Unlearning Meditation: What to Do When the Instructions Get in the Way

by Jason Siff

  By not stopping our thoughts and feelings in meditation, we are paving the way for gentle ways of being with our experience. When thoughts are intentionally cut off, that is often an act of harming. If it is done aggressively, even with a minuscule amount of force, it supports and furthers the tendency to get rid of thoughts rather than the tendency to get to know them. Our ability to get to know our thoughts and feelings depends on our capacity to stay with them, and staying with them depends on our ability not to get rid of them. Holding our experience gently, thoughts and feelings come and go in their own time. What is cultivated is gentleness, not the feared obsession and domination by inner forces out of our control.

  As you can see, gentleness is related to the qualities of tolerance and interest in your experience, the other two qualities talked about in this chapter. It links them emotionally. Investigation into your experience, when devoid of gentleness, can make you driven to find answers, get results, make conclusions and use them selfishly. Tolerance for pain, emotions, unwanted states of mind, and so forth can be practiced with a warrior mentality, where bearing pain to its limits is a mark of self-mastery. Tolerating what is painful with gentleness toward your reactions to the pain, and what the pain brings with it, feels more like embracing and comforting the pain than holding yourself rigidly in control of your reactions and feelings.

  Interest in Your Experiences

  As much as insight, understanding, wisdom, knowledge, and investigation into experience are talked about in relation to meditation practice, the simple quality that is at the root of all of these is seldom discussed. Teachers and traditions may differ in their opinions as to what that basic quality is, but I would hazard to propose that it is our interest in our experiences that enables us to become insightful, understanding, and wise regarding them. This of course goes against the notion that all you have to do is have an enlightening experience with the appropriate insights and all will be clear—that there is thus no need to waste your time looking at mundane or unacceptable experiences. I would say the opposite is actually true—by looking at our mundane and unacceptable experiences with an interested and open mind, insight, understanding, and investigation can actually be fostered.

  Before you can really look at your mundane and unwanted experiences with interest, wonder, and curiosity, you may need to begin with your interest in the more compelling aspects of your meditation experience. I would not ask you to feign interest in things you have no interest in. It is more skillful to start with what you are naturally drawn to and then to work from there, as in this progression of meditation sittings from a woman who has meditated in this approach for a few years.

  First Sitting: At one stage my attention went to my eyes . . . they were tight, as they usually are when I think. With my attention on them, they softened. My whole face softened. Sounds came from the window, and my attention leaped to the sound, as it wasn’t obvious what it was. It was like I watched with interest as I saw the perception process kick in. It was a rumbling and a gravelly sound. I didn’t put in effort. I just let it slowly register, and it took quite a few minutes.

  Second Sitting: In the beginning of this sit there was a hodgepodge of various things that happened. But the whole way through as I was watching, or recollecting as I went along, there was a sort of theme in an overhanging question of “How do I know?” Something would occur, my mind would parcel it up into a story, but almost straightaway I would sort of challenge the experience, or at least challenge the label or view. I can’t remember all of them, and its hard to frame now, but an example may be as follows. I would feel a tightness in my chest that I would watch for a while. I would think, “Chest tightness,” but immediately there’d be this “maybe not” feel. I’d go into the tightness at another level and sense that maybe it was “joy.” I’d think, “This is joy,” but then up would come the, “maybe not” feel again. I’d sink into another layer of it and I’d think, “This is my energy thing,” and I’d cut into another level of it and think, “This is a being-alive feeling.” This would all happen in quite a short time, and it wasn’t necessarily thought. But I’d just end up with the feeling/sensation, with no label or sense of what it was or who it was, just the sensation, then it would happen again. I remember feeling it as a layering process, and ending up with little sense of self, just the sensations that had gone through some natural kind of process of identity stripping.

  The meditator was interested enough in how she was labeling her experiences to begin questioning the labels she was accustomed to using. Usually, meditators are instructed to investigate the nature of their sensations or the process of breathing, seeing them as arising and passing away or as having other general characteristics, but not to investigate the labels they use to describe experiences. With unlearning meditation, when you follow your interest, it goes to any aspect of your experience, not just a segment of it. Eventually a meditator will find that an interesting area of investigation has sparked an interest in related aspects, and so moves on to another area. Being interested is usually a dynamic quality, but we tend to try to hold our interests in check, as if there is some danger in pursuing new areas of curiosity that emerge. It is by allowing interests to expand and form in this way that interest starts to develop in aspects of our experience that have seemed bland or boring.

  Here is a journal from another woman:

  Lots of thoughts about what I’m planning to do today. Roaming around. Then period of focused thoughts with interest—an idea for artwork. Followed the idea through for a while, developed it, visualized the piece.

  At some point thought came about breakfast—felt energy click in around the idea of what I wanted—quite subtle and quick, and then also very softly and quickly came a sort of turning away from that energy of wanting—just a turning away, maybe with a thought, something like “Oh, I don’t have to go there right now.” Subtle but distinct feeling of what it’s like to renounce something, just leave it—an easing, opening.

