It’s a bit ironic for
practitioners of a form of “spirituality” that emphasizes how life is stressful
(it is the first noble truth after all) to sit around offering a litany of
problems they face in practice! Why should practice be any different from the rest
of life? Problems are inevitable! In fact, they should be seen as inevitable! The problems you will face on this path are precisely the
means that will help you progress along the path! Facing these difficulties in
meditation will give us practice in confronting problems in the rest of our
lives. In time, you will see that the uncomfortable ‘stepping stones’ of the
path are precious jewels! The most important aspect of practice is viriya (P; virya S) or persistence.
Never give up and you can never fail!
The first noble truth tells us
that life is stressful and meditation, being a microcosm of life, will present
us with the same challenges we’ll find elsewhere in life. In fact, along with
the difficulties we face in life that will arise while sitting, the very
practice of sitting will bring its own special challenges. So, not only should
we expect problems, we should welcome them!
Only the complete acceptance of
discomfort, pain and stress lead to its amelioration. And to accept duhkha takes courage -- the
determination to look at difficulty head-on, without averting our gaze. Courage
is not fearlessness. In fact, fear is
an essential component of courage. You cannot be courageous unless you can feel
your fear completely. If you are able to stand your ground rather than averting
your gaze or taking flight, that is courage. As Richard Petty, the greatest
NASCAR driver of all time said: You’d have to be crazy not to be afraid to
climb into a race car and take to the track with 40 other drivers going 240 miles
an hour bumper to bumper! These men and women took the fear they had with them
as they climbed into their chariots and drove with passion and courage.
If you think about it, the
posture of meditation itself is the posture of courage: in determining to sit
in stillness, we are declaring our willingness to look bravely at whatever our
mind churns up without taking whatever our usual exit strategy might be. If you
reflect for a moment, you’ll have to agree that the experiences that have most
contributed to your personal development have been the trials you’ve faced and
moved through. In retrospect, we understand this. In prospect, we fall into
fear that they will overwhelm us, and yet often it is the fear and anxiety that
is worse than the actual experience. As Mark Twain said, “I have known many
troubles, but most of them never happened.”
Think of practice difficulties as
simply aspects of experience that require attention. Many times, there really
is nothing to do and nothing to solve – only something to watch, embrace, and
learn from.
There are many difficulties that arise in meditation that
are not really any different than those that arise in other aspects of our
life. But, there are also some difficulties that may be specific to practice.
Pain, for most of us, is one of these challenges. Almost everyone has to learn
to deal with the discomfort of sitting: backaches, knee pain, feet that go to
sleep. Some of these discomforts do lessen over time, but others never go away.
One of my favorite sayings of Suzuki Roshi is something he said to his students
on long retreat: “The problems that you have now you will always have.”
So, when you begin to experience
pain in practice, first see what you can do to eliminate it. There is enough
pain in life without you adding more of it with your practice. But when you
find that there are certain discomforts that cannot be removed by changing
external circumstances, mindfulness can show us that they can be mitigated by
practice.
First, we can learn to see the
difference between pain and suffering. Pain is an unpleasant sensation.
Suffering is a mental and emotional reaction to pain. It may or may not be
associated with the sensation of pain. It is possible to suffer without pain
and equally possible to feel pain without suffering.
Suffering arises when we resist
pain. We may feel a sense of unfairness, our fear of the pain may lead to
panic. Resistance to pain arises because of the often unstated (and
unconscious) belief that pain shouldn’t happen to us. Such belief is a major
cause of suffering, conditioning anger, fear, anxiety and discouragement.
One way to work with the
suffering of pain is to re-align ourselves with reality. Believing that pain
shouldn’t happen to us is delusional. With sufficient practice, witnessing of
the pain will lessen suffering and sometimes even lessen the pain, because our
resistance is often what keeps the pain ‘locked in place.’
Allow the pain to become the
object of mindfulness. Relax any tension or muscular contraction surrounding
the painful sensation. Practice with ‘curious disinterest.’ Disinterest simply
means you are not attached to any particular outcome or agenda. If you are
paying attention as a strategy to
lessen pain, that grasping for a particular outcome actually works against you.
Now, in the early stages of
practice, it is absolutely unrealistic to expect that this ‘observational
meditation’ will be easy or clearly beneficial. However, with time and
experience, even the most severe kinds of pain can be ameliorated. Take your
time; when you feel you’ve reached your capacity and begin to lose focus, do
anything else – like changing your position, or scratching that persistent itch
– to alleviate the discomfort, but do so mindfully.
Other problems specific to
meditation are ‘strange’ phenomena that may arise. Sensations of floating,
expansion and contraction that may be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral may
arise. You may feel like your spinning like a top, or fidgeting uncontrollably.
You may become distracted by images arising internally if your eyes are closed
and strange patterns on the floor (like faces morphing into weird shapes) if
your eyes are open. When any such experience happens,
treat it like anything else that arises: observe and reflect upon your reaction
to it. Drop aversion and grasping and it will fade away soon enough. Just don’t
make a big deal out of it.
The most tenacious problem while
meditating is difficulty concentrating. This is particularly upsetting since
concentration is such a necessary skill for any form of meditation. Remember
that each time you catch the mind wandering and gently bring it back to the
breath, you are concentrating and
refining mindfulness.
If lethargy, sleepiness or fatigue is a problem, you may need to eat more moderately before practice or get more
sleep. But keep in mind that just the typical fluctuations of daily life will
impact your level and capacity for concentration. Various counting and labeling
techniques, as well as mantra, and visual gazing strategies are available.
Doubt and discouragement often
comes up when we are dissatisfied with what we may perceive as our “lack of
success” in meditation. We may feel like giving up completely. First, if you
find this happening, remind yourself that the absolutely only way to fail at
meditation is not to do it! If you take your seat, then no matter what is
happening while sitting, you are doing it! The struggles and so-called
“failures” are all part of the process.
Second, look at the sense of discouragement itself as an object of mindfulness. See where it comes from; how it arises and what it feels like. Watch its coming and going, its wavering degrees of intensity. Discouragement is no different than any other mental formation: it is impermanent!
Sometimes the greatest problem in
meditation practice is just sitting down. Regardless of how you feel about
meditation at a particular moment, just do it anyway! You do not have to like
it! Just do it – no argument, no excuses, no negotiations. As Jack Kornfield
advises: “Just get your ass on the cushion.” Make that your absolute bottom
line (no pun intended). Don’t even begin to think of how long you’re going to
sit or what you’re going to do: just get your butt on the cushion.
If you can commit to this, you’ll
find that generally, once you’re on the cushion, any aversive feelings you had
to meditating evaporate after a few moments. Once you settle down, you can even
begin to investigate what the aversion was all about. You may find some subtle
fear was under it all that you can now observe with courage!
