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

by Jason Siff

  The initial segment of experience in the second meditation sitting above:

  Begin with intense anxiety arising in chest, stomach. With hypersalivation. Thinking occurs—difficult to describe, as they are not entirely verbal, but they imply a profound sense of inadequacy, and this ties into anxiety about going to work tomorrow. The thoughts imply that somehow I will be perceived as inadequate, not good enough and inferior by coworkers at my company.

  The transitional period of experience:

  This is accompanied by random, neutral images of the work setting. Wander into other thoughts (don’t remember them). When I realize that this has happened, I also notice that the anxiety is gone.

  What distinguishes the initial segment of experience from the transitional period is that it is coherently related to things on the person’s mind before the sitting began. It is a carryover of what he was feeling or thinking about before he sat down. The transitional period of experience, however, usually has elements that are not carryovers from what was occupying the person’s attention before the sitting. The meditator’s mind is acting differently. Thoughts and images may lose their coherence and thus be experienced as more random and less embedded in a narrative. This, of course, is frequently experienced when entering a pre-jhanic (or hypnagogic) state but is not limited to that kind of transition. An important feature of the transition is that something that was in the foreground of your experience at the beginning, such as anxiety, moves into the background or vanishes altogether.

  Here is another example, from a man who has attended some of my workshops and retreats.

  At the start of the sit (and for about half an hour prior to it) I was noticing lustful thoughts. It felt like my attention and focus were being pulled outside myself toward half-formed nonverbal images and memories, mostly recent ones from the hour before—the sensation of being “pulled” was very tangible. Simultaneously I noticed (and preferred to notice) my body, visual field, and thoughts settling down, and a mildly buzzing descending tingling start on the surface of my skin and just under it. I was interested to watch the lustful thoughts and erotic images, but they didn’t progress much and faded after about five minutes, which surprised me, since they had seemed to have such energy.

  The rest of the sit alternated between brief episodes of random content-laden thought about the odds and ends of daily life, punctuated by longer episodes of quiet spatial blankness. The blankness seemed to have a lot of depth to it, and I mostly focused on this and the dark and static, but not completely uniform, visual field. These reminded me of quiet sits on retreat where there was nothing but a very big dark space with a vague area of focus on it and, in the background, an acknowledgment of watching it. I frequently drooped during these episodes, and they typically ended when I straightened myself up. Toward the end of the sit, I decided not to bother straightening. Three or four times faintly luminous amorphous images started forming and dancing in the blank visual field—I found this interesting but didn’t do much to sustain it. Several times I noticed a contented happiness and automatically checked to see if it was correlated with tingling, but it seemed very disconnected from the tingling, which was mild and didn’t attract much attention the few times I was aware of it. I also remember occasionally hearing external sounds (the doorbell upstairs, water moving through pipes, the sprinklers outside), and my body felt cold. When the bell rang, I was surprised how quickly the time had passed.

  The primary transition in this meditation sitting was taken up with lustful thoughts. In the first few minutes, the meditator became aware of his attention being pulled toward half-formed images and memories from an hour before the sitting began. Then he describes simultaneously noticing his body, his (internal) visual field, his thoughts settling down, and tingling along his skin. It is here that he is making a transition. A notable feature of this kind of transition, found in the previous person’s sittings as well, is that the mind becomes more diffuse, less focused on one thing in particular. It is thus no surprise that the lustful thoughts and images lose their energy, as they no longer occupy the meditator’s central focus, dissipated by an awareness that is able to include more aspects of his experience than before. The rest of the meditation sitting progresses in a peaceful, contented manner, resembling what, from the outside, would be a relaxing and refreshing meditation sitting.

  Allowing our sittings to begin with the receptive process is also a way to surrender control over the course and direction of them. Contrary to what is commonly believed, being receptive to what comes up at the beginning of a meditation sitting can lead to transitioning into calm, settled, and aware states. It can also facilitate the emergence of the three developed meditative processes (explorative, non–taking up, and connected).

  19

  Unlearning Meditation and the Generative Process

  Many of the reservations people have about unlearning meditation relate to the value and usefulness of generative practices. I tend to paint a negative picture of such practices, focusing more on their problems instead of their benefits. But that is because I actually see that generative practices are best used when you’re in the generative process. When you’re in a conflicted process, where there is a struggle to do the instructions, that’s not the right time to use a generative practice. When you’re in a receptive process and less able to hold your attention on a single object, then it will also be difficult to do any of the generative practices that require a strong focus. But when you are truly able to hold your attention on an object of meditation and do a generative instruction without effort, that is the right time to do such a practice.

