saturn return to sender

Yesterday morning I attended a Beginning Meditation class at Boulder’s Shambhala center. While I have a lot of curiosity and a little education about meditation, Buddhism and the like, and even though I have not lately been shy about talking about it, I have never had formal training in any “official” meditation technique.

I was curious.

So we discussed and were guided through sitting and walking shamatha meditation as practiced in Shambhala Training. I was pleased to find myself in philosophical accord with the goals for this particular practice. It’s pretty simple, and can be completely secular: practice non-attachment to thoughts and emotions, whether good or bad. They will arise and they will dissipate; practice witnessing them without doing anything in particular, but gently return attention to the present moment. Practice openness to the present. Practice “leading with the heart,” as our teacher put it, through the posture.

I’m down with all that. It’s pretty mundane and practical at this level: deal with things more clearly and directly, gain confidence and emotional stability, be happier. From the Shambhala Training FAQ:

In meditation, what we’re doing is looking at our experience and at the world intelligently. The Buddha said that this is how we learn to look at any situation and understand its truth. This is what a Buddha does—and we are all capable of being Buddhas, whether or not we are Buddhists. We all have the ability to realize our naturally peaceful minds where there is no confusion. We can use the natural clarity of our mind to focus on anything we want. But first we have to tame our minds through shamatha meditation.

Incidentally, after watching a Google tech talk on jQuery, I found that Google recently hosted a talk by Matthieu Ricard, a scientist-turned-Buddhist-monk. His argument is that happiness is influenced by external conditions only up to a point. Past that point, abiding happiness is largely an internal affair. He talks about meditation, compassion, and discusses ongoing research into how regular “mind training”—ie, meditation—physically changes the structure of the brain. A little long, by internet attention span standards, but an interesting talk, and aimed at the layman.

Of course, all this everyday well-being stuff is the is only the tip of the iceberg. For a little more depth, I thought this article was a good read. The author describes two complementary aspects of Buddhist practice:

The first, called shamatha in Sanskrit, is the step by step development of mental and physical calmness. The second, vipashyana, is the step by step heightening of awareness, sensitivity and observation. These two components complement each other and should be practiced simultaneously. Some techniques develop primarily calming, others primarily clarity, still others both equally. It is of utmost importance, however, that one component not be enhanced at the expense of the other. To do so is no longer meditation. Tranquility at the expense of awareness is dozing; awareness at the expense of calm is ‘tripping.’

Shamatha, if taken to an extreme, leads to special trance states; these may be of value, but they are not the ultimate goal of Buddhism. The practice of clear observation, on the other hand, if developed with sufficient intensity and consistency leads to a moment of insight into the nature of the self identification process. At that moment, awareness penetrates into the normally unconscious chain of mental events which gives us the rock-solid conviction “I am separate and limited.” This insight brings with it a radical and permanent change in perspective . . . a refreshing sense of freedom which is not dependent upon circumstances. The attainment of this perspective and the full manifestation of its implications in daily life are the goals of Buddhist meditation.

Or “enlightenment,” to use the hackneyed term.

The article appears to be erudite and is well-written (odd punctuation mistakes aside). Most education I have had on Buddhist practice—from the “acadmic” perspective—has focused on Zen. I’ve never really learned much about other forms—Tibetan or older, pre-Bodhidharma Buddhism—so this is all very interesting.

But as regular readers may know, I am a big Ken Wilber fan. So long as I’m quoting and referring …

I’ve always been impressed by Wilber’s ability and equanimity when he describes the first-person experience of meditation or “resting in the Witness,” or the more esoteric “One Taste” of the nondual. His writing is occasionally hypnotic, divulging what seems to be a taste of the experience itself. Um. I’m tempted to quote like two pages here, but I’ll try to be more brief. From his book One Taste:

And so arises self-inquiry …. I have feelings, but I am not those feelings. Who am I? I have thoughts, but I am not those thoughts. Who am I? I have desires, but I am not those desires. Who am I?

