I think often this point is misunderstood and people feel as though they have to give up their dreams and ambitions in life in order to practice meditation. But that’s not the case at all. There is something inherently human about striving to achieve something, and having sense of purpose and direction in life is vital. But, if anything, meditation can be used to clarify and support that purpose, because what the practice will show you, in a very direct way, is that a lasting sense of happiness and sense of headspace is not dependent on these things. This will allow you to live with a greater sense of freedom and ease, confident in where you’re heading in life and yet not so attached to the outcome that an unexpected obstacle or unfavorable outcome will result in heartbreak and loss. It is a subtle yet profound shift in perspective.
And this is how most people live their lives, moving from one distraction to the next. When they’re at work they’re too busy, too distracted, to be aware of how they really feel, so when they get home they’re suddenly confronted by lots of thoughts. If they manage to keep themselves occupied during the evening, then they may not even become aware of these thoughts until they go to bed at night. You know how it goes, you put your head on the pillow and it appears as though the mind suddenly goes into overdrive. Of course, the thoughts have been there all along, it’s just that without any distractions you become aware of them. Or it can be the other way around. Some people have such busy social lives or family lives that it’s not until they get to work that they become aware of just how frazzled they feel, of all the thoughts racing around in the mind.
This is perhaps the most neglected aspect of mind training. When meditation came from the East to the West, for some reason it quickly became about “me, myself and I.” While this was perhaps inevitable at first, it’s important that we now, as time goes by, have the intention to make it a more altruistic type of training. My guess is that you probably struggle most in life when you are focusing on your own problems, because that’s what we tend to do as humans. We like to obsess, ruminate and analyze endlessly. Okay, so we don’t actually like doing it, but it can sometimes feel impossible to stop it. But what happens when you think about someone else’s problems instead? The nature of the internal struggle changes, right? Sure, you might feel sad or upset when you think about their difficulties, but it feels very different from obsessing about your own problems. There’s a shift in perspective. And this is such an important part of training the mind. By focusing less on your own worries and more on the potential happiness of others you actually create more headspace for yourself. Not only that, but the mind becomes softer, more malleable, easier to work with. It tends to be quicker to settle on the object of meditation, less easily distracted by passing thoughts. It also tends to be clearer, more stable and less reactive to volatile emotions. So giving your practice an altruistic edge is about so much more than simply doing the right thing.
It should come as no surprise that the impact of this simple skill can have on your relationships with others is quite profound. In becoming more aware of everything and everyone, you inevitably become more aware of others. You start to notice how sometimes you might unintentionally push their buttons, or notice what causes them to push yours. You start to listen to what they’re actually saying, rather than thinking about what you’d like them to say or what you’re going to say next. And when these things begin to happen you’ll notice that your relationships with others really start to change. But so long as we’re immerse in our own thoughts the whole time, it’s very difficult to truly find time for others.
So, the first thing to get straight is that meditation does not make you think. All it does is shine a big bright light on your mind so that you can see it more clearly. This bright light is awareness. You may not like what you see when you switch the light on, but it’s a clear and accurate reflection on how your mind behaves on a daily basis.
Sometimes people try to stop the thoughts through force. At other times they try and ignore them, to think about something else instead. Or if the thoughts are very interesting, then they might try to encourage them and get involved in them. But all these tactics are just ways of trying to avoid the reality of what is. If you think back to the busy road, it’s no different from getting from the side of the read, running among the cars and trying to control the traffic.
Here’s an idea — rather than running around in the traffic trying to control everything, why not try staying where you are for a moment? What happens then? What happens when you stay on the side of the road and just watch as the traffic goes past? Maybe it’s rush hour and the road’s full of cars, or maybe it’s the middle of the night and there are very few cars at all. It doesn’t matter which it is. The point is to get used to ‘holding your seat’ on the side of the road and watching the traffic go by.’
So, these thoughts that we try so hard to suppress, to get away from or to stop altogether, are pretty much just popping up whenever they feel like it, right? We like to think we control our minds, control the flow of thought, but if it was possible to do that then you wouldn’t have traveled halfway around the world for my advice. In fact, if it were possible to control your thoughts then you’d never have any reason to get stressed at all. You’d simply block out all the unpleasant thoughts and live peacefully with all your happy thoughts.
