by Jason Siff
This table illustrates how meditation practices can begin with instructions based on one type of meditation practice and yet lead to a different meditative process. Often, however, the meditative practice is presented to students highlighting the developed process it can lead to (its goal) instead of the basic process it incorporates in the instructions. For example, when you practice meditating with a single-syllable mantra, the method of doing the practice is to repeat the mantra over and over. The goal of the practice, however, is to become completely absorbed and concentrated on the mantra and enter into a state of unified consciousness. If that form of meditation were presented without such a goal, then the stated objective would be the constant repetition of the mantra in and of itself.
Even though each of the meditation practices listed in the table can lead to processes or meditative experiences different from the one(s) stated, they are often taught as though they lead to only one process. Other processes that arise while doing those practices are not usually considered acceptable and are thus either devalued or dismissed. It is quite possible, and even likely, that someone practicing awareness of the breath will not arrive at a connected or non–taking-up process for some time. The person doing that practice would more quickly find himself in a conflicted process, in periods of struggle around the instructions, or in a receptive process, giving up doing the instructions altogether for a while. Both of these processes would be considered “outside” of the breath-awareness practice. Yet they are occurring within the practice. This is the case with each meditation practice you are taught: meditative processes you experience that are not part of the goal of the practice are excluded from that practice rather than included in it.
In the case of Recollective Awareness Meditation, however, all six meditative processes have a role and function within the practice. The nature of the practice is receptive, but it can lead into the other five processes, including them in significant ways. That is one reason why I do not state a goal for this type of meditation. If I did, it would eclipse and exclude the naturally arising processes that come from sitting in a receptive manner. Instead, by including everything experienced in meditation, there is no single experience that is its goal. Where meditation leads is a result of how you engage, develop, and learn from these six meditative processes in a lifelong path.
PART FOUR
Leveling
the Hierarchy
of Experiences
24
Assessing Meditative States
It is quite natural for us to develop a hierarchy of meditative states. At the top are what we consider optimal states of mind, such as mental clarity, equanimity, mindfulness, and deeply tranquil experiences that are wakeful. Near the bottom are those experiences that are considered mundane or uninteresting. Generally, at the very bottom are negative emotional or painful states of mind.
This hierarchy of meditative states may not be explicitly stated in anything you have read or heard, but it has been reinforced by other meditators and teachers alike. It comes up as a word or phrase describing how you feel about an experience. Or it is seen right there in the meditation sitting as part of the running commentary on your experiences.
When I ask people to look at how this hierarchy operates in their sittings, they sometimes feel as though they are being asked to let go of the optimal states they experience. That is not the case. It is not about letting go of optimal states but about seeing into how you assess your experiences using them as the standard for comparison. And by asking you to look at those experiences that have been devalued on account of such comparisons, I am not asking you to dwell on those experiences but to consider that by devaluing them it becomes hard for you to be with them and learn from them.
As you continue to meditate, you may find that many experiences have not been assessed within your existing hierarchy. That is primarily because they have gone by largely unnoticed. For usually as our experience gets subtler and subtler, it also gets harder to put into existing language, which consequently makes it harder to identify and thus harder to evaluate. You can’t really evaluate something that you are dimly aware of, except maybe to say that it is “strange, mysterious, or indefinable.” By putting language to these experiences, we also fit them into our hierarchy.
You may think that assessing and evaluating experiences in meditation that have not undergone this process is moving in the wrong direction. Shouldn’t we be going in the direction of having no preferences? That’s a noble goal but highly unrealistic, and in practice, it tends to lead to a lack of discernment. Discerning wisdom not only knows the differences between qualities of mind but also knows their value in terms of the path toward awakening.
For instance, by noticing a subtle quality of compassion in an internal dialogue that in the past you would have ignored as mundane thinking, that experience can become valued. Then, instead of becoming concerned at having been engrossed in a fanciful inner dialogue, you become able to see that there was real thoughtfulness and caring for the individual in your thoughts. The experience then naturally moves to another place in your inner hierarchy of mind states.
States of mind that are labeled as negative may arise at times when good qualities are also present. If you label the state of mind as negative when some compassion or understanding is also present, you will put an experience that is wholesome and beneficial in a place in which it is to be “overcome” instead of developed. Wouldn’t you want to develop more compassion for yourself when you are upset at somebody? When compassion does arise within an internal dialogue, or actual situation, of being upset, wouldn’t that compassion be something you would then want to cultivate? Should such beneficial states of mind be seen with an all-or-nothing view, where it has to be absolute compassion with no trace of ill will? With such an absolute view, many wholesome and beneficial states that arise in the course of meditation may be erroneously evaluated as worthless or a waste of time.