So you push back into the source of your own awareness—what Ramana often called the “I-I,” since it is aware of the normal I or ego. You push back into the Witness, the I-I, and you rest as That. I am not objects, not feelings, not desires, not thoughts.

But then people usually make a rather unfortunate mistake in this self-inquiry. They think that if they rest in the Self or Witness, they are going to see something, or feel something, something really amazing, special, spiritual. But you won’t see anything. If you see something, that is just another object—another feeling, another thought, another sensation, another image. But those are all objects; those are what you are not.

No, as you rest in the Witness—realizing, I am not objects, I am not feelings, I am not thoughts—all you will notice is a sense of Freedom, a sense of Liberation, a sense of Release—release from the terrible constriction of identifying with these little finite objects, the little body and little mind and little ego, all of which are objects that can be seen, and thus are not the true Seer, the real Self, the pure Witness, which is what you really are.

So you won’t see anything in particular. Whatever is arising is fine. Clouds float by in the sky, feelings float by in the body, thoughts float by in the mind—and you can effortlessly witness all of them. They all spontaneously arise in your own present, easy, effortless awareness. And this witnessing awareness is not itself anything specific you can see. It is just a vast, background sense of Freedom—or pure Emptiness—and in that pure Emptiness, which you are, the entire manifest world arises. You are that Freedom, Openness, Emptiness—and not any little finite thing that arises in it.

Resting in that empty, free, easy, effortless witnessing, notice that the clouds are arising in the vast space of your awareness. The clouds are arising within you—so much so, you can taste the clouds, you are one with the clouds, it is as if they are on this side of your skin, they are so close. The sky and your awareness have become one, and all things in the sky are floating effortlessly through your own awareness. You can kiss the sun, swallow the mountain, they are that close. Zen says “Swallow the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp,” and that’s the easiest thing in the world, when inside and outside are no longer two, when subject and object are nondual, when the looker and the looked at are One Taste.

That’s not the best passage for the kind of hypnotic writing I’m talking about, I think, but it’s what fell to hand.

Wilber also puts all this in a larger perspective, endorsing an “integral” practice of which meditation would be one part. There is no reason, he argues, to limit oneself ideologically to any particular toolset. Why not use the best of the East and the West? “Take a practice (or practices) from each of those levels and engage whole-heartedly in all of those practices.”

For the physical level, you might include physical yoga, weightlifting, vitamins, nutrition, jogging, etc. For the emotional/body level, you might try tantric sexuality, therapy that helps you contact the feeling side of your being, bioenergetics, t’ai chi, etc. For the mental level, cognitive therapy, narrative therapy, talking therapy, psychodynamic therapy, etc. For the soul level, contemplative meditation, deity yoga, subtle contemplation, centering prayer, and so on. And for the spirit level, the more nondual practices, such as Zen, Dzogchen, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, formless Christian mysticism, and so forth….

If you just meditate, your psychodynamic “junk” will not automatically go away. If you just meditate, your job or your relationship with your spouse will not automatically get better. On the other hand, if you only do psychotherapy, do not think that you will be relieved from the burden of death and terror. Render unto Freud what is Freud’s, and render unto Buddha what is Buddha’s. And best of all render unto the Divine all of yourself, by engaging all that you are.

In my experience Wilber offers a very compelling and readable account of East and West, how inner life and wisdom traditions can mesh non-destructively with the objectifying tendencies of contemporary society.

But to echo my earlier post, and Wilber’s point too, I think: it doesn’t matter what you believe about any of this. Nearly every wisdom tradition has some kind of practice. As practices, they can be approached with ideological agnosticism, just the same as if you were riding a bike. You don’t need to believe in the mighty god Schwinn to ride one of his bikes; as Tim says, your beliefs are not so important if your actions are genuine and constructive; and you don’t need to believe in any intellectual explanation of meditation to try it out.

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