I’m not saying that all thinking is bad. We need the ability to think in order to live. It’s the nature of mind to think. In the same way that the road was built for cars to journey on, so the mind exists to experience thoughts and feelings. So don’t make the mistake that all thoughts are bad. They’re not — we just need to know how to relate to them. What you need to ask yourself is how much of your thinking is helpful, productive, and how much is unhelpful or unproductive. If you’re worried about losing these creative thoughts, then where do you think they come from in the first place? Do those moments of inspiration come from cold, rational thinking, or do they arise from the stillness and spaciousness of the mind? When the mind is always busy there’s no room for these thoughts to arise, so by training your mind you’ll actually make more space for these creative thoughts to arise. The point is, don’t be a slave to your mind. If you want to direct your mind and use it well, then good. But what use is the mind if it’s all over the place, with no sense of direction or stability?
Imagine a very cloudy day, no blue sky at all, just big, dark, heavy clouds. How does that make you feel? Not so good, right? Now, imagine those clouds are the thoughts in your mind, how sometimes they’re fluffy and white and appear quite friendly, whereas at other times they appear dark and heavy. The color of the clouds simply reflects your feeling or mood at the time.
The thoughts were somehow easier to deal with and I’d taken the analogies of the road and the blue sky to heart. However, when strong emotions arose in the mind or I started to feel physical discomfort, I had a hard time just sitting with it. I found it almost impossible to be unbiased in these situations. When I felt happy and blissed out I wanted to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible. But when unpleasant feelings arose I couldn’t help but resist them. I’d lost count of how many times I’d been told that resistance was futile, that it only made the situation worse, but I just couldn’t help myself.
This went on for some time. I saw it as a kind of heroic battle with the ego and, being quite stubborn, refused to back down. I didn’t yet have the awareness to see that the only battle I was waging was against myself. Eventually I had to concede and arranged to see my teacher. “It’s the same for everyone. We’re attracted to the things we like and we become attached to those things. We don’t want to give them up for anything. The only problem is, the more we chase after them the further away they appear. And the more we try to hold on to these pleasant feelings, the more fearful we become of losing them.”
It was true. In fact, in my meditation practice it had even become a bit of an obstacle, because every time I had a session in which I experienced what I considered to be positive feelings it simply raised my expectations. This meant that when I came to the next session, far from sitting there in the moment, I was trying to recreate an experience from earlier on. “At the same time as trying to hold on to the good things, we’re also busy trying to get rid of all the unpleasant things. It doesn’t matter whether we’re trying to get rid of lots of thoughts, difficult emotions, or a painful feeling in the body, it’s all the same, it’s resistance. As long as there’s resistance, there’s no room for acceptance. As long as we don’t have acceptance, there’s no way of having a peaceful mind. Happiness is just happiness, no big deal. It comes and it goes. Sadness is just sadness, no big deal. It comes and it goes. If you can give up your desire to always experience pleasant things, at the same time as giving up your fear of experiencing unpleasant things, then you’ll have a quiet mind.”
When you experience pleasant sensations in your practice, I want you to imagine sharing those feelings with other people. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the pleasant sensation of a quiet mind, of a relaxed body or a comforting emotion; simply imagine you are giving it away, sharing it with your friends and family, the people you care about. When you experience discomfort in your meditation, whether it’s the restless of a busy mind, physical tension in the body, or a challenging emotion, I want you to imagine it’s the discomfort of the people you care about. It’s as if in an act of extraordinary generosity, you are sitting with their discomfort so they don’t have to.
Despite my doubts, my teacher had been right. When I had the attitude of sharing pleasant sensations they seemed to last longer, and the meditation became more enjoyable. It’s hard to say what changed exactly, but I guess it became a little less self-serving. The other aspect was equally effective. I can’t say that unpleasant emotions or tension immediately disappeared when I applied this method, but the intention had been to find a way to sit with those feelings with a greater sense of confidence and acceptance.
Before that time I’d only wanted to get to know the pleasant sensations and had always feared the unpleasant ones. But this changed everything; it was like seeing and understanding a part of my mind that I’d never seen before — and of course I’d never seen it because I was always so busy running away from it.
You’re looking for the wrong kind of happiness. True happiness doesn’t distinguish between the kind of happiness you get from having fun and the sadness you feel when something goes wrong. Meditation is not about finding this kind of happiness. If you want to find this kind of happiness then go to a party. The kind of happiness I’m talking about is the ability to feel comfortable no matter what emotion arises.
