the difficulties and their remedies

meditation practice is based on the confidence that the seed of attention — natural awareness, or original mind — is present in everybody. our work is to provide the conditions in which that seed can grow.

Ken McCleod

ego is sly and won’t stay away when you need it to. this little story illustrates ego’s truth comically.

four monks engaged in silent meditation for two weeks. as a symbol of their practice, they lit a candle and began. then the candle went out. 

the first monk exclaimed: “oh no, the candle went out!”
the second monk interrupted him: “hey, we’re not supposed to talk!”
the third monk was annoyed: “why must you two break our precious silence?”
the fourth monk started laughing: “haha! i’m the only one who didn’t speak.”

we’re going to meet ego all along the way on the journey of meditation. its first presentation is in the very difficulties that we experience. ego is what we slowly dismantle and replace with attention, because it is ego that creates our suffering. ego is the aspects of our self that we are identified with, where we think and feel. it is deeply dualistic (right and wrong; like and dislike) and creates strong preferences. ego confuses us by holding out a promise or an ideal, and we feel the pain and anxiety of this expectation as we do not measure up to the ideal. in meditation practice we come to see this process again and again. we slowly learn to meet reality more directly, without all the idealizing, planning, and promise. we find our stability in the moment and are humbled by the journey. we come home to ourselves, beyond ego. we become sure of the awareness that we are.

thinking

the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again, is at the very root of judgment, character, and will.

William James

meditation means resting from the involvement in our internal commentary and analysis. do not mistake the running commentary in your mind (“now i’m breathing in, now i’m breathing out”) for mindfulness. mindfulness is not thinking, though it can observe and see into thinking. what is important is pure presence, meaning we are sensing and feeling the breathing pattern. we become the experience of breathing. later, when the mind itself is the object, we become the witness of perception, thought, feeling, and sensation.

typically, in our daily life, our thoughts are in the foreground of attention. if we bring our witnessing attention to the thought, we will be aware of a great deal of communicating going on at a subverbal level. we are forming thoughts and words in our mind and talking to ourselves all the time. once we become more aware of this, it can feel like an avalanche. this is typically the first experiences of meditation. we may feel overwhelmed by thought. we can take heart when we have this experience, because it means that we are becoming more aware.

so, if thought is in the foreground, what then forms the background? typically this would be perception and sensation. we bring attention there only when necessary, like when we hear an unfamiliar sound or see a bright color. our thinking and planning usually take up all the space of attention.

in the beginning of our practice, it may be helpful to turn this default background-foreground dynamic around. we are already focusing on the breath as sensation, riding our breath with the tip of our awareness, feeling the process, in and out. when this goes well and we find some stability (we are able to hold the attention on the breath), we can slowly begin to expand attention, including other sensations like hearing, the feeling of the movement of air, the sensations of sitting and support, the sensations of connecting with the floor or seat. we can actively put sensation and perception in the foreground and thinking in the background.

initially, we may need concentration (focused attention), reapplying ourselves again and again. at this stage it is helpful to have short sessions of dedicated practice, dedicating ourselves to staying with the breathing sensation, or expanded sensation.

Buddhism tells us that, just like the ocean has waves, our mind has thoughts. the waves are the very ocean, radiating different forms, and in the same way, mind’s radiance is thought and feeling. the ocean is not disturbed by the waves, and we don’t need to be disturbed by thoughts and feelings. Dudjom Rinpoche writes that we can be like an old person watching children play. we can be attentive to the thought process without following thought or breaking our attention to the senses.

we don’t need to fight our thoughts or try to push them away. where they persist, we can look into them. we can see what they’re about and what they tell us about ourselves in this moment. and then we can let go, focusing or landing our attention back on the senses, on direct perception and knowing, initially of the breath, and gradually of our whole experience. if it helps to close your eyes, by all means begin in that way. gradually, lean into keeping the eyes open, with the gaze softened. we want our meditation practice to become part of our everyday actions, where our eyes will mostly be open.

we can notice where our thoughts are taking us. we can start recognizing the patterns that our reactions take, and we can make a different choice. we can build our capacity to return to the freshness of now, back to simply now. the more we see ourselves succeed in renouncing an old pattern, the more we build confidence in this ability. we become free of the prison of mental overlay and emotional overlay.