Part of the problem here lies in assessing an experience on the basis of a single prominent characteristic. This often happens when we conclude what an experience is before having investigated it thoroughly. When we explore our experiences, it is likely that the judgment we have of them will also change because we become aware of more of what is going on. So during a patch of anger in a meditation sitting, you might also notice hurt, fear, and periods of being less invested in it and more gentle. Acknowledging the gentleness might be a way to see the experience as not wholly negative but also containing a positive element. By acknowledging that, the experience can shift from being at the bottom of the hierarchy to somewhere closer to the middle, where it becomes easier to accept. It is still not perfect, not at the top, but it is no longer in the rubbish bin.
State-Dependent Qualities
The notion of qualities, abilities, and inner resources being dependent on one’s state of mind is a familiar one in psychology but is not used that often in meditation teaching. Yet it is found in the discourses of the Buddha. The basic theory is that the state of mind we are in greatly affects the qualities that can be accessed. For example, when we are in a deeply calm state, especially one of the pre-jhanic states, we may be able to notice what is occurring while in it, but when we come out and return to a more normal waking state, we have no memory of what went on. Awareness does not seem to bridge the two states. The quality of awareness in the calm state is not the same as the quality of awareness in a normal waking state. These two separate states of consciousness have a different kind of awareness. They may also have different kinds of concentration, effort, and ways of feeling and thinking.
When you look at the concept of consciousness from a Buddhist perspective, it is not an entity such as a self, but a way of knowing your experience. Changes in states of consciousness are thus changes in ways of knowing. When we go from one state of consciousness to another, we not only feel differently, we perceive things differently. This is how we experience the difference between deep sleep, waking, pre-jhanic states, and che
mically induced altered states. They seem like completely different worlds, with one not so easily relating to, or intersecting with, any of the others.
So it should be no surprise that certain qualities of mind that you develop in meditation will appear to be different and function differently in other states of consciousness. Otherwise we then tend to make the assumption that a quality is entirely absent in a state, when it may just be manifesting in that state in a different way. Awareness as it functions in hypnagogic or pre-jhanic states and in waking states is an example of this—we may tend to think that awareness is absent in our pre-jhanic states because we can’t remember anything when we come out of them, when, in truth, during those states there are periods of being aware.
By not seeing and acknowledging the qualities in certain states of mind, we may devalue those experiences. Sometimes we are so busy looking for certain qualities to be present, as when we look for some kind of clear, sharp awareness in our calm states, thus missing what qualities are more easily observed, such as the peace or stillness of mind that could be found in them. We might also have the idea that we should be able to do things in certain states of mind, such as focus on a meditation object for a long period of time, when that may not be possible. Looking at qualities and abilities as being state dependent helps us get a realistic picture of what is actually possible in the states of consciousness we go through inside and out of meditation.
Optimal States of Mind
Optimal states of mind are often believed to be the goal of meditation. When we arrive at an optimal state of mind in our meditation sittings, we usually recognize it as such. We know we would like to have this state of mind last longer. It often becomes a standard to measure other, less-optimal experiences and states of consciousness. If it has not immediately changed our view of the nature of reality or the truth of existence, it most likely will as we hold on to it, remember it, and try to reenter it or re-create it. Our tendency is to take an optimal state of mind to be a realization or an experience of a truth when it agrees with the descriptions we’ve heard.
What interests me about this in the context of unlearning meditation is how these optimal states function for us. They can work for us at times, against us at other times. They work for us by giving us confidence in ourselves as meditators and trust in the meditative process, as well as in our teachers and their particular teachings and traditions. They do this by bringing the teachings closer to our experience—instead of trying to experience the states of mind we hear about, we now have our own experience of those states of mind. It is no longer someone else’s experience that we reference when we hear people speak of such meditative states but our very own.
On the downside, however, we can develop a certain amount of pride, ownership, and self-identification around such experiences, for now that they are our own, we can make something out of ourselves on account of them. This can be a very subtle thing. It may not be much of an impediment for some people, while for others, it may infect their minds to the degree that they cannot settle for anything less. For them, optimal states become something they need to experience in each meditation sitting, and so when they go through periods of not having such experiences, they either must live off the memories of past optimal states or feel deprived of them. Such deprivation can be awfully deflating and even lead to giving up meditation practice altogether.
It is here that unlearning your reliance on optimal experiences in meditation may become necessary. You can see things about yourself and learn from all of your experiences, not only the optimal ones. You may need to remind yourself at times that this has indeed been the case. Then you may find it easier to let go of the need to have an optimal state of mind in order to investigate your experience—though you might still prefer an optimal state to any other that comes along. That is perfectly natural, totally human. It is not about removing optimal states from the top of the hierarchy, or doubting their usefulness and skillfulness, but about not getting so attached to them that you disregard everything else.