  Then an impulse to go closer to that, at first wanting more of the easeful feeling, then feeling more interest in looking at the other side of the dynamic, at the feeling of restlessness under/inside the wanting. Was with that for a while—actually that’s what I noticed first, rather than deciding to look at it.

  At the beginning of the sitting, the meditator pursues visualizing an art project to its end, which, since she is an artist, is something that naturally grabs her interest. But when she moves on to thinking about breakfast, which is a comparatively mundane matter, her awareness of a subtle craving in the thoughts makes her interested. Her first response is to renounce the thoughts of wanting breakfast, and she experiences an opening around that. It feels easeful, and as much as she would want to have more of that feeling, what interests her is the other side of the experience: the restlessness inside/under the wanting.

  The Subtle Nature of These Qualities

  Tolerance, gentleness, and interest may be so subtle as to go largely unnoticed in meditation practice. These qualities may be more apparent at times when something that would normally be present, such as feeling pressured or using force, is absent. You may not realize that you were tolerating an intense emotion or an uncomfortable train of thought until after the sitting is over. In fact, you may not even give yourself much credit for tolerating something that in the past was difficult to tolerate, because in the act of tolerating it, you did very little. You probably just sat with the experience longer and with greater acceptance and patience.

  Because many meditators are given the idea that good, wholesome qualities in meditation make themselves known to us by doing practices to generate them, there is less attention given to qualities that arise on their own. When gentleness arises of its own accord, with the conditions being right for it, it might appear more like a softening around your experience as opposed to some well-defined state of gentleness. You may just be soft and easy on yourself and not call it gentleness. In a similar way, you may suddenly find an old pattern of
behavior emerge in a scenario within the meditation sitting, and instead of not wanting to go there, you’ll be curious about it. You may not immediately consider that the quality of interest has arisen, but that doesn’t matter—we don’t need to identify these subtle qualities whenever they arise. We just need to acknowledge that such qualities are arising in our sittings from time to time and that cultivating them is allowing these qualities to lead and influence our meditation practice.

  PART TWO

  Impasses

  and Calm Spaces

  9

  Impasses in Meditation

  As I sit down to write this section on impasses, my thoughts also go to the two feet of snow that fell overnight outside my house. And there is more on the way today. In the interim, I must figure out how to get my car freed from the snow that surrounds it. Do I shovel it? For a shovel is all I have. Should I call someone to plow it for me? That involves starting a relationship with someone new, and before I do that, my wife will surely want to research it by talking to her friends and getting the word on the snowplow guys in town. Should I go over to my neighbor and ask to borrow his snowblower? That too has its complications. What if I just leave my car buried in the snow and wait until the snow melts? That might take weeks. During that time, I would have to rely on others to get food, mail, and supplies, and the garbage would begin to pile up in the house. Fortunately, we have enough food, firewood, and necessities stocked up to last a week or more, though we would need to take care of mail and trash. The question is: What do I do now with this impasse I am in?

  I could simply decide not to concern myself with digging my car out of the snow and spend my time working on this book instead. It may be a blessing that I am snowed in at the moment, for I can concentrate on writing. But by not doing anything about it I am leaving the solution up to factors outside my volition, perhaps trusting that in time the conditions will change and I will be able to get my car out. This course of action requires patience, a willingness to make sacrifices, and a faith that things will turn out all right in the end.

  Let’s say this is also an acceptable way for working with impasses in meditation. Instead of doing something about the experience of being stuck, you put your attention on something you can do that is both beneficial and productive. Instead of paying attention to the sour mood or the angry thoughts you keep finding yourself in after a few minutes of sitting, you put your attention on your breath or on thoughts of loving-kindness or on a koan or mantra. You stay with something that is a productive use of your meditating time rather than attending to something that would seem to take up too much time and effort and require resources that you don’t have. I could see how staying with a sour mood would be like my choosing to dig out my car with a snow shovel, while staying with a purposeful technique would be like my deciding to make the best use of my time by writing.

  Still, even if I ignore the fact that I can’t move my car, someday soon I will have to do something about it. Periodically during the day, mostly when I am taking a break from writing and am thinking of other things I need to do, I am reminded of the predicament with my car. It just doesn’t go away because I am absorbed on something else. In fact, when the absorption fades, the predicament returns.

  There is a fairly common belief that in meditation, if you stay with your breath, or in the present moment, or do any prescribed technique for long enough, you will have a transcendent experience, a realization, or some kind of internal shift in your way of being. This transformation is then supposed to eliminate the various negative moods and thoughts that keep you stuck doing and saying the same things over and over. Connected with this belief is the notion that impasses are overcome by such experiences and realizations without ever needing to be experienced fully and examined deeply. But as I said above, do you have the patience, can you make the sacrifices, and do you have the required faith to stay with a meditation practice that is supposed to overcome impasses by putting your attention on something other than the predicament your mind is in?

