The Meditator's Dilemma
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Because a secure, warm internal holding environment is foundational to meditation practice, this is where meditation instruction needs to focus first and foremost. When meditation teachers guide students in how to cultivate the inner atmosphere—the holding environment for meditation—then meditation practice can begin to flower.
How can a meditator create an internal holding environment when a teacher is not present? Is it possible to consciously arouse feelings that will change the atmosphere of meditation? In Buddhist psychology, strengthening positive affect is not only possible but encouraged. For example, there are practices designed to elicit compassion for oneself. In the past several years, teaching compassion and loving-kindness meditations has become increasingly common in meditation instruction to address the harsh and critical voices that can dominate the practices of students.
This trend is encouraging, and early on I thought this alone might establish the holding environment essential for meditation. However, over the years I have found that to be insufficient. Compassion, and especially self-compassion, can be difficult to arouse in a climate of unworthiness, which is pandemic in the West. Part of the fabric of unworthiness, and the catch-22 of these practices, is the sense that one does not deserve to feel compassion for oneself; one is not worthy of it. Repeating the traditional phrases, “May I be happy, may I be peaceful, may I be free from suffering,” simply reinforces this dilemma. One can end up swimming in self-doubt, wondering why one is not feeling any warmth at all. I have seen many students struggle with compassion meditation in this way.
So I continued my search for a single exercise that would create an inner holding environment. Then one day in meditation, I recalled touring the cockpit of a jumbo jet with my brother-in-law, who was a pilot for a major airline. I remembered looking around in amazement at the incredible array of buttons, switches, flashing lights, levers, and pedals. Watching me, David said, “It’s not so simple, this business of taking off. It’s not a matter of pushing one button or pedal; it requires going through an extensive checklist in a particular sequence.”
A light went on in that moment, and I realized that the same might be true of cultivating an inner holding environment for meditation. It would involve breaking the process down into a manageable sequence of practices that would eventually lead to meditative liftoff. With that insight, I began to consider that not just one, but a number of qualities contribute to an inner holding environment.
Over the following years, I have identified several core qualities—the buttons, switches, levers, and pedals—that together can create the holding environment for meditation. In the following chapters, we will explore these essential cornerstones of the inner holding environment and the exercises designed to elicit them.
QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION
It seems that we are always encouraged to create some kind of “container” in meditation. What is different about creating a holding environment?
It is a matter of degree. I thought I was creating a container in meditation just by bringing a bit of settling intention to the sensations of the breath at the beginning of a session. But there was no deep settling or relaxing, and I was only giving this beginning phase of practice nominal lip service. There is little appreciation in the West for the importance of creating a welcoming, comfortable, heartfelt foundation for meditation. That will not happen with a few token breaths. It is a training unto itself.
If I keep coming back to the breath again and again, and the attention stays more and more, isn’t that a holding environment?
Think of the last time you were fully engaged and deeply moved by someone or something in nature. Is that how it is for you when the attention begins to stay with the breath? For most of us, that is certainly not the case. And when you are fully engaged in this way, do you have to bring your attention back again and again to the present moment? Doesn’t it naturally stay in the vicinity? That is the point, and the function, of cultivating this type of holding environment in meditation.
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MAKING MEDITATION PERSONAL
I RECENTLY SPOKE to a piano teacher who worked with children and asked him what he found most important in teaching beginners. He said a first secret was allowing them to choose the songs they played. Second, he encouraged them to explore, noodle around, on the keyboard early on.
I see “choose the songs” and “noodle around” as an equally important metaphor to engaging with meditation successfully, particularly as beginners. In fact, the first step in creating the holding environment is giving ourselves permission to meditate in a personally creative and meaningful way, rather than force ourselves to align with traditional instructions.
Traditional mindfulness instructions put little emphasis on the development and enhancement of individual needs. There is a notion in meditation circles that it’s problematic to want anything from meditation, which has been called “spiritual materialism.” I believe it’s time to set that notion aside. It simply gives meditators one more reason to feel they are doing the practice incorrectly or to blame themselves for being selfish. Our emotional needs matter. This is our North Star. We want to know how meditation can help improve our balance of mind, increase our focus, and decrease our stress.
The Dalai Lama has emphasized repeatedly that the purpose of life is happiness. We are wired to be happy. It’s a biological imperative. That means we are learning meditation to get happier. The sooner we adopt and internalize this basic, core intention, the better. I want fewer disturbing thoughts, more peace, more self-worth. Perhaps I include the wish that others may benefit from the work I do in meditation, and perhaps I have had direct experience with this. If I accept myself more fully, for example, I may be less likely to judge others. If I quiet down regularly in formal practice, I may be able to access this more easily in daily interactions. However, whether we are beginners or long-term practitioners, our core agenda centers around happiness.
