by Jason Siff
One predominant way of choosing which narrative to follow is to let the story choose you. That is, to simply follow whatever particularly holds your interest. These are often repetitive thoughts and feelings that you may feel you have already sat with enough or talked about enough or worked through completely. The sad truth is that nothing really gets worked through completely, and recurring themes in your life tend to emerge in meditation. So at first, when one of these themes or issues comes up, you may resist it and try to put your attention elsewhere. When you find that that’s not working, you can just become aware of your feelings about wanting to avoid it. You don’t have to go into it. And in fact, by focusing on your feelings about it, you will become aware of the narrative that causes you to avoid it. That narrative may be one of having worked through it or of having reached some other conclusion about it, such as that it is trivial and doesn’t deserve any more attention. The narrative might sometimes be one of fear or shame. Eventually, from having stayed with and explored the narratives that keep you from being with this recurrent theme, you may find that you will be able to go into that theme without much resistance when it arises again.
We generally think that there is nothing to be learned from a mundane train of thought, such as making a list, reviewing a conversation, organizing something, or imagining a future event. Since these might not seem “juicy” enough narratives, we pass over them, usually by stopping such thoughts midstream in meditation. But I encourage you to explore them. What may start out as mundane (which is just a judgment placed on it without really knowing much about it) can turn into a train of thought that leads to something profound.
Generally, I recommend letting the themes emerge on their own in your meditation sittings instead of bringing issues into the sittings to look at. But occasionally people have told me that many of the most important issues in their lives never enter into their meditation sittings. Once they sit down, their minds go to other things, or get calm, and the big things going on in their lives don’t come up. When that happens for you over a period of time, it might be useful to experiment with bringing issues into your sittings. The most effective way of doing this is to sit when you are in the midst of going through such an issue. That could mean that you would have to meditate at an odd time and in an unusual setting or that you would have to stop other things that you were doing. For instance, you might get into an argument with someone and want to sit with your feelings. Or you might realize something about a kind of unwanted behavior and sense that you are more connected with it at that moment and that it would be a perfect time to sit with it.
The Narrative of Recollection
Over the years I have received a wide range of feedback on the practice of recollecting meditation sittings, talking about them afterward, and writing them down in a journal. One of the main objections has to do with the “accuracy” of the narrative as it relates to the experiences. Some people gravitate toward a blanket statement that meditative experiences (or any experience, for that matter) can’t be accurately conveyed with language. Some go to the other extreme, assuming that the language we use to describe an experience is capable of describing that experience perfectly.
One extreme places more weight on the truth and reality of words and ideas, while the other emphasizes the truth of experience. Most meditation teachings will propound the “truth of experience” view while at the same time placing significant weight on the truth of their words and ideas. So when I encounter a student who argues that all of this recollecting and journaling is removed from experience, I wholeheartedly agree. But after nodding my head in agreement, I will usually reply that we are putting language to our experiences anyhow, and the language we generally use may be even further removed from the experiences they are meant to describe than what we are putting down in our meditation journals. Longer descriptive phrases and clauses provide more information than single-word concepts. Of course, a description of an experience cannot be entirely accurate, but the fact is that we are either going to forget the experience entirely by not describing it or we are going to label it in a perfunctory manner, which in either case leaves us with an inadequate story about the experience. So, what I am asking you to consider here is that by recollecting the experience and putting it into your own words, you are actually less removed from the experience.
The journaling process brings with it its own problems. It can produce a certain amount of commenting on your experience and rehearsing what you will write. So some people journal about the thoughts they had regarding journaling and, on occasion, curse me for giving them this task to write down their sittings. As much as I would like people to be able to tolerate this side effect, I truly understand when it gets in the way and starts to dominate the meditation sitting. To alleviate this unwanted side effect, you can decide before or during the sitting not to journal afterward. After the sitting, however, you can open your journal and start writing, or you can follow through with your decision and not write about that sitting. Also, I don’t recommend that you write down every sitting; it may be something you do only occasionally.
I’m often asked, “What do I do with my journal?” Keeping a journal is helpful for looking back over a period of meditation practice, either as part of your own self-review or as preparation for talking with a teacher about your sittings. When meditators don’t keep a journal, their sittings can blend into a blur, with perhaps one key experience standing out. Then what generally happens is that people remember only certain significant experiences and mostly forget everything else they have gone through in meditation. When that happens, it is difficult to learn from your past sittings. Having a journal handy will aid your memory and, on occasion, prompt you to reflect on and ponder your meditation sittings.
As preparation for talking with a teacher, the journal provides a document that can be referenced during the interview. As you relate the sitting, either by reading the journal entry or by just glancing at it on occasion to jog your memory, new information about the sitting is often recalled. Then when the teacher asks questions about the sitting, there is the possibility that what was on the periphery of your awareness, and did not make it into the journal, may come out in the interview. The sitting becomes richer, and you can often learn things about yourself, and the meditative process, from this exploration of the sitting. And this kind of exploration can enter into your subsequent sittings.