  An impasse is “a predicament affording no obvious escape” according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. Using that definition, one would find oneself at an impasse in meditation when there is no “obvious” way of going through something. All of the usual methods, the bright ideas and good advice, the right-sounding strategies and correct beliefs, don’t help one go through something that one is stuck in, one’s “predicament.” There is a caged feeling around such impasses. You come face-to-face with your limitations, your ignorance, your lack of creativity, inventiveness, or insight.

  It is easy to ignore such impasses when the purpose of meditation is taken to be doing the instruction correctly, trusting that doing so will eliminate all roadblocks and resolve all deadlocks. “What impasse?” you might ask. “My meditation practice is going just fine.” Of course it is, on one level: the level where you have confidence and trust in your practice, believing in its effectiveness and correctness. But I wonder if on another level you feel stuck, confused, limited, or frustrated; if there are thoughts, feelings, and memories that keep repeating themselves as you sit; or if there are certain stories, themes, and problems that keep drawing you in and won’t let go.

  Working with an Impasse

  Every meditation practice we do leads to an impasse. Often it is painfully obvious that what was working so well just the other day is no longer capable of delivering. The common advice meditation students get from teachers is to meditate harder. That is, to tighten around the instructions and put more time and effort into the practice. Sometimes a teacher will offer a strategy that he or she has used in a similar predicament. Occasionally the teacher might suggest that you take a break from meditation. This instruction misses the fact that tremendous learning can arise from staying with your impasses and exploring them more deeply.

  Since I fully expect students to reach impasses, I am more than ready and willing to work with them on it. Some impasses are common for nearly everyone and can be addressed by the approach I have presented. Other impasses—the great majority of them—are highly individual. I can’t just tell people what to do, because “doing something about it” in any form keeps them from tolerating the impasse and developing an interest in it. My approach here in this book is different and highly unorthodox.

  Instead of giving you ways to work with or go through impasses, I am going to explore the impasses various students of mine have encountered. You may find that you relate to some of them in ways that illuminate aspects of your own impasses.

  I would like to acknowledge that there is a tendency for teachers to present the successful and wonderful experiences students have had with their method. Sometimes that is the author’s objective in writing the book—to show how well his method works. This does make a certain amount of sense when presenting a technique, but with a process of unlearning, there are periods that look like success, periods that look like failure, and periods that don’t fit into either of those categories. By reading this book with an open and interested mind, you are engaged in the heart of my approach: exploration into the experience of meditating.

  10

  An Impassable Impasse

  Cliff is a man in his fifties. He is primarily interested in Tibetan Buddhism and has been especially taken with the writings of Pema Chödrön. He came to me fairly content with his meditation practice, seeing no problem with it. After attending a one-day workshop in his hometown, he decided to keep a meditation journal and send it to me. Here is his account of what happened.

  Day one: Started with tracking breathing sensations in abdomen or heart areas. Sitting began without apparent difficulty other than trying to be comfortable. Thought about how to do it right. Had a fair amount of anxiety about doing meditation correctly and tried to just follow thoughts and feelings associated with fear of doing meditation wrong. Felt some anxiety but stayed present. Tried to be aware of the person doing the thinking and follow that inward. Noticed my left leg falling asleep. Fel
t tremendous fear of doing it wrong. Was again present with fear. Aware of constant thinking. Session ended and seemed to pass quickly.

  From this account, it seems Cliff’s most prominent impasse is his fear of doing meditation wrong. This arose after an apparently smooth beginning of tracking breathing sensations in his chest. What was the practice he thought he had to do right, and feared doing wrong? Was it watching his breath? Or was it allowing his thoughts and feelings into the meditation and becoming aware of them?

  Day two: Sat with some difficulty getting a comfortable position for my legs. Transition seemed smooth. I went to noticing sensations of breathing at the abdomen and heart. Dwelt on doing meditation correctly. Tended to notice I was thinking and then as soon as I became aware of thinking, the thought would dissolve, or I would notice my thinking and then become aware of “who” was doing the noticing. Would try to be gentle with this “technique” and notice how good it felt to be kind and avoid judgments; felt rather warm and a little exhilarated. Began thinking I was doing meditation wrong and felt a little low and then noticed the thinking. . . . As meditation wore on, I became more engrossed in thoughts for longer periods before I became aware I was thinking. Thoughts of doing the meditation wrong came up repeatedly, and I felt bad about that. Then I felt some confusion, but each time that feeling of confusion came I would let the feeling be there with equanimity until the feeling lifted. Had a few thoughts wondering when meditation would be over but resisted looking at the timer. Meditation seemed to go quickly and ended sooner than expected. Felt like time was brief in general. I just allowed thoughts and feelings to arise naturally and attempted to meet each with gentleness, allowing whatever thought or feeling to arise and run its course. . . . My state at the end was about the same as at the start.