Once we accept this reality, we can comfortably locate our own particular reasons for meditating, identifying clearly what we hope to get from the practice. Next we can tailor meditation practice to suit our goals and personality style and give ourselves permission to be creative in meditation practice, to experiment, to explore.
Memory Highlights
The assumption underlying traditional instruction is that wise and compassionate qualities of heart and mind will arise spontaneously in the course of meditation practice. Follow the basic instructions, and those qualities will develop. However, being a run-of-the-mill, restless, tense, striving, self-critical Westerner, I have not found this to be the case.
My favorite book as a child was The Arabian Nights. I loved the magic-on-command feature; rub a lamp and the wish-granting genie appears. Sadly, though, the famous command “Open, Sesame!” doesn’t work in meditation. Ordering thoughts to disappear or tensions to ease through verbal suggestion carries no magic that creates a nourishing internal holding environment.
What can help, on the other hand, is evoking selective memories. One day, I was trying very hard to relax in meditation and kept telling myself to “lighten up.” Tired and frustrated, my mind eventually drifted to a summer vacation scene from my childhood. I was lying face-down on a dock, the warm sun on my back, looking through the slats at fish lazily swimming just beneath the surface of the water. I let myself just enjoy this memory. Without any effort, my mind became relaxed and soft. I instinctively and intuitively lightened up.
The next time I found myself straining in meditation, I consciously brought that scene to mind and rested there until my mental and physical energy felt more balanced, softened. Voilà! What I had been unable to accomplish through willpower happened effortlessly through accessing a salient memory. This soothing, powerful childhood scene became the starting point for creating my inner holding environment.
I worked with James, a client meditator who, like most of us, had trouble relaxing in meditation. He came to me having tried popular guided imagery exercise
s offered in self-help books: “I tried focusing on healing rays of the sun, lying in a mountain pasture, basking in warm Caribbean water. Nothing! Worse than that, I got more tense because I couldn’t do it.”
His homework was to explore childhood memories and associations, in search of an image from his personal repertoire that would be supportive of relaxation.
The next week he came in smiling:
You won’t believe this, Doc. When I was a kid, I watched a lot of sports on TV with my dad. We always watched Wide World of Sports, and every year they had the cliff-diving competition in Mexico. These guys would do swan dives from a hundred-foot cliff! This may sound crazy, but I remember I used to feel a sudden sense of calm as they jumped from the cliff. I tried recalling that moment in meditation, and it worked. I brought to mind the image of the diver jumping right as I was beginning to exhale. I exhaled as the diver jumped and experienced a sense of deep relief and quiet as the diver went into free fall. In a single exhale, I relaxed dramatically.
This would probably not be found in the top one hundred suggestions for inducing relaxation, but it worked for James.
The usual approaches to overcoming difficulties in meditation differ greatly from the one I initially stumbled upon. Traditionally, five mind states are considered obstacles in meditation practice: greed, aversion, dullness, restlessness, and doubt. The three solutions typically offered for these afflictive emotions are (1) bringing direct attention to the difficult mind state, (2) reflecting on someone inspiring, like the Buddha, and (3) refocusing on the primary object of meditation, usually the breath.
For new meditators, focusing on the difficult mind state itself is challenging. Most of us don’t come to meditation to spend more time getting intimate with our afflictive emotions. When one tries this approach, it will be met with resistance. Let’s say I am restless in meditation. I notice the presence of tension in the body and racing thoughts. These feel very uncomfortable. I want to get away from this discomfort, which I do by spacing out in a fantasy or an irritated rant. Then I come back to the present and judge myself for being an incompetent meditator. I notice that. This process quickly degenerates, and my restlessness grows worse. Why would I want to do this? It would be like asking a new client in psychotherapy to immediately talk about something extremely emotionally distressing. We may get there after establishing a ground of safety and trust, but not in the first session. Yet this approach of “just stay with whatever arises, including unpleasant sensations or moods or mind states” is a common mindfulness instruction.
The second solution—reflecting on someone inspiring—usually yields mixed results. I may feel inspired by thinking about the Buddha or Mother Theresa, but I am also aware of how distant my own state of being—filled with restlessness and doubt—is from the object of inspiration. Now I’m feeling discouragement on top of my restlessness.
The third approach—making a greater effort to return to the focus of meditation—is often ineffective because the primary object of meditation is frequently not compelling. It is a neutral object at best. We need first to establish something positive in the field of awareness, an object that the mind wants to alight upon.
Experienced meditators might say that knowing that one is uncomfortable is the starting point of meditation. Before we can go further, we need to stew in our juices, recognizing how stressful it is in there. Isn’t this the first noble truth the Buddha taught? “No pain, no gain” may be useful in the gym, but not in meditation. Working with difficult mind states is ultimately important, but in my experience this is more productive for Westerners after the inner holding environment has been established with confidence.
