Make no mistake about it, meditation can profoundly change your life for the better; I say this not because it is a pithy thing to say, but because it has changed my life for the better. Meditation has helped calm my monkey-mind; it has facilitated a profound self-healing and, perhaps most importantly in my case, it has facilitated a reframing of my relationship with anger. Don’t get me wrong, my life is not all unicorns, moonbeams and rainbows, and there is still plenty of work to be done. But, my goodness, I feel better about my life now in my mid-fifties than I ever have done before, and meditation has been one of the key ingredients in this transformation.
The first time I was ever given any formal meditation instruction I was seventeen years old; a year after I first smoked cannabis and about a year before I first tripped on LSD or magic mushrooms. In terms of exploring consciousness and your own psyche meditation is much safer, although usually less entertaining, than taking psychedelics. And spinning out on psychedelics is something that I have done on a handful of occasions, and on a couple of those occasions I seriously thought that I might end up in a mental hospital. As it happens I didn’t ever end up in a mental hospital, but it was a close call. Several of my friends from this time were not so lucky. As a side note, within the Western Buddhist Tradition it is extremely common for westerners to come to Buddhism via psychedelics, although psychedelic use among Asian Buddhists is extremely uncommon.
Western Buddhism is the youngest Buddhist tradition, and it draws primarily from three older Buddhist traditions: Tibetan, Japanese Zen, and the Thai forest monk tradition. When I say Thai, I actually mean the wider Mekhong region, so to a lesser extent Burma/Myangmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. But the majority of westerners who ordained as monks and became meditation teachers upon returning to the West underwent their ordination in Thailand. Many of these westerners either studied under Ajahn Chah in the Isaan region that borders with Laos, or with Ajahn Buddhadhassa at Wat Suan Mokh in the south of Thailand. Other Western practitioners studied under Vietnamese monk Tich Nhat Hanh, at Plum Village in France.
After Thailand, the country with the most westerners ordaining as monks is probably Japan. The simplicity, structure and Stoic nature of Zen appeals to a certain type of individual, and many of these individuals studied under, or at the very least read the writings of, Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki. Suzuki authored a number of the twentieth century’s Zen classics and is widely read in the West as well as his home nation of Japan. In addition to formal sitting meditation, Zen also emphasises mindfulness in all everyday activities, particularly cleaning. Even the precision of making a pot of tea becomes a form of meditation in Zen.
The Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s led to a large Tibetan diaspora in many Western countries, most particularly the USA. Communities of Tibetan monks drew in many Westerners hungry for a fresh perspective on the nature of life and reality. From this diaspora a variety of meditative techniques, including Dream Yoga, took root and blossomed in the West. To this day, many Western Buddhists practise in the Tibetan tradition.
There are many different forms of formal meditation techniques and my entry point to this world was Anapanisti; Mindfulness with Breathing. It is one of the simplest, possibly the oldest, and probably the most widely practised meditation technique on Planet Earth. Millions, if not hundreds of millions, of humans practise it every day, so you’ll be in good company if you decide to give it a spin. A tribe of humans from many different backgrounds, some look like me and some look like you (the Homo sapiens species having multiple avatar manifestations). The method is the same. Follow the breath to the exclusion of all else; one-pointedness. There’s a little bit more to it than that, but not much. The doing of not-doing.
The term one-pointedness, although it is an invention in the English language by Buddhist meditation practitioners, is often used by meditation instructors to describe the ‘how’ of meditation. It is not the case that you are trying to “empty your mind” (as many Westerners seem to believe), although the mind under certain conditions does clear, and that experience is akin to emptying your mind but that is a side-effect. Rather you are focusing the mind on one phenomenon to the exclusion of everything else. Other objects of one-pointedness meditations are possible, such as the body (as in the Goenka Method), but the breath is the most common object of meditation both because the technique is simple and we always have the breath unless we are dead. And being alive and conscious are pre-requisites of formal meditation.
The monkey-mind does not like to focus on the breath; however, it finds it boring and contrary to its everyday nature, and therefore it goes to one of two places: the past or the future. Our view of the past is, I would argue by definition, distorted and inaccurate to a lesser or greater degree. You are deluding yourself. At least in part you are; also, your memory is faulty to a lesser or greater degree. Pay the past no heed, let it go, come back to the breath. Watch the breath. Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out. Breathe in and breathe out. Beautiful moment. The self is an illusion.
Or the mind will go to the future. Again, you are deluding yourself to a lesser or greater degree. By necessity any speculation on the future is based on limited, often faulty evidence and pure speculation, but the delusion may or may not be useful. That is an interesting tangent later in this essay, but for now come back to the breath. Watch the breath. Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out. Breathe in and breathe out. Only moment, beautiful moment. There is no ‘self’.
The past or the future is where the mind will go to escape the present, but it may do so in either a banal or fantastical manner. If you are on retreat and it is almost twenty hours since you last ate, and this is the final meditation session before breakfast time you will probably fantasise about food. Despite the fact that your breakfast will only consist of plain rice gruel with some vegetables, your body’s craving will direct your mind to the subject of food. “Mmmmmmmmmm….food. That’ll be nice, can’t wait for that rice gruel. Wouldn’t it be nice if they served up a really nice curry. Mmmm garlic naan would be fantastic, haven’t had one of those in ages. But actually, a pizza would really rock, not a Pizza Hut pizza but a proper Italian wood-fired oven pizza, oh Yeah! Shit, I was meant to be following the breath. Back to the breath.” And so it goes.
The temptation at this point for many newbies to meditation is to judge themselves, “I’m a shit meditator. I can only keep my concentration for about five seconds, like a goldfish. This is such a waste of time, why am I even bothering?” Something like that. I’ve been there and done that. Judgements are not useful; in fact they can be a big hindrance for some people. Forget the judgements and simply go back to the breath. There is no scorecard when you are in the process of training the mind, and using a club of guilt to beat yourself with is counterproductive. Be firm but gentle with yourself, simply go back to the breath and forget about judgements. Later, if you keep a journal and reflect on your experiences, judgements and analysis can be useful but while you are in the moment simply let them go and disappear into the void.
You may have grandiose delusions or experience intense emotions of joy, sadness, disgust or anger as memories (some buried very deeply) bubble up, and there are different lessons to be learnt. If you calm the mind, it is much easier to have productive discussions and negotiations with your inner cast of characters, although that type of discussion falls more under the bracket of Creative Visualisations and/or Jungian Shadow Work. The point about following the breath is that it is so alien to the ‘everyday nature’ of the mind that initially the mind will fight against it with memories, emotions and cravings, but if you stick with it the mind will naturally calm of its own accord. When the mind does calm you may experience great peace within yourself, you may even experience exalted states or breakthroughs of one sort or another. Some people do and some don’t, but exalted states are not the goal of meditation. Ultimately the goal of meditation is Enlightenment, a state that any and all humans are capable of attaining. On the road to enlightenment there are many potential side effects of meditation such as calmness and inner peace, but these are not to be dwelt upon but rather are to be let go of along with everything else.