I won’t pretend that this process was quick, or easy, and nor did it mark the end of me feeling unpleasant emotions. But the experience taught me some lessons. One of the most important was that the emotion itself is often not the problem. It’s the way we react to it that causes the problem. For example, I feel angry and respond to it with more anger, stoking the coals, keeping the fire of anger burning. Or I feel worried and I start to feel worried that I feel worried. By stepping back and getting a little bit of perspective I was able to see the original emotion for what it was. And by simply being aware of it, it was as if it had its moment in the sun and was more willing to move on. So often we shut down when unpleasant feelings arise, we don’t want to feel them or be around them. But by reacting this way we only give the emotion a greater sense of importance.
By learning to let emotions come and go, and because there’s this underlying sense of awareness and perspective, then no matter how difficult the feeling, there is always the sense that everything is okay, even if the emotion is very strong. The other lesson I learned was that sometimes, the “idea” of something can be very different from reality. I thought I felt very sad, but when I tried to locate that sadness, all I could find were these ever-changing thoughts and physical sensations. I struggled to find any permanent emotion. I just found thoughts and physical sensations that were colored by the feeling.
At an intellectual level, we can also appreciate the value of so-called negative emotions. I often hear people say that were it not for a particularly difficult period in their life, they would never have gone on and done the things they’ve done — and that even if they could go back and change it, they wouldn’t. With the passing of time and with increased perspective, the experience of emotion can look very different.
It’s the nature of life for stuff to happen. And when it happens it can be good to know that you’re as well equipped as you can be to deal with the situation.
My own modus operandi when I started was one of bullishness. I was not really that interested in what happened along the way, I just wanted to experience the ultimate fruit of meditation — that of enlightenment. I guess you could call it an “enlightenment or bust” kind of attitude, where I was always focusing on a future goal rather than resting in the moment and enjoying all that life had to offer. It’s a common mistake to make in meditation, to search for some kind of experience or want to be rewarded with some sign of progress or fruition, but peace of mind or insight will always be illusive if we are trying too hard to find it.
When it comes to meditation, though, the goal and the journey are the same thing. So my approach to meditation was probably the equivalent of leaving home on a driving holiday, not stopping at any of the places on the way, driving through the night without a break and refusing to look out of the windows during the hours of daylight. It kind of defeats the purpose.
One of my teachers always used to describe this quality as gentle curiosity. When this becomes part of your approach to meditation you’ll notice that the mind feels very open. For example, you may well think, much like myself at the time, that if you’ve seen one breath then you’ve seen them all. And if this is your attitude to follow the breath, then you’ll undoubtedly lose interest very quickly. But if you take the time to look a little more closely, you’ll notice that each and every breath is actually quite unique. The same can be said of the thoughts that pass through the mind and even physical sensations that arise in the body.
In many ways it sums up the process of meditation. And it’s just that, a process. Just because you sit for a few minutes each day doesn’t mean that you will immediately master the mind and no longer fall prey to your old habits. That’s not to say you won’t sometimes experience those “lightbulb” moments, when you realize what it is you’ve been doing. But the process will likely be a gradual one, where each day you will see the hole a little earlier, with a little more clarity. In doing so, you’ll manage to avoid many of the habitual reactions that stress you out. This is what it means to have awareness, to see the mind with absolute clarity.
If you’re distracted, then it’s not meditation. Only if you’re undistracted is it meditation. There’s no such thing as good and bad meditation, there is only distracted or undistracted, aware or unaware.
Sometimes the story might be particularly unpleasant. In these moments it’s very difficult not to lose yourself in the play. Perhaps you even start thinking for the actors on stage. You may feel so involved in these moments that you find it heard to resist the temptation to call out, or jump to the actors’ defense. Or it might be an uplifting tale that brings about a pleasant and comforting feeling inside. In these moments you might see something in the actor or actress that you’ve always wanted fro yourself in life. Or maybe you’re reminded of an old relationship and the mind drifts off to memories of past. Perhaps you even feel so inspired by the story that you sit there planning how best to ask that person you’ve been wanting to ask out for the last five years.