8
Qualities
Various qualities are more readily developed through unlearning meditation than through other, more traditional practices. Unlearning meditation may actually be a trade-off for some people, where they change in certain ways they can appreciate and value, but not necessarily in ways they intended.
The qualities of mind developed in unlearning meditation are not necessary the same ones that are found in Vipassana, Zen, or Tibetan meditation practices. One who has studied the different Buddhist schools and their practices might also concur that the mindfulness developed in the Mahasi method is different from the spacious mind of Dzogchen; that realizing the meaning of a koan is not the same as exploring and inquiring into the nature of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations; and that observing each in- and out-breath is not the same kind of focused attention as focusing on a sensation and following the associations that come to mind.
Before reading on, you may ask yourself what qualities (or abilities) you have developed from the various practices you have done. Unlearning meditation is not going to take them away but, rather, will help you develop them in combination with other qualities. So if you have developed concentration from observing the breath, you won’t lose that hard-won ability through unlearning meditation. You will, however, learn things about that type of concentration that makes it an asset in some situations, but not in others. By examining it more closely, you will be able to see the limitations and deficiencies of that kind of concentration and also its strengths. The same holds true for the mindfulness you might have developed, the discipline and effor
t you have applied, and the insightful understandings you have had. In the various practices you have done, those qualities have been developed in a certain way. I would hope you would find it pleasant, peaceful, and wholesome to add other qualities to them, allowing them to interact like new ingredients in a favorite recipe.
Tolerating Your Experiences
In most meditation practices, people are instructed to calm the mind before looking at intense emotional material. The calmness enables them to tolerate their emotions. But when they do that, the intense emotional material is no longer intense; it is muted, distant, ephemeral. Someone in such a state is generally quite content not to have the intense feelings anymore. The practice then turns into a way to get beyond emotional intensity, and into a calm state, instead of a way to look into emotions. The quality of mind that is being developed here is calmness.
Many people meditate just to arrive at a state of calm, so what is wrong with this picture? Nothing, if the purpose is to get calm and not experience any emotions. But if the purpose is to learn about intense emotions so that you can be less dominated by them, then there is something not quite right in always relying upon a quality that makes it impossible to look at them. The need to be calm in order to be with intense feelings may turn into a way to postpone being with such feelings. It may even lend support to the notion that being with such feelings is unnecessary as long as one can pacify them through meditation. The hard reality here is that intense emotions will keep popping up, sometimes when you least expect them, and you may find that the tools that worked to get you calm don’t always work when you need them.
The way to be with an experience as it is involves the cultivation of greater tolerance for such experiences. We don’t begin by tolerating intense, unacceptable thoughts and feelings in meditation. We start out wanting to manage them or get rid of them. That is understandable. And if certain techniques aid in that, naturally we try them out. But these techniques may get us calm instead of enabling us to build up enough tolerance for difficult experiences.
Developing tolerance is a gradual process. You can’t force it. Forcing yourself to tolerate something that you feel you should be able to bear, like knee pain during meditation, often leads to a struggle with the pain and anger from being with it. The same is true of trying to tolerate emotions such as fear, rage, or grief. These difficult-to-tolerate experiences need gentleness, not force. We need to have patience with ourselves and not feel pressured to get through the discomfort.
Many of you who have been meditating for some time may just find that a little shift in how you relate to your thoughts and feelings in your sittings will facilitate becoming tolerant of them. Those of you who have begun with the instructions in this book may find that you have already made this shift without having to give it too much thought.
Here are a couple of journal entries from a longtime meditator who came to one of my retreats.
First sitting: I noticed a shift in my practice today as I concentrated less on the breath and started to become aware of other things that were going on in my body. I noticed a ringing kind of static noise that was like sound but seemed to come from within my brain, between the ears. I have recently become aware that I tend to stop my mind from talking when it is midsentence and return to what I think is a meditative state. Today I intended to become more aware of that before the meditation, and the result was a feeling of more allowing. I noticed that I tend to stop the thoughts when they are just about done anyway, so I just let them go more toward their conclusion. I always seem to have an abundance of erotic thoughts or imaginings, visions of naked girlfriends that come and go. I allowed these also. Toward the end of the meditation things seemed to become quite peaceful, and the time between thoughts grew large. A sense of peace and joy that was subtle and slight was with me, and I felt like I did not want to stop at the end of the half hour. I noticed that I was thinking about what I was going to write about during the meditation and I don’t think I wrote about much of the things I thought about.
Second sitting: Neutral is a word that I would use to describe today’s sitting, and it seems that same word describes my general feeling lately. There were no swings of emotion, and there was a sense of tranquillity. I am getting better at letting my thoughts go to their conclusion and then recognizing the space that is created between thoughts. A lot of planning goes on, yet the plans are not realized or acted upon after the sitting, so I wonder why I plan so often during sitting. It feels good to sit and do nothing, because it is the one time during the day when there are no demands upon me to act or be something. I feel very patient and understanding of the pace at which things change, which often seems slow.