  You might think that what I am describing here is an ideal scenario and one that doesn’t happen all that often. But actually it happens quite frequently. We find ourselves able to do a meditation practice that we have tried to do “with effort” and have previously failed at. By associating generation with effort in meditation, we miss the fact that our minds are quite capable of focusing, creating, and learning without being forced to do so. Our minds are naturally generative.

  What we are unlearning in meditation is the notion that we should be doing generative practices all the time, and with great effort, in order to attain their benefits. We are not unlearning the generative practices themselves—I never recommend that students stop doing traditional practices that have been helpful to them. I just suggest that they come to a place in their sittings where such practices begin to arise more receptively, and then they can apply added attention to those generated objects of meditation in order to go deeper into the generative practice they are accustomed to doing. The only time I would tell a student to reconsider doing a generative practice is when it has become automatic, forced, or in some way detrimental to the person’s psyche.

  Although I don’t teach generative practices—you will never find me leading a guided meditation—I do suggest that students become aware when the conditions appear to be right to do a particular practice they have confidence in.

  I recently co-led a workshop with Ken McLeod, a teacher in the Tibetan tradition, in which we traded off teaching one-hour segments throughout the day. The initial periods of meditation were instructed as found in this book, while the last meditation of the day was a guided meditation led by Ken. He began with directing students’ attention to bodily and sense experience, then gradually expanding it to mental and emotional experience, and from there to specific aspects of the mind, and finally he gave instructions to generate wholesome states of mind. Many of the people found the guided meditation easy to do and that it led them into new experiences and insights. Some people could not follow the guided meditation at certain intervals and so sat with what came up for them.

  For the people who found this easy, it was an example of doing a generative practice within an existing generative process. I believe that some of the reason they found it easy to do was that they had been sitting in a more receptive mode earlier in the day. The receptive process, especially when it leads to
periods of exploration, tends to clear away the impediments to doing generative practices. Many students have remarked to me how when they have switched from sitting receptively to doing a particular structured meditation practice, the practice can be accomplished with greater ease and less effort than usual.

  The transition from a receptive process to a generative one can be smooth, though you may soon become aware of the change of effort in the sitting. When you’re receptive, experiences just come to you without any willing involved, and you can get quite comfortable with that and view it as the norm. So when you shift into a generative process receptively, it may take some recalibration regarding how much effort to apply. Often people don’t apply enough effort and therefore miss out on an opportunity to use the generative productively and skillfully. Other times they apply a strong intention and approach the experience with too much force and so need to readjust their effort in order to use the generative process.

  Quiet seems very loud and I listen to the quiet, which translates into the Om sound. Then I notice how much effort I am making to make the sound of silence into the Om sound, so I relax the effort.

  There can also be a sense of clinging to experiences, or elaborating upon them, when you move into a generative process, and many meditators tend to be warned against this when they are practicing in a tradition that values “letting go.” You might think that I support “letting go” at those times, but I don’t generally. I see clinging to experiences and elaborating on them, or thinking about them, as being quite natural and nothing to be alarmed about. When someone makes a huge story about an experience in meditation while it is going on, it is all right to allow the story to go on until it reaches a place where a transition to something else occurs. Then reflecting back on the story can provide some insight as to what kept it alive.

  I have heard many reports of meditation sittings where someone has written an article, composed a piece of music, planned an art project, or redecorated her house, and it was actually very productive and efficient to be doing this in meditation. Such events are also instances of the generative process, though there seems to be no meditation practice associated with this kind of creative process, quite understandably. But since it is happening in a meditation sitting, it is meditative, and the mind is using the qualities it has developed in meditation to accomplish this particular mental task.

  We are often warned against using meditation to work on a project, we should drop those thoughts and get back to sitting with awareness. But when the generative process is active, it is not easy to get back to a receptive process (or even to generate something other than what holds our interest). There is often a momentum pushing the whole project along, and one can only surrender to it or fight it. By surrendering to it, you’ll go through the thoughts on the project, occasionally feeding them, until there is some gradual dissipation of the energy behind the thoughts. This is being receptive with the generative process, allowing it to flourish, knowing that at some point you will inevitably transition into another process.

  20

  The Three Developed Meditative Processes

  The three developed meditative processes are the explorative, the non–taking up, and the connected. They are ways our mind has learned to relate to experiences through meditation, and they are not meant to be taken as optimal meditative experiences. In fact, this theory of the meditative process does not attempt to go beyond what people would ordinarily experience in meditation and so makes no conjectures as to what an awakened or enlightened consciousness is.

  The Explorative Process

  The explorative process may initially appear as discursive thought about your experience. Meditation practices that do not value thinking will often disregard this aspect of the budding explorative process. I often have to ask several questions about the nature of a student’s internal dialogues in meditation for the student to pick up on the explorative nature of his or her discursive thinking. When you’re having an internal dialogue (or monologue) about what is going on in your sitting or about the subject of meditation or on a concept about your experience, it is likely that there is an explorative process occurring.