Pema Chödrön

discerning the state of meditation

early in our practice, the only objective is to move the mind from restless to restful, from listless to actively paying attention. we’ve seen before that the objective of meditation is not restfulness — presence or cultivating attention is the object — but it is in restfulness that we may first discern the state of meditation; the state of simple direct awareness and being with the content of awareness, responding to it, without the need for thought.

as we’re paying attention to the mind, we may, for the first time, notice its extreme activity, its inability to be at rest, resulting in our difficulty being with ourselves. if we are able to increase the attention on the breath, we may notice how thinking slows down, how we’re allowing thinking without giving attention to it. the attention simply stays with the object of breathing, and later, sensing the whole field of consciousness. persistence is key here. we simply repeatedly land the attention in our breathing sensation and notice the decreasing effect on thought and increase in presence. then we build on these glimpses. we keep practicing for just that moment or few moments that mind relaxes and becomes restful. at this stage we are like a child who is learning to walk. we fall often, but it is in falling that we learn balance and how to control our movements. similarly, it is in the busyness of the mind that we begin to learn about the mind, and where we begin to practice the muscle of stilling or centering the mind. we come to know the experiential difference between the busy mind and still mind.

the meditative state is easily distinguishable from thinking mind. it has an expanded attention which is visceral; a sense of stable, peaceful openness, and clarity of awareness. the body is witnessing rather than seeing, listening rather than hearing, sensing rather than deadened by thought. thoughts are distinguishable as thought. like the senses, they become objects of the mind, and we are able to disidentify from them. we feel this disidentification as a letting go of thought or feeling and coming back to the full experience of this moment.

sometimes we have fleeting glimpses of the nature of mind. these can be inspired by an exalting piece of music, by the serene happiness we sometimes feel in nature, or by the most ordinary everyday situation. they can arise simply while watching snow slowly drifting down, or seeing the sun rising behind a mountain, or watching a shaft of light falling into a room in a mysteriously moving way. such moments of illumination, peace, and bliss happen to us all and stay strangely with us. i think we do, sometimes, half understand these glimpses. but then, modern culture gives us no context or framework in which to comprehend them. worse still, rather than encouraging us to explore them more deeply and discover where they spring from, we are told in both obvious and subtle ways to shut them out. we know that no one will take us seriously if we try to share them. so we ignore what could be really the most revealing experiences of our lives, if only we understood them. this is perhaps the darkest and most disturbing aspect of modern civilization — its ignorance and repression of who we really are. 

Sogyal Rinpoche

the newness of now is ever-present. in fact, it is this very newness that alerts us, through its absence, of thinking or identification. boredom is usually the most prominent sign that we are not attentive to this newness that rearranges itself from moment to moment. the only effort we make is to return our attention to this moment, experiencing it fully. we are not trying to meditate. that is a self-conscious thinking process. one does not have to try, as the state is natural to consciousness, and the effort is one of maintaining the strong and clear mindfulness that forms its foundation. this mindfulness is what we are practicing when we sit to practice formally. because we are sitting still and are undistracted, there is enough attention available to begin the process of mindfulness, and then to maintain this awareness of what is, without slipping into thinking, planning, or identification. by doing this, we come to know a very alive and sensual field of awareness that is very sensitive and open, and brings a sense of calm, peace, and clarity.

the way to relax, or rest the mind in newness, is through the practice of meditation. in meditation you take an unbiased approach. you let things be as they are, without judgment, and in that way you yourself learn to be.

