About the Author
Venerable Henepola Gunaratana was ordained at the age of
12 as a Buddhist monk at a small temple in Malandeniya Village in Kurunegala District in
Sri Lanka. His preceptor was Venerable Kiribatkumbure Sonuttara Mahathera. At the age of
20 he was given higher ordination in Kandy in 1947. He received his education from
Vidyalankara College and Buddhist Missionary College in Colombo. Subsequently he traveled
to India for five years of missionary work for the Mahabodhi Society, serving the Harijana
(Untouchable) people in Sanchi, Delhi, and Bombay. Later he spent ten years as a
missionary in Malaysia, serving as religious advisor to the Sasana Abhivurdhiwardhana
Society, Buddhist Missionary Society and the Buddhist Youth Federation of Malaysia. He has
been a teacher in Kishon Dial School and Temple Road Girls' School and Principal of the
Buddhist Institute of Kuala Lumppur.
At the invitation of the Sasana Sevaka Society, Venerable
Gunaratana came to the United States in 1968 to serve as Hon. General Secretary of the
Buddhist Vihara Society of Washington, D.C. In 1980 he was appointed President of the
Society. During his years at the Vihara, he has taught courses in Buddhism, conducted
meditation retreats, and lectured widely throughout the United States, Canada, Europe,
Australia and New Zealand.
He has also pursued his scholarly interests by earning a
B.A., and M.A., and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the American University. He taught courses
in Buddhism at the American University, Georgetown University and University of Maryland.
His books and articles have been published in Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka and the United
States.
Since 1973 he has been buddhist chaplin at The American
University counseling students interested in Buddhism and Buddhist meditation. He is now
president of the Bhavana Society in West Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley, about 100
miles from Washington, D.C. teaching meditation and conducting meditation retreats.
Preface
In my experience I found that the most effective way to
express something in order to make others understand is to use the simplest language. Also
I learned from teaching that the more rigid the language the less effective it is. People
to not respond to very stern and rigid language especially when we try to teach something
which normally people don't engage in during their daily life. Meditation appears to them
as something that they cannot always do. As more people turn to meditation, they need more
simplified instructions so they can practice by themselves without a teacher around. This
book is the result of requests made by many meditators who need a very simple book written
in ordinary colloquial language.
In preparing this book I have been helped by many of my
friends. I am deeply grateful to all of them. Especially I would like to express my
deepest appreciation and sincere gratitude to John Patticord, Daniel J. Olmsted, Matthew
Flickstein, Carol Flickstein, Patrick Hamilton, Genny Hamilton, Bill Mayne, Bhikkhu Dang
Pham Jotika and Bhikkhu Sona for their most valuable suggestions, comments and criticisms
of numerous points in preparing this book. Also thanks to Reverend Sister Sama and Chris
O'Keefe for their support in production efforts.
H. Gunaratana Mahathera
Bhavana Society
Rt. 1 Box 218-3
High View, WV 26808
December 7, 1990
Introduction
American Buddhism
The subject of this book is Vipassana meditation
practice. Repeat, practice. This is a meditation manual, a nuts-and-bolts, step-by-step
guide to Insight meditation. It is meant to be practical. It is meant for use.
There are already many comprehensive books on Buddhism as
a philosophy, and on the theoretical aspects of Buddhist meditation. If you are interested
in that material we urge you to read those books. Many of them are excellent. This book is
a 'How to.' It is written for those who actually want to meditate and especially for those
who want to start now. There are very few qualified teachers of the Buddhist style of
meditation in the United States of America. It is our intention to give you the basic data
you need to get off to a flying start. Only those who follow the instructions given here
can say whether we have succeeded or failed. Only those who actually meditate regularly
and diligently can judge our effort. No book can possibly cover every problem that a
meditator may run into. You will need to meet a qualified teacher eventually. In the mean
time, however, these are the basic ground rules; a full understanding of these pages will
take you a very long way.
There are many styles of meditation. Every major religious
tradition has some sort of procedure which they call meditation, and the word is often
very loosely used. Please understand that this volume deals exclusively with the Vipassana
style of meditation as taught and practiced in South and Southeast Asian Buddhism. It is
often translated as Insight meditation, since the purpose of this system is to give the
meditator insight into the nature of reality and accurate understanding of how everything
works.