Attainments
Attainments are an integral part of meditation practice, especially within more traditional settings. When learning Zen from a roshi or Vipassana from a Theravadin monk, for instance, you’ll most likely hear about the kind of enlightenment or awakening experience that will happen to you if you follow that practice. Those experiences are often considered attainments, which are permanent and irreversible, and they can indicate a certain knowledge that can’t be lost, certain negative qualities that have been shed, or a certain connection with a higher truth or ultimate reality.
Attainments are often granted by teachers after the student has reported an experience or realization that matches what the attainment is said to be in the teacher’s tradition. A meditator will rarely claim an attainment for himself without verifying it with a teacher, since such attainments often carry with them the status of now being a part of the tradition in a significant way and often pave the way for the student’s becoming a teacher within that tradition.
Many people who have been granted attainments trust in their teacher’s assessment of their progress in meditation and consequently believe in the validity of their attainments. Others may question whether it is true or not. Early on in my own experience, when my teacher told me I was a sotapanna, a stream-enterer (the first of four stages culminating in final liberation), I believed him for about twenty-four hours, and then it stuck me, “How can he know?” So I took it upon myself to learn more about how he came to that assessment. I studied the texts used to chart a student’s progress in meditation toward becoming a stream-enterer. I consulted other monks who were knowledgeable in this area, including my teacher at the time, to ascertain how they knew when someone had become a stream-enterer. And I talked with other monks who had also been told that they had that attainment. I also inquired into the experiences that they had told to their teachers when they were granted their attainment. From these conversations and my own study and reflections, which were done gradually over a two-year period, I came to a simple conclusion: teachers do not know their students well enough to make such claims for them.
This conclusion may be a bit shocking for you, especially if you have been told you have an attainment by a wise, selfless, compassionate, venerable teacher. How well does your teacher actually know you? Does he or she know you better than you know yourself? In these cases, students often do believe that the teacher has some special ability to see into their minds and know with certainty that they have arrived at a particular attainment. The Buddha was said to have this ability. But that does not mean that modern-day meditation teachers have it too.
All of this comes down to whether you can find the attainment verified within your own experience. To verify an attainment in your own experience takes time, learning, and honesty. The time factor lies in suspending belief in the certainty of the attainment and entertaining it as a possibility for a period of time. This opens the door for honesty around it. You are then able to look at aspects of yourself that may not have changed due to the attainment experience and consider whether the attainment has actually seeped into those areas. You can also notice those changes that have occurred on account of the attainment that agree with the teachings regarding that attainment and see confirmation in them. But you still don’t have to decide either way as to whether you have the attainment or not, though it may at times feel distressing not to know for certain. Here is where additional learning can help. When studying the teachings regarding attainments in various traditions, you can get a better idea of what changes with an attainment as stated in the texts, as opposed to what is believed by your teachers and fellow practitioners in a particular tradition. In some cases, such as in Vipassana, the Pali canon has different descriptions than those that are found in the later commentarial texts that modern-day teachers generally consult. This discrepancy can open up a whole can of worms in regard to whether the modern versions are corrupt or, in the opposite direction, whether the e
arlier versions are incomplete or poorly stated.
There may be no way to prove an attainment beyond the shadow of a doubt, and all of this work to verify it may be one huge distraction from the practice of meditating. I have followed the approach of not talking about attainments with students, keeping my teaching free of this whole business. Instead, I prefer to talk about people’s development in meditation in terms of discernible qualities being present with more frequency, having greater influence on their decisions and actions. The various qualities that together would be seen to make up a description of a particular attainment are part of this picture, but without all the stuff around being someone who has a certain attainment and therefore “possesses” these qualities.
When you take away the need to ascribe an attainment to someone in order to acknowledge a difference in how the person is, there is a freedom from creating a self around those qualities—there is no person who is identified as being such and such on account of what the teacher has told him or her. What there is is a humble person who is becoming aware and awake, and who manifests self-honesty, wisdom, patience, friendliness, compassion, and other excellent human qualities.
A POSTSCRIPT TO UNLEARNING MEDITATION
Unlearning meditation is an open-ended process, so much so, that after a while, you might find your meditation practice to be so open and free that it is hard to recall what it was like to meditate in a way that felt rigid, pressured, and result oriented. The doubts, anxieties, and concerns about a receptive approach to meditation tend to die down considerably over time, though they may not vanish altogether. When someone asks what you do when you meditate, you might find it hard to give a clear and precise answer. As you continue, the meditation practice becomes less defined, less tangible, and less conceptual. It becomes loose and diffuse.