Chögyam Trungpa

difficulties and their remedies

the purpose of meditation is to cultivate attention. the method is to place and rest attention on the breath, or meditative object. on some days we experience many difficulties. on other days our practice feels easier, and our attention is clearer and more stable. one of the first difficulties we have to overcome is that meditation is not what we thought or have interpreted from our reading. each of us must discover for ourselves the experience of feeling centered, with an open and relaxed mind, and connected with our body sensations. we discover the space where thought, feeling, perception, and sensation arise; a field of active awareness. meditation does not change your day-to-day difficulties, but when you begin to function with more meditative awareness in your daily life, it becomes possible to make the changes you want to make. meditation does not change the exterior (your circumstance), but it changes who you are towards it.

unwillingness

the first difficulty we encounter is our stubborn unwillingness. we typically see it as laziness, but this view does not allow us to penetrate the reason for our unwillingness. it is only by setting a daily time and then entering our practice space and paying attention to our experience that we will find the reason behind the unwillingness. if you’re happy with this reason, then of course meditation won’t happen, but if you want to work with the unwillingness, you can use interest, effort, or confidence. we can activate some interest by focusing on the discomforts that brought us to practice. maybe you wanted to meditate because you want to be more in control of your emotions. you are now in the right place to find out more about your emotions and discover ways of stilling them. effort comes from the natural flow of energy and enthusiasm for what you’re doing. hoping that we will find some magic undermines this effort, because it takes us out of the experience of this moment. once we realize this, it becomes obvious that the only way to seriously work with the difficulties of life is by staying on course with this practice. we bring a “no choice” attitude. confidence comes from trusting our own potential to wake up and live with more presence. this confidence grows through direct experience. by paying attention, and staying with your attention, we begin to have the experience of resting the attention in the breath. we begin to notice how staying with the breath or the mind in this non-attached way leads to a decrease in the intensity of our reactions.

many people believe that having a chaotic mind means they’re not doing the practice correctly. meditation is the space where everything arises, and nothing can be wrong. we develop competence by staying with the breath despite the chaotic mind. we learn to let be and pay attention. this patience soon leads to tangible results. we become aware of our competence, and we refrain from seeing difficulties in staying with the breath as bad or wrong. we become grateful for the insights gained from the “bad” practice session.

when you connect with your intention in practice, you step out of the reactive patterns that cloud the mind. when you put energy into practice, reactive patterns can’t hold. when you feel confidence in your potential for attention and presence, you rise above the level of reactivity. when you are grounded in the knowledge of how to practice, you cannot be shaken.

Ken McCleod

forgetting

this difficulty can present as forgetting to practice, forgetting how to practice, and forgetting the breath or object. in the beginning, days may pass without practice. there are fleeting memories and intent, but they are quickly forgotten. meditation will only happen if you make it a priority, and this happens most easily if you simply make it a non-negotiable task at a specific time; a dedicated place and time to get to know yourself. the remedy for forgetting is mindfulness. you remember to practice, remember how to practice, and remember the breath. we commit to ourselves, and find ways of reminding ourselves.

simply put, a large part of us actually prefers the comfort of our mental fantasies and planning, and that’s actually why this practice is so difficult to do. experiencing our emotional distress and nurturing all of these qualities – steadfastness, clear seeing, courage — really shakes up our habitual patterns. meditation loosens up our conditioning; it’s loosening up the way we hold ourselves together, the way that we perpetuate our suffering.

Pema Chödrön

confusion

one moment we find ourselves attentive and experiencing the breath, and the next we’re making plans for the weekend or falling asleep. the mind is either too busy or too dull and unresponsive. awareness is now our remedy. through awareness we can be aware of the mind being overly busy or dull, and we can also note the effect of the busyness or the dullness. we learn to recognize these states more easily. with dullness, it is helpful to expand our awareness to include our senses and allow attention to become more energized. with busyness, it is helpful to strengthen the focus of attention and rest in the object.

in our daily life we begin to see our reactivity and learn to bring a response rather than a reaction. we learn to say what we feel without the reaction. when we begin to take our practice into our daily life, we can simply use attention on the breath, or attention on expanded consciousness, as the way of centering ourselves and remaining mindful.