Buddhism as a whole is quite different from the
theological religions with which Westerners are most familiar. It is a direct entrance to
a spiritual or divine realm without addressing deities or other 'agents'. Its flavor is
intensely clinical, much more akin to what we would call psychology than to what we would
usually call religion. It is an ever-ongoing investigation of reality, a microscopic
examination of the very process of perception. Its intention is to pick apart the screen
of lies and delusions through which we normally view the world, and thus to reveal the
face of ultimate reality. Vipassana meditation is an ancient and elegant technique for
doing just that.
Theravada Buddhism presents us with an effective system
for exploring the deeper levels of the mind, down to the very root of consciousness
itself. It also offers a considerable system of reverence and rituals in which those
techniques are contained. This beautiful tradition is the natural result of its 2,500-year
development within the highly traditional cultures of South and Southeast Asia.
In this volume, we will make every effort to separate the
ornamental and the fundamental and to present only the naked plain truth itself. Those
readers who are of a ritual bent may investigate the Theravada practice in other books,
and will find there a vast wealth of customs and ceremony, a rich tradition full of beauty
and significance. Those of a more clinical bent may use just the techniques themselves,
applying them within whichever philosophical and emotional context they wish. The practice
is the thing.
The distinction between Vipassana meditation and other
styles of meditation is crucial and needs to be fully understood. Buddhism addresses two
major types of meditation. They are different mental skills, modes of functioning or
qualities of consciousness. In Pali, the original language of Theravada literature, they
are called 'Vipassana' and 'Samatha'.
'Vipassana' can be translated as 'insight', a clear
awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens. 'Samatha' can be translated as
'concentration' or 'tranquility'. It is a state in which the mind is brought to rest,
focused only on one item and not allowed to wander. When this is done, a deep calm
pervades body and mind, a state of tranquility which must be experienced to be understood.
Most systems of meditation emphasize the Samatha component. The meditator focuses his mind
upon some items, such as prayer, a certain type of box, a chant, a candle flame, a
religious image or whatever, and excludes all other thoughts and perceptions from his
consciousness. The result is a state of rapture which lasts until the meditator ends the
session of sitting. It is beautiful, delightful meaningful and alluring, but only
temporary. Vipassana meditation address the other component, insight.
The Vipassana meditator uses his concentration as a tool
by which his awareness can chip away at the wall of illusion which cuts him off from the
living light of reality. It is a gradual process of ever-increasing awareness and into the
inner workings of reality itself. It takes years, but one day the meditator chisels
through that wall and tumbles into the presence of light. The transformation is complete.
It's called liberation, and it's permanent. Liberation is the goal of all buddhist systems
of practice. But the routes to attainment of the end are quite diverse.
There are an enormous number of distinct sects within
Buddhism. But they divide into two broad streams of thought -- Mahayana and Theravada.
Mahayana Buddhism prevails throughout East Asia, shaping the cultures of China, Korea,
Japan, Nepal, Tibet and Vietnam. The most widely known of the Mahayana systems is Zen,
practiced mainly in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and the United States. The Theravada system of
practice prevails in South and Southeast Asia in the countries of Sri Lanka, Thailand,
Burma, Laos and Cambodia. This book deals with Theravada practice.
The traditional Theravada literature describes the
techniques of both Samatha (concentration and tranquility of mind) and Vipassana (insight
or clear awareness). There are forty different subjects of meditation described in the
Pali literature. They are recommended as objects of concentration and as subjects of
investigation leading to insight. But this is a basic manual, and we limit our discussion
to the most fundamental of those recommended objects--breathing. This book is an
introduction to the attainment of mindfulness through bare attention to, and clear
comprehension of, the whole process of breathing. Using the breath as his primary focus of
attention, the meditator applies participatory observation to the intirety of his own
perceptual universe. He learns to watch changes occurring in all physical experiences, in
feelings and in perceptions. He learns to study his own mental activities and the
fluctuations in the character of consciousness itself. All of these changes are occurring
perpetually and are present in every moment of our experiences.
Meditation is a living activity, an inherently
experiential activity. It cannot be taught as a purely scholastic subject. The living
heart of the process must come from the teacher's own personal experience. Nevertheless,
there is a vast fund of codified material on the subject which is the product of some of
the most intelligent and deeply illumined human beings ever to walk the earth. This
literature is worthy of attention. Most of the points given in this book are drawn from
the Tipitaka, which is the three-section collected work in which the Buddah's original
teachings have been preserved. The Tipitaka is comprised of the Vinaya, the code of
discipline for monks, nuns, and lay people; the Suttas, public discourses attributed to
the Buddha; and the Abhidhamma, a set of deep psycho-philosophical teachings.
In the first century after Christ, an eminent Buddhist
scholar named Upatissa wrote the Vimuttimagga, (The Path of Freedom) in
which he summarized the Buddha's teachings on meditation. In the fifth century A.C. (after
Christ,) another great Buddhist scholar named Buddhaghosa covered the same ground in a
second scholastic thesis--the Visuddhimagga, (The Path of Purification)
which is the standard text on meditation even today. Modern meditation teachers rely on
the Tipitaka and upon their own personal experiences. It is our intention to present you
with the clearest and most concise directions for Vipassana meditation available in the
English language. But this book offers you a foot in the door. It's up to you to take the
first few steps on the road to the discovery of who you are and what it all means. It is a
journey worth taking. We wish you success.
Chapter 1
Meditation: Why Bother?
Meditation is not easy. It takes time and it takes
energy. It also takes grit, determination and discipline. It requires a host of personal
qualities which we normally regard as unpleasant and which we like to avoid whenever
possible. We can sum it all up in the American word 'gumption'. Meditation takes
'gumption'. It is certainly a great deal easier just to kick back and watch television. So
why bother? Why waste all that time and energy when you could be out enjoying yourself?
Why bother? Simple. Because you are human. And just because of the simple fact that you
are human, you find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness in life which simply
will not go away. You can suppress it from your awareness for a time. You can distract
yourself for hours on end, but it always comes back--usually when you least expect it. All
of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, you sit up, take stock, and realize your actual
situation in life.
There you are, and you suddenly realize that you are
spending your whole life just barely getting by. You keep up a good front. You manage to
make ends meed somehow and look OK from the outside. But those periods of desperation,
those times when you feel everything caving in on you, you keep those to yourself. You are
a mess. And you know it. But you hide it beautifully. Meanwhile, way down under all that
you just know there has got be some other way to live, some better way to look at the
world, some way to touch life more fully. You click into it by chance now and then. You
get a good job. You fall in love. You win the game. and for a while, things are different.
Life takes on a richness and clarity that makes all the bad times and humdrum fade away.
The whole texture of your experience changes and you say to yourself, "OK, now I've
made it; now I will be happy". But then that fades, too, like smoke in the wind. You
are left with just a memory. That and a vague awareness that something is wrong.
But there is really another whole realm of depth and
sensitivity available in life, somehow, you are just not seeing it. You wind up feeling
cut off. You feel insulated from the sweetness of experience by some sort of sensory
cotton. You are not really touching life. You are not making it again. And then even that
vague awareness fades away, and you are back to the same old reality. The world looks like
the usual foul place, which is boring at best. It is an emotional roller coaster, and you
spend a lot of your time down at the bottom of the ramp, yearning for the heights.
So what is wrong with you? Are you a freak? No. You are
just human. And you suffer from the same malady that infects every human being. It is a
monster in side all of us, and it has many arms: Chronic tension, lack of genuine
compassion for others, including the people closest to you, feelings being blocked up, and
emotional deadness. Many, many arms. None of us is entirely free from it. We may deny it.
We try to suppress it. We build a whole culture around hiding from it, pretending it is
not there, and distracting ourselves from it with goals and projects and status. But it
never goes away. It is a constant undercurrent in every thought and every perception; a
little wordless voice at the back of the head saying, "Not good enough yet. Got to
have more. Got to make it better. Got to be better." It is a monster, a monster that
manifests everywhere in subtle forms.
Go to a party. Listen to the laughter, that
brittle-tongued voice that says fun on the surface and fear underneath. Feel the tension,
feel the pressure. Nobody really relaxes. They are faking it. Go to a ball game. Watch the
fan in the stand. Watch the irrational fit of anger. Watch the uncontrolled frustration
bubbling forth from people that masquerades under the guise of enthusiasm, or team spirit.
Booing, cat-calls and unbridled egotism in the name of team loyalty. Drunkenness, fights
in the stands. These are the people trying desperately to release tension from within.
These are not people who are at peace with themselves. Watch the news on TV. Listen to the
lyrics in popular songs. You find the same theme repeated over and over in variations.
Jealousy, suffering, discontent and stress.
Life seems to be a perpetual struggle, some enormous
effort against staggering odds. And what is our solution to all this dissatisfaction? We
get stuck in the ' If only' syndrome. If only I had more money, then I would be happy. If
only I can find somebody who really loves me, if only I can lose 20 pounds, if only I had
a color TV, Jacuzzi, and curly hair, and on and on forever. So where does all this junk
come from and more important, what can we do about it? It comes from the conditions of our
own minds. It is deep, subtle and pervasive set of mental habits, a Gordian knot which we
have built up bit by bit and we can unravel just the same way, one piece at a time. We can
tune up our awareness, dredge up each separate piece and bring it out into the light. We
can make the unconscious conscious, slowly, one piece at a time.
The essence of our experience is change. Change is
incessant. Moment by moment life flows by and it is never the same. Perpetual alteration
is the essence of the perceptual universe. A thought springs up in you head and half a
second later, it is gone. In comes another one, and that is gone too. A sound strikes your
ears and then silence. Open your eyes and the world pours in, blink and it is gone. People
come into your life and they leave again. Friends go, relatives die. Your fortunes go up
and they go down. Sometimes you win and just as often you lose. It is incessant: change,
change, change. No two moments ever the same.
There is not a thing wrong with this. It is the nature of
the universe. But human culture has taught u some odd responses to this endless flowing.
We categorize experiences. We try to stick each perception, every mental change in this
endless flow into one of three mental pigeon holes. It is good, or it is bad, or it is
neutral. Then, according to which box we stick it in, we perceive with a set of fixed
habitual mental responses. If a particular perception has been labeled 'good', then we try
to freeze time right there. We grab onto that particular thought, we fondle it, we hold
it, we try to keep it from escaping. When that does not work, we go all-out in an effort
to repeat the experience which caused that thought. Let us call this mental habit
'grasping'.
Over on the other side of the mind lies the box labeled
'bad'. When we perceive something 'bad', we try to push it away. We try to deny it, reject
it, get rid of it any way we can. We fight against our own experience. We run from pieces
of ourselves. Let us call this mental habit 'rejecting'. Between these two reactions lies
the neutral box. Here we place the experiences which are neither good nor bad. They are
tepid, neutral, uninteresting and boring. We pack experience away in the neutral box so
that we can ignore it and thus return jour attention to where the action is, namely our
endless round of desire and aversion. This category of experience gets robbed of its fair
share of our attention. Let us call this mental habit 'ignoring'. The direct result of all
this lunacy is a perpetual treadmill race to nowhere, endlessly pounding after pleasure,
endlessly fleeing from pain, endlessly ignoring 90 percent of our experience. Than
wondering why life tastes so flat. In the final analysis, it's a system that does not
work.
No matter how hard you pursue pleasure and success, there
are times when you fail. No matter how fast you flee, there are times when pain catches up
with you. And in between those times, life is so boring you could scream. Our minds are
full of opinions and criticisms. We have built walls all around ourselves and we are
trapped with the prison of our own lies and dislikes. We suffer.
Suffering is big word in Buddhist thought. It is a key
term and it should be thoroughly understood. The Pali word is 'dukkha', and it does not
just mean the agony of the body. It means the deep, subtle sense of unsatisfactoriness
which is a part of every mental treadmill. The essence of life is suffering, said the
Buddha. At first glance this seems exceedingly morbid and pessimistic. It even seems
untrue. After all, there are plenty of times when we are happy. Aren't there? No, there
are not. It just seems that way. Take any moment when you feel really fulfilled and
examine it closely. Down under the joy, you will find that subtle, all-pervasive
undercurrent of tension, that no matter how great the moment is, it is going to end. No
matter how much you just gained, you are either going to lose some of it or spend the rest
of your days guarding what you have got and scheming how to get more. And in the end, you
are going to die. In the end, you lose everything. It is all transitory.
Sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it? Luckily it's not; not at
all. It only sounds bleak when you view it from the level of ordinary mental perspective,
the very level at which the treadmill mechanism operates. Down under that level lies
another whole perspective, a completely different way to look at the universe. It is a
level of functioning where the mind does not try to freeze time, where we do not grasp
onto our experience as it flows by, where we do not try to block things out and ignore
them. It is a level of experience beyond good and bad, beyond pleasure and pain. It is a
lovely way to perceive the world, and it is a learnable skill. It is not easy, but is
learnable.
Happiness and peace. Those are really the prime issues in
human existence. That is what all of us are seeking. This often is a bit hard to see
because we cover up those basic goals with layers of surface objectives. We want food, we
want money, we want sex, possessions and respect. We even say to ourselves that the idea
of 'happiness' is too abstract: "Look, I am practical. Just give me enough money and
I will buy all the happiness I need". Unfortunately, this is an attitude that does
not work. Examine each of these goals and you will find they are superficial. You want
food. Why? Because I am hungry. So you are hungry, so what? Well if I eat, I won't be
hungry and then I'll feel good. Ah ha! Feel good! Now there is a real item. What we really
seek is not the surface goals. They are just means to an end. What we are really after is
the feeling of relief that comes when the drive is satisfied. Relief, relaxation and an
end to the tension. Peace, happiness, no more yearning.
So what is this happiness? For most of us, the perfect
happiness would mean getting everything we wanted, being in control of everything, playing
Caesar, making the whole world dance a jig according to our every whim. Once again, it
does not work that way. Take a look at the people in history who have actually held this
ultimate power. These were not happy people. Most assuredly they were not men at peace
with themselves. Why? Because they were driven to control the world totally and absolutely
and they could not. They wanted to control all men and there remained men who refused to
be controlled. They could not control the stars. They still got sick. They still had to
die.
You can't ever get everything you want. It is impossible.
Luckily, there is another option. You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of
this endless cycle of desire and aversion. You can learn to not want what you want, to
recognize desires but not be controlled by them. This does not mean that you lie down on
the road and invite everybody to walk all over you . It means that you continue to live a
very normal-looking life, but live from a whole new viewpoint. You do the things that a
person must do, but you are free from that obsessive, compulsive drivenness of your own
desires. You want something, but you don't need to chase after it. You fear something, but
you don't need to stand there quaking in your boots. This sort of mental culture is very
difficult. It takes years. But trying to control everything is impossible, and the
difficult is preferable to the impossible.
Wait a minute, though. Peace and happiness! Isn't that
what civilization is all about? We build skyscrapers and freeways. We have paid vacations,
TV sets. We provide free hospitals and sick leaves, Social Security and welfare benefits.
All of that is aimed at providing some measure of peace and happiness. Yet the rate of
mental illness climbs steadily, and the crime rates rise faster. The streets are crawling
with delinquents and unstable individuals. Stick you arms outside the safety of your own
door and somebody is very likely to steal your watch! Something is not working. A happy
man does not feel driven to kill. We like to think that our society is exploiting every
area of human knowledge in order to achieve peace and happiness.
We are just beginning to realize that we have
overdeveloped the material aspect of existence at the expense of the deeper emotional and
spiritual aspect, and we are paying the price for that error. It is one thing to talk
about degeneration of moral and spiritual fiber in America today, and another thing to do
something about it. The place to start is within ourselves. Look carefully inside, truly
and objectively, and each of us will see moments when "I am the punk" and
"I am the crazy". We will learn to see those moments, see them clearly, cleanly
and without condemnation, and we will be on our way up and out of being so.
You can't make radical changes in the pattern of your life
until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do that, changes
flow naturally. You don't have to force or struggle or obey rules dictated to you by some
authority. You just change. It is automatic. But arriving at the initial insight is quite
a task. You've got to see who you are and how you are, without illusion, judgement or
resistance of any kind. You've got to see your own place in society and your function as a
social being. You've got to see your duties and obligations to your fellow human beings,
and above all, your responsibility to yourself as an individual living with other
individuals. And you've got to see all of that clearly and as a unit, a single gestalt of
interrelationship. It sounds complex, but it often occurs in a single instant. Mental
culture through meditation is without rival in helping you achieve this sort of
understanding and serene happiness.
The Dhammapada is an ancient Buddhist text which
anticipated Freud by thousands of years. It says: "What you are now is the result of
what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now. The
consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it.
The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like you own shadow. No one can do
more for you than your own purified mind-- no parent, no relative, no friend, no one. A
well-disciplined mind brings happiness".
Meditation is intended to purify the mind. It cleanses the
thought process of what can be called psychic irritants, things like greed, hatred and
jealousy, things that keep you snarled up in emotional bondage. It brings the mind to a
state of tranquility and awareness, a state of concentration and insight.
In our society, we are great believers in education. We
believe that knowledge makes a cultured person civilized. Civilization, however, polishes
the person superficially. Subject our noble and sophisticated gentleman to stresses of war
or economic collapse, and see what happens. It is one thing to obey the law because you
know the penalties and fear the consequences. It is something else entirely to obey the
law because you have cleansed yourself from the greed that would make you steal and the
hatred that would make you kill. Throw a stone into a stream. The running water would
smooth the surface, but the inner part remains unchanged. Take that same stone and place
it in the intense fires of a forge, and the whole stone changes inside and outside. It all
melts. Civilization changes man on the outside. Meditation softens him within, through and
through.
Meditation is called the Great Teacher. It is the
cleansing crucible fire that works slowly through understanding. The greater your
understanding, the more flexible and tolerant you can be. The greater your understanding,
the more compassionate you can be. You become like a perfect parent or an ideal teacher.
You are ready to forgive and forget. You feel love towards others because you understand
them. And you understand others because you have understood yourself. You have looked
deeply inside and seen self illusion and your own human failings. You have seen your own
humanity and learned to forgive and to love. When you have learned compassion for
yourself, compassion for others is automatic. An accomplished meditator has achieved a
profound understanding of life, and he inevitably relates to the world with a deep and
uncritical love.
Meditation is a lot like cultivating a new land. To make a
field out of a forest, fist you have to clear the trees and pull out the stumps. Then you
till the soil and you fertilize it. Then you sow your seed and you harvest your crops. To
cultivate your mind, first you have to clear out the various irritants that are in the
way, pull them right out by the root so that they won't grow back. Then you fertilize. You
pump energy and discipline in the mental soil. Then you sow the seed and you harvest your
crops of faith, morality , mindfulness and wisdom.
Faith and morality, by the way, have a special meaning in
this context. Buddhism does not advocate faith in the sense of believing something because
it is written in a book or attributed to a prophet or taught to you by some authority
figure. The meaning here is closer to confidence. It is knowing that something is true
because you have seen it work, because you have observed that very thing within yourself.
In the same way, morality is not a ritualistic obedience to some exterior, imposed code of
behavior.
The purpose of meditation is personal transformation. The
you that goes in one side of the meditation experience is not the same you that comes out
the other side. It changes your character by a process of sensitization, by making you
deeply aware of your own thoughts, word, and deeds. Your arrogance evaporated and your
antagonism dries up. Your mind becomes still and calm. And your life smoothes out. Thus
meditation properly performed prepares you to meet the ups and down of existence. It
reduces your tension, your fear, and your worry. Restlessness recedes and passion
moderates. Things begin to fall into place and your life becomes a glide instead of a
struggle. All of this happens through understanding.
Meditation sharpens your concentration and your thinking
power. Then, piece by piece, your own subconscious motives and mechanics become clear to
you. Your intuition sharpens. The precision of your thought increases and gradually you
come to a direct knowledge of things as they really are, without prejudice and without
illusion. So is this reason enough to bother? Scarcely. These are just promises on paper.
There is only one way you will ever know if meditation is worth the effort. Learn to do it
right, and do it. See for yourself.
Chapter 2
What Meditation Isn't
Meditation is a word. You have heard this word
before, or you would never have picked up this book. The thinking process operates by
association, and all sorts of ideas are associated with the word 'meditation'. Some of
them are probably accurate and others are hogwash. Some of them pertain more