In these sittings the meditator is not only noticing how he has stopped his thoughts as part of his previous meditation practice, he is also learning to tolerate their going toward their conclusion. Basically, the practice of cutting off your thoughts in midsentence or midscene does not cultivate tolerance for thinking in meditation but, rather, leads to its opposite. By allowing sexual fantasies and plans into his sittings, he finds that they too run their course, and he is not consumed by them for the remainder of the meditation, as one might fear, but instead his mind moves on to other things and to other states of mind. In this process he is also developing other qualities, such as patience with himself and the pace of his meditation and interest in understanding his planning mind instead of trying to find ways to stop it.
Of course, there are sittings from hell, which are exponentially more intolerable than the one described above. My advice to you is that if you are overwhelmed by an emotion, a scene, a type of thinking, or a memory, do not force yourself to stay with it. Be with it up to the point when you can’t take it anymore, and then bring your attention to something grounding, like the touch of your hands or the breath or anything you’ve found to be a good anchor at such times. Just let your attention become grounded for a little while, and if the feelings, thoughts, or memories return, let yourself go back into them. You may have to go back and forth for some time in the sitting before you begin to notice a greater tolerance for the intense inner experience and, consequently, have less need to return your attention to something that grounds you.
In time you may then be able not only to tolerate such “horrendous” and “tumultuous” meditations, you may also begin to understand what keeps them going, as in this next journal entry. This is a different meditator, whose former practice involved labeling emotional experiences and distancing from them. After a few years of working with me closely, he has lost the distance and control over such intense experiences in favor of being in them and able to tolerate them to a high degree.
I have avoided sitting the last couple of days. This follows several really good days with my girlfriend, and then we had a fight. Not really even sure what about. Felt put down, not good enough. Old bogeymen. Sat the night it happened, as I couldn’t sleep. Poor night’s sleep the night before, and waited until she left and then sat. Feel alive with sensation, heart pounding, guts churning, really don’t want to sit. Initial thoughts of revisiting fight, her saying I am willing to settle for less, I accept being treated badly by staying at my job (she is a coworker), kind of rush of thoughts. Some anger, but I think mostly sadness and fear. Back to thoughts around argument, maybe she is right, which I said in midst of argument, maybe I do settle and am willing to be put upon, maybe I will never change, her doubting me and whether she wants to be with someone like that. Painful thought of her in the morning asking me to leave, saying I had broken her heart. Physically really uncomfortable, want to get up, guts upset, hoping I will have to go to bathroom. Also thoughts of I will sit more today. Other not-so-strong thoughts of other things I will do today that need taking care of. Resolve to sit for the half hour I have specified. Go through a list of things to get done today. Open eyes and look around, look at time and sit for last ten minutes, calmer but still upset.
Meditating after an argument, a disappointment, a scare, o
r anything that throws us off balance can be very beneficial as a healing and learning process if we can develop the tolerance to be with the thoughts and feelings that are churned up. As you saw in this scenario, the meditator became calmer toward the end of the sitting by tolerating the intense feelings and not trying to manage or eliminate them. Like much of what I am pointing out in this book, the pattern is the opposite of what is often presented as correct meditation practice. His calmness follows upon a storm of feelings; it is not about creating a calm container to silence the storm.
Qualities are interlinked. Tolerance won’t develop without other supporting qualities, which it in turn also supports. In the next two sections, I will focus on two other qualities that are cultivated by unlearning meditation: gentleness and interest.
Gentleness
I consider the quality of gentleness an important factor in unlearning meditation. It is primarily about being gentle with your harshness, irritation, anger, and impatience when those feelings are present. In this respect, it is intentional, as you remind yourself to be gentle with the pressured feelings, the self-critical voices, or the thoughts that demand your attention. After a while gentleness can start to arise in you without your having to remind yourself about it, and like many such qualities that we invoke or apply in meditation, it can then also emerge in situations where we least expect it, where it is most needed.
We all know what gentleness is like, even if we didn’t experience much of it in our childhood or if we have had traumatic experiences that have eclipsed the softer side of humanity. It is being tender and caring when another is hurt or suffering. It is being friendly and understanding with someone. There is not only a soft voice but a soft demeanor, one that makes the gentle person also kind and trustworthy.
The qualities of self-acceptance, loving-kindness, and compassion all partake of this quality of gentleness, but those three qualities are more complicated, requiring learning, reminding, and practicing for most people, while gentleness is right there in front of us; it is at our fingertips, if we would only draw it out the rest of the way. That is what we are doing in unlearning meditation. We are clearing away what keeps us from being gentle with our own experience and that of others.