no effort

sometimes, even when we notice that attention is decaying into confusion, we simply make no effort. in daily life we may notice that we need to rest, but pay no attention. we know a problem is developing, but are not willing to take action. we simply let ourselves slip into the confusion of busyness or dullness. when this happens we need to restore our meditative balance. we do this by relaxing or energizing the mindstream. relaxing into the object of attention undermines or cuts the busyness of the mind. we can take a deep breath or two and settle back into attention. as we breathe out, we can focus on feeling ourselves cutting through the dullness or busyness. to energize, we focus on details in the field of awareness. we may, for example, focus more deeply on listening, and in so doing allow the attention to become energized.

every time you create a gap in the otherwise incessant stream of thinking, your light of consciousness grows stronger. 

Eckhart Tolle

trying too hard

this difficulty is very common, and is based on our expectations or idealizations about meditation. we are resting in attention, and also aware of thoughts coming and going whilst the attention remains undisturbed, focused on awareness. but this is not enough. we want our meditation to live up to our fantasies. we want to feel something or know something novel and amazing. we cannot be patient and attentive with the process, so instead we go searching for our projections. another form of trying too hard is a constant and critical vigilance that says things like: “i’m not doing this right,” “that is not supposed to happen,” “this is not meditation.” in the beginning of our practice it is hard to hold the attention stable and clarify the awareness, so we try to control the situation and feel separate from our experience. when this happens we can rely on equanimity (allowing things to just be as they are). we can simply stay attentive and curious about our experience, not making an effort, but rather being with our experience. we learn to trust our meditation, and thereby develop a calmer and more patient mind; a mind that recognizes things as they are, and leaves them to be as they are.

working with reactive emotions

if we practice regularly, it is normal to have days where the practice time is filled with emotional reactivity. although meditation is not feeling or emoting, it is a good place to look into feeling, to bring mindfulness to the feeling and use the feeling as the object of meditation.

strong emotions cause reactions based on past experiences. elements in the current situation that remind us of the traumatic situation become the trigger, and we explode or implode in a predictable pattern. when we look into this pattern, we notice that it has a set path. it begins with a sensory stimulus and associated feeling tone. these two together activate thinking, and we start interpreting. we give a mental form to the experience. interpretation provides a reason to be caught in the emotion, which then gets expressed as action.

(a) as we practice mindfulness, it becomes possible to differentiate between the reactive emotion — anger, for example — and the expression of the emotion. we can feel the anger and hold it, instead of becoming the anger (identifying with it).

(b) as practice deepens, attention penetrates more deeply, and we become aware of the movement from interpretation to reactive emotion. we are now aware of the associations triggered by the stimulus and become able to intervene earlier in the process, when the momentum of the reactive emotion has not yet built up. increasingly, we are able to recognize past associations, distinguish them from the present experience, and let go. what does this look like in a real situation?

let’s say you feel hurt by someone who is not listening to you and connecting with you. you’ve just told them something close to your heart, and they’ve changed the topic. you are aware of the fact that they often do this, and that it is probably not personal. you are also aware that this is an old wound for you, predating your relationship with this person. as you stay in attention with the feeling, the urge to repeat the old pattern of lashing out fades away.

(c) finally, with continued work in cultivating attention, we can pick the feeling up very early, when it is still just a feeling tone. we notice when these feeling tones arise, and can distinguish whether attachment (pleasant), anger (unpleasant), or neutrality (indifference) is coming up. we are generally aware of the feelings and thoughts arising within the mind, and are therefore able to intervene and self-regulate earlier.

with enough energy in attention, all kinds of possibilities open up in the normal reactive sequence. given our example at (a) i might feel hurt but realize that it does not mean that i want to lash out. at (b) i may reason that, just because the other is not listening, that does not mean that i must be hurt. at (c) i may recognize the feeling tone of aversion, and, in recognizing that i want to push the situation away, i can instead choose to simply become more observant and speak my needs.

use your senses fully and let the alert stillness within you be the perceiver, rather than your mind.

