent method for relaxation. Its main benefit is mental clarity, which leads to a plethora of positive effects on your life. You can expect to become calmer, more relaxed, and more confident. All you need for meditation is a modest amount of spare time and a quiet place. Yet, meditation is commonly taught in a highly convoluted manner. It is for this very reason that Meditation Without Bullshit exists.
This book is the result of over two decades of personal practice. It is also the result of my deeply rooted skepticism. I stripped meditation of the nonsense this subject is all-too-often fraught with and present a version of it that is even more bare-bones than Zen meditation. The result is a school of meditation that should work perfectly well for anybody. Depending on your background, you may strongly object to how quickly I dismiss what many practitioners perceive to be fixtures of meditation. They are not! Just have an open mind, even if this means that you may need to reevaluate some of your positions. If you have fully bought into all the bells and whistles the spirituality industry sell
s, you may experience significant resistance to changing your opinions.
On the other hand, if you have had only fleeting exposure to meditation, then this book is an excellent introduction. It condenses my personal experience from meditating for over two decades. It also takes into account my experience from teaching meditation, either in dedicated seminars or in the context of yoga, of which I used to teach a stripped-down, no-nonsense version for several years. My classes concluded with the kind of meditation I describe in this book.
I have the impression that people generally enjoy getting introduced to my way of meditation. Frequently, my students asked me whether I could recommend books on that topic. Sadly, I could not. The books I knew were flawed in many regards. Some were written in a deliberately obtuse way. Others discussed things that do not exist at great length. As I could not find a book I could give to a rational person, I had to write my own.
Meditation Without Bullshit presents a straightforward and easy-to-follow approach to meditation. It is divided into two parts. The first part, Preliminaries, provides a quick outline of meditation, including its benefits. You will also get a first taste of meditation. The second part, Practice, has a much more applied focus and covers everything you need to know for proper meditation practice. In addition to discussing what you need to know, I also point out what you should disregard. My recommendation is to read this book sequentially. After finishing it, you may occasionally want to return to the second part. For the truly dedicated and ambitious I have added an appendix.
Lastly, I expect you to be a reasonably intelligent adult. This means that if you feel pain any point, then stop and consult a physician. In that case, you likely have much bigger issues to resolve than learning how to meditate.
Preliminaries
A Fresh Approach to Meditation
I am an autodidact. Therefore, I prefer figuring things out on my own, no matter if it takes longer than following the teachings of self-proclaimed gurus. Learning things that way often takes longer as you tend to make more mistakes, go down paths that lead nowhere, and have to figure out some elementary aspects on your own. On the plus side, you gain much more profound knowledge compared to just reading about something or adopting someone else's opinion without questioning or considering alternative points of view. You also tend to be a lot more critical about information that is presented to you when you explore an area on your own as opposed to being spoon-fed.
When I first discovered meditation in the zazen tradition, I was a fairly busy teenager. Looking for a shortcut, I explored the option of learning meditation from others. A common path with meditation is to join a Buddhist congregation or a similar group. Yet, I just could not see any advantage to all the bells and whistles those groups offered. There was no benefit to being part of a group. Standard props like incense sticks, candles, gongs, or even instrumental music I viewed as an unwelcome distraction. Worst of all, very few of the leaders of such groups seemed authoritative to me. Some particularly despicable ones viewed meditation as a means of filling their coffers or a convenient way of hitting on women.
It seemed that group efforts did a lot more harm than good. On the other hand, in the comfort of my home I can meditate whenever, however, and for however long I like. Giving that up for the doubtful experience of joining a Buddhist temple that is run by some New Age horndog was thus a highly unappealing trade. Factoring in the time it takes to get to the temple, it seems downright ludicrous to suggest joining one, considering that the total travel time of thirty or more minutes could instead be used for meditation right away. Those time savings are not the only reason why you will progress much faster on your own. Another reason is that you avoid needless distractions, which move you further away from your goal. For me, the prospect of meditating in a group was about as appealing as doing my homework in a study group full of underachievers. I don't think you will gain anything useful, in terms of meditation, from joining such a group.
The basics of meditation are quite simple. Just like with many other fields of human inquiry, however, there is far too much fluff being built around it. Practitioners are oftentimes all-too-eager to tell you about your chakras, the third eye on your forehead that you urgently need to open, or the inner child in you, which needs to be awakened. Scarily enough, more often than not, those people seem to believe all that mumbo-jumbo. You don't need any of that, though. What you instead need is a quiet place and a comfortable pair of pants. The old comfortable sweatpants you wear around the house when you are on your own will do just fine. You don't even need a pillow.