When you sit to mediate it’s a little like watching this play. The images and voices are not you, in the same way that the play or the film is not you. It’s an unfolding story that you’re watching, observing and witnessing. This is what it means to be aware. Your own story, as in your own life, will still require direction and a sense of engagement, but when sitting to observe the mind during your meditation, taking a seat in the audience is by far the best way of watching. And it’s through developing that ability of passive observation that you get to experience the clarity and confidence to make decisions, make changes and live life more fully. Think back to the blue sky, this space that has always been there. Awareness is not something you need to create, as it’s always present. We just need to remember not to forget.
By the end of the week, it’s no exaggeration to say that some couples had taken that chain of thought so far, that not only they had dated in their minds, but they’d got married, consummated the marriage, had children, and spent time thinking where they might retire to. Some had even got divorced! Even though it was their own story that they were creating, they had still chosen to build in some pain and anguish. Yet they’d never even spoken to the other person. This shows how easy it is to get caught up in all the little stories, the dramas, the hopes and the fears of the mind.
Part of the reason that we get so easily drawn into these stories is that we’re so used to doing something, being involved in something, that it can feel a bit boring to just sit and watch the mind, especially if the thoughts are mundane. We create these stories in an attempt to make things interesting, to get away from the boredom. But have you ever stayed with boredom long enough to look what it is? Is it simply a thought or a feeling of wanting to be somewhere else, of doing something different? And if so, then why treat that thought or feeling any differently from all others you observe in the mind? As you know, just because we experience a thought doesn’t mean we have to react to it, or act upon it. We’d be in pretty big trouble if we always did. We actually have the ability not to take thoughts too seriously. It’s just that we’ve created boundaries for when we should start to take them seriously. Think back to a time when you might have had a thought that was so extreme you laughed at it. In that moment, you saw it for what it was, a crazy thought, no more than that. And so you didn’t give it too much importance and probably let it go. So we have this ability within us, it’s just getting used to the feeling of taking up the position of an observer on a more regular basis.
Instead he was feeding the frustration with even more thoughts. “This meditation doesn’t work at all. I feel terrible. I felt fine when I came in and now I feel awful, what’s the point in that? I’m rubbish at this. Typical, I’m rubbish at everything. Can’t one thing in my life go right for a change? Can’t I even just have one hour to sit and enjoy the silence? How much longer is this going to go on? It feels like we’ve been sitting here forever. I thought they said it would only last one hour. This feels more like two hours!” He continued to think in this way, using one thought to fuel the next, increasing the intensity of his frustration and making it more and more difficult to sit there in the process.
The story also illustrates the danger of waiting for the meditation to finish. It’s a common experience and it’s almost as though we think that by simply sitting there and not moving, we’re mediating, no matter what we’re doing with the mind. But this underlying sense of expectation, of waiting for something to happen, is a mind that is looking to the future, as opposed to a mind resting in the present. Think about it, how can there ever be a sense of ease resting in the present moment if the mind is hurried trying to get to a space and time in the future?
Remember, there is only aware and unaware, undistracted and distracted — there is no such thing as wrong breathing or bad breathing in the context of this exercise.
At first glance this discovery may not sound all that extraordinary to you. In fact, it may sound quite obvious. But if it were that obvious, then surely we’d do it all the time, because it’s only when we’re caught up in all the thoughts that we get stressed. So for me it was the realization that the mind can only be in one place at one time. Sure, sometimes it moves so quickly from one thing to the next that it gives the impression of being in more than one place at one time, but that’s just an illusion. The reality in that situation was that by placing 100 percent of my attention on the physical sensation of walking, the mind was no longer lost in thought. I became quite excited about this idea, with visions of how wonderful my new life would be, always living in the present, never distracted by thinking. In fact, I got so carried away with it that within just a couple of minutes I’d lost all the sense of awareness and was completely lost in thought again! As I said before, I think it’s best to think of insight as drips of water filling a bucket, rather than any great thunderbolt that might transform your life instantaneously.
I found that the act of juggling perfectly mirrored my meditation. It became an external reflection of what was happening inside. If my mind was too tight, too focused, then the juggling balls didn’t flow. On the other hand, if the mind was too loose and I wasn’t concentrating enough, then I would drop the balls altogether. So there was something in working with this balance of focus and relaxation, which reflected the inner balance developed through meditation. I guess it’s what most people would describe as being “in the zone” and you’ve no doubt experienced it yourself at some time, perhaps while you were playing a sport, painting a picture, cooking a meal, or doing some other form of activity.