Eckhart Tolle

the obstacle is the path

roads were made for journeys, not destinations.

Confucius

as we become more familiar with the meditative mind, we recognize more easily that all the difficulties we may experience are part of the path we’re journeying on. the obstacles are there to provide us with practice and to learn how to bring meditative awareness into our daily lives. as we will see later, in our discussion on meditation in action, our practice is not limited to formal sitting. our meditative attention grows everywhere, into all our daily situations. in terms of managing strong emotions, this means that we lean into the process and actively work with it. we rest our attention on the breath and include as much of the sensation of the emotion as we can without falling into busyness (feeding the reaction), or dullness (repressing the emotion). as we notice that we can rest in attention to the emotion, we can include more of its feeling-sensation. finally we can also include the cognitive processes happening around the reaction, whilst resting in the breath.

it is only patience with ourselves and curiosity about our experience that leads us to the middle stages of our practice. at these stages you will have occasional glimpses of a mind that is free from thought and identification, and at the same time, you will have many thoughts that are deeply identified. “i can’t do this,” “there is too much noise,” “practice is silly, there are more important things to do,” “i don’t know that i understand this,” etc.

our reactive patterns are based on wanting to change something outside or inside ourselves. we want to “do” or “make an effort”, and have an idea or fantasy of what we will get. the path of meditation takes the route less travelled. it works directly with its own experience. when i’m angry, i notice the anger, and bring the mind back to calm. in this way the outer circumstance becomes workable. it is a wise action to ask myself, in the middle of a reaction, how much of the circumstance inside the mind comes from the outside, and how much from the inside. how much is “reality” and how much is the “reality that i see (interpret)?” this is challenging, because our interpretations are so ingrained, and therefore feel so deeply true. meditation allows us to see that our suffering is inflicted by ourselves, and gives us the method for stilling this suffering.

the guideline is this: if you’re hooked [reactive], then you need to work on your side of the situation, no matter how outrageous and unjust the outer circumstances might seem. if you’re hooked, this is a clue that you have some work to do — and you, only you, can call yourself back. this is the basic attitude of meditation.

Pema Chödrön

when we practice with attention and curiosity, we notice that something very important is happening. we are becoming more consciously aware. we’re aware of thought and all the rest, but also aware of moments of rest; the moments of stillness, of simply being. in the middle stages of our practice, we have overcome having to deal with an onslaught of thought. it becomes easier to quieten the mind and to reach deeper levels of awake restfulness. we also begin to notice that we are bringing the action of mindfulness into our interactions with others. our knowing of self and other increases and we have regular insights.

in the later stages, settling the mind is relatively easy, and the mind becomes aware of its own presence. mindfulness is now expanded three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, and we experience the emptiness of “self” in many forms. we are now relatively unaffected by the rising of thought and feeling, although at times we may still become identified with experience and have reactions. we are also much more curious about these occurrences, and tend to learn from them and adjust more quickly. it becomes important to know the state of mind at all times, and to be willing to work with this awareness.

along the way, we learn to refrain from engaging in past and future thoughts. we stop examining or analysing our thoughts and feelings, and we stop trying to create an experience. when we become more adept, we stop involuntary wandering or following thought. the practice has become our way of being in the world, and is no longer thought of as a practice. when this practice is done in a sustained manner, it leads to insight into the subjective construction of experience and into the three characteristics of existence: 1) we come to know that every phenomenon is impermanent, 2) we learn that much of our suffering is self-created, and 3) we come to realize the way out of the suffering. we begin to discover that the self we’ve believed in for so long does not really exist as a separate object. what we call “i” is just a field of awareness.

meditation is the breaking
of the addiction to
any other moment except
the one you inhabit.

meditation can be uncomfortable
because you are going through
withdrawal.

your attention is in the Now.
you feel the urge to escape.
the restlessness, the desire for more,
the resistance to being where you are.

it takes courage to remain.
but the remaining is what heals.
and you eventually discover:

there is no greater joy
than being with yourself.

Jeff Foster