Being a skeptic, I never bought into the promises of the New Age industry surrounding the various schools of meditation and instead went straight to the core of meditation. The core of meditation comes with some difficulty, though. The initial difficulty is sitting in the lotus position, which is depicted in the figure below. I will talk about it in detail later. I will also present alternatives as well as a natural progression to help you get closer to being able to sit in that position. Sitting in the lotus position is not easy. I was able to sit in the lotus right away, as my body is limber. Yet, sitting comfortably in the lotus position for a longer amount of time took me months of practice. As challenging as sitting in the lotus position may be, it is nothing compared to dealing with all the thoughts that start to enter your mind once all sources of distraction are removed.
Figure 0.1: The Lotus Position
It is challenging to learn to meditate in the Zen tradition or related ones. Other schools promise similar effects while removing the hurdles, but you cannot dilute something and maintain the same quality. Consequently, seemingly more approachable schools of meditation only waste your time. Let me just highlight one very popular approach to meditation, namely guided meditation. This means that you listen to an audio recording or the words of a meditation teacher as you conjure up images in your mind corresponding to whatever you hear. Instead of sitting in the lotus position, you sit on a chair or possibly even lie down. The content of such guided meditations is clichéd, with no shortage of open fields, cold breezes, clear waterfronts, and bright skies. All those images are superficial means to make you relax by evoking associations. By imagining certain sceneries and events you keep your mind occupied, but this is the exact opposite of what you can achieve through meditation, which is learning to actively control your mind and your thoughts.
If you learnt to control your thoughts you would not have any need for guided meditations. Chanting serves a similar purpose, but this may not be obvious. You do not need to bother with it either. My view is that those approaches are red herrings that will do nothing positive for you in the long run. Through meditation in a more traditional manner, such as what I outline in this book, you will be able to reach much deeper meditative states. This will allow you to relax at a level that you will find impossible to achieve by following a guided meditation.
The Long Path Ahead
Earlier, I briefly alluded to some of the positive effects meditation might have on your life. I hopefully have not given you the impression that it will be easy to get to the point where you will be able to reap all those benefits. To provide you with a more realistic perspective, I am therefore going to outline the required effort. To be perfectly clear, the issue is not so much the amount of time you need to spend every day. It is about consistent practice. Improving your mental health through meditation should be within reach for most of you, but you need to make, at the very least, a modest daily sacrifice. Presumably, you brush and floss your teeth every day, so maybe it will help you to view meditation as a procedure akin to flossing your mind.
The main hurdle you will face is that it may prove difficult to handle all the thoughts that keep cropping up while meditating. You will gradually get used to it. However, the first few times will indeed be very challenging as they lead to experiences you may be completely unfamiliar with. To ease the transition into a meditative lifestyle, I suggest two-minute meditations in the beginning, which w
e will quickly extend to five minutes. Only after you are able to endure that without any problems will we extend the time limit. I chose such a short amount of time to lower the barrier of entry. We will have increasingly longer sessions once you have become comfortable with those durations.
You will probably be able to reap a good eighty to ninety percent of the benefits of meditation with a modest investment of time consisting of ten to fifteen minutes a day. Yes, of course, I am pulling those numbers out of thin air. Still, the point is that diminishing returns kick in quickly. Keep in mind that this statement is coming from someone who has meditated for one to two hours a day many hundreds of times. On that note, meditating for one to two hours a day is far from the limit. Zen monks spend most of their waking day sitting in the lotus position. At my most extreme, I spent five to six hours a day meditating, but I eventually realized that I was overdoing it, not in the least because my desire to push my limits in the field of meditation began to impinge on other areas of my life. For years, my daily regimen has been much more manageable. Normally I meditate for half an hour or less. Just try it and decide for yourself how far you want to go. You will probably find that by meditating for fifteen minutes a day the quality of your life already improves noticeably. Even if you never go beyond that, you can expect to benefit significantly from meditation.
Again, do not expect quick fixes. Even though you may consider yourself a balanced and stable person, that perception may be wrong. For instance, only after I started meditating did I become aware of the incredible amount of distractions surrounding us. There is traffic noise, radio, television, your computer, the constant lure of your smartphone, and the list goes on and on. I am not merely talking about audible noise. There are also distractions due to information overload. The consequence is that we are hardly ever on our own and alone with our thoughts. Some of you may not even know what it feels like to think about something for a prolonged period of time.
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