Most people are not interested in consciously and quietly being present to feelings such as irritation and anger and sadness, not to mention the subtle stressors of the mind. They want meditation to bring comfort and relief from emotional storms and obsessions.
Here again is a parallel to the process of psychotherapy. People come seeking relief from symptoms. In order for healing to happen, the symptoms and their causes need to be explored, but only after the client feels safety, comfort, and trust in the process. The creation of the holding environment is the first critical step, and it is equally important in meditation practice.
Before we can consciously hold difficult mind states without discomfort or restlessness, we have to learn to self-soothe, to create an internal condition of comfort and ease. Whatever our motivation for practice, the starting point is getting comfortable and confident as quickly as possible. We need positive reinforcement that will encourage us to sustain meditation practice.
I faithfully attempted to follow traditional meditation instructions for twenty-five years before I gave myself permission to explore memory in the service of cultivating the holding environment in meditation. I encourage you to try this, in your own way, in the guided meditations that follow in the next several chapters.
Many people object at first that they don’t visualize well. The problem is often that they have no relationship with whatever they are asked to visualize. I was encouraged to visualize a Tibetan deity called Green Tara by one of my early teachers. I understood that she represents awakened qualities of mind to which I aspired, but I had no personal connection to her. On the other hand, I can easily visualize my grandmother’s face in fine detail at any moment. Not only that, but when I bring grandma’s face to my mind’s eye, I am filled with gratitude, an essential ingredient of the holding environment. I encourage practitioners to uncover personally meaningful images from their own wellspring of poignant memories.
It takes some practice to call forth these distilled, empowering memories. Most of us are skilled at accessing unpleasant memory lowlights with ease. Memories of disappointment, betrayal, regret, and unrequited love arise regularly, not only in meditation, but in daily life. Neuroscientists have assured us that we are not alone in this, that it’s universal, a byproduct of evolution. They have named it the negativity bias.
We are wired for both survival and happiness, but survival takes precedence in the evolutionary hierarchy of needs. When we are not mindful, which is much of the time, the mind looks for trouble, both in the past and in the imagined future. This relatively primitive troubleshooting is the reason the wandering mind is correlated with unhappiness. It may have served an evolutionary purpose, but the universal side effect is neurotic obsession and worry.
Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.
—Blaise Pascal
When balanced mindfulness is present, however, the negativity bias is disengaged, and this is when we have the capacity to develop new neural pathways, more conscious and less self-defeating mental patterns. In order to do this, we need the aid of a supportive inner milieu.
Distraction, worry, and obsession are frequent visitors, and they will show up when we are first inclining our minds toward positive memories. There is an art to this, and it takes some patience. For example, I can recall my exuberant first dog, Whitey, and feel a wave of delight, until I recall that his exuberance was, at times, excessive: like the time the laundry man walked into the house without knocking and Whitey bit him in the leg, which led to Whitey being taken away from me, which leads me to consider other unhappy experiences in my life, and down the rabbit hole I go . . .
There is an art to arousing positive memories and staying with the positive aspect of the memory. The initial instruction is to settle back and allow memories to come forward. This is easier said than done, because it flies in the face of our tendency to grab the steering wheel, in this case by actively sorting through the cabinet of memories. Settling back is an acquired skill in meditation. It requires a different kind of orientation, less about effort in the usual sense and more about inclining the mind in a particular direction. It is definitely not about straining. I enjoyed playing with a crystal-ball toy in my childhood. Shake it up and your fortune, or the answer to your very im
portant question, would float up to the surface. The emphasis in accessing fruitful memories is on allowing images to float up to the surface.
One of the first things to become aware of in meditation practice is the difference between going out to an experience versus letting experience come to you.
Try this simple experiment:
1. If there is some ambient sound in your vicinity, bring your attention to it for a moment.
2. Notice that you can attend to it in an active way, going out to the sound, or in a receptive manner, receiving the sound.
3. Try this with eyes closed, moving back and forth between these two positions a few times.
Next try this with seeing. Observe how the mind can go out to see or settle back and receive the visual field. We can focus on something in the visual field or have a soft gaze as we look at the sky. Play with these modes of seeing.
This time try it with a memory. After closing your eyes, actively look for a pleasant memory from childhood. Next settle back and allow an uplifting memory to float up. Take some time with this. Sometimes surprising fragments arise, ones that you had long forgotten. At times a series of images arise, either slowly or in quick succession. What follows is a personal example:
When I was a young boy, just learning to swim, my father would play a game with me in the lake. He would stand with his legs spread wide in about five feet of water, and I would dive down, hold my breath, and swim between his legs without touching them. Then I would move farther away and try again; how long could I hold my breath? This was a powerful bonding moment with my dad.
The face of my grandmother and swimming with my father are two of the core distilled memories that often bubbled up for me during the memory slideshow. These people were my primary caregivers, so the memories themselves became the holding-environment memories of my childhood. Naturally they help cultivate the holding environment in my meditation.