  How can you tell? First of all, the explorations are open-ended. There isn’t much of a drive to find an answer, reach a conclusion, arrive at completion. You’re engaged in the process of exploration without the need to wrap it up too quickly or too neatly with a good idea, though such ideas might occur and move the exploration along in interesting directions, as in this person’s sitting.

  Sitting in a state of agitation because I had to wake a neighbor up to get him to move his car so my wife could leave for work. That agitated state continued into the meditation sitting. I’m appreciating my time at the Zen center because I really was removed from a lot of the world that disturbs me now. I’m concerned about the political situation, and my anxiety comes up. Or does my anxiety express itself in those thoughts? Tightness around my solar plexus. Internal dialogues followed where I was being right, winning the argument. Comforting myself, my survival assured. Reflected for a while on my relentless desire to be. Being is satisfying and fear of loss of being creates anxiety. The double-edged sword of Manjusri. Noticing how a thought or feeling can branch out in all directions.

  Then there is how the explorative process is an outgrowth of the receptive process. One is led along in the exploration. There seems to be less self-agency in it along with a willingness to go into painful or difficult areas that you would normally avoid. It can have the feel of going back and forth from staying with an experience (an emotion, a train of thought, a sensation, or any combination thereof) and observing it. You can test your observations by bringing your attention back to the experience (either remembered or, if it is still accessible, in the present) and seeing whether the concepts actually line up with it. There are no perfect examples of this process, as it is not a technique to be done but, rather, a diffuse and disorganized process one is led through, as in this journal entry.

  This sitting was especially hard to get a grip on afterward—at first seemed almost impossible to recall anything, like a deep dream that’s slipped away. Most noticeable episode was when I had been sitting for about fifteen minutes with a sort of tension in upper chest and shoulder area. It was associated with an unpleasant feeling and thoughts that were vague and not really noticed.

  Very fleeting image of a sort of plane of light or light color extending away from my body to the right side, and with it a kind of sliding movement. It became like an exit of some sort, and the tension slid away as if someone had opened a doorway onto an expansive place.

  When the tension around it was removed (or rather not being maintained) and the physical sensation of tension and hunching over in a protective posture were seen clearly and also eased, it became evident that “inside” was an unpleasant feeling that was subtle but almost unbearable when I really registered it. It was kind of exquisite but awful—felt inescapable, like it was part of everything, had no edges or limits. I think that’s why it was so hard to bear. I noticed it and then there was a kind of quiet panic, like I couldn’t open to it for very long. Then it changed and I can’t remember what happened. I think I moved my attention elsewhere. Even so, at the end of the sitting there was a mixed feeling of fear of the boundless unpleasantness, marked vulnerability, and a kind of relief (from having connected with it).

  Often there is a degree of samadhi in the explorative process, where you’re tranquil as your mind goes through some difficult feelings or memories and begins to pick up things about them. Some of these sittings, like the one above, can have periods that are hard to recollect, but when going through them, you may be fairly aware of the thoughts, feelings, observations, and the way of knowing your experience. Even if very little is recalled, such experiences of exploration within a samadhi state have a characteristic sense of your having gotten to something very deep and hidden about yourself.

  The painful feeling the meditator connected with in the si
tting above had many dimensions to it as she stayed with it and explored it. Her names for it and ideas about it emerged from her exploration of it. At the time, there was little if any interpretation of this subtle unpleasant feeling, though after the sitting she did interpret the experience in her journal: “Afterward I reflected that painting brings me in touch with this exposed, vulnerable feeling, because there is no edge to it, it can’t ever be perfected or finished. This has been on my mind because I’ve been painting every day this week.” It is common to come up with some kind of meaning for such experiences afterward, because we do need our explorations to provide us with something we can use in our lives. Instead of trying to stop interpreting experiences, we can become aware of the effect these interpretations have on us, how we use them, and why we believe them.

  Going Further into the Explorative Process

  To further illustrate the explorative process, I am going to look at a series of journal entries by one individual. Her name is Joan, and she has been a student of mine for about four years. She has been meditating for about thirty years and was practicing Vipassana meditation before she met me. At the time she met me, she would primarily let her attention go to sounds when she meditated. She would also, rarely, focus on the breath, and she would occasionally do metta practice. Even though she had also done “choiceless awareness” meditation practice at some point in her past, she hadn’t really allowed thoughts and feelings to carry her along in her sittings until she sat a ten-day retreat with me. Since then, she has loosened up considerably in her meditation practice and has become comfortable with this way of meditating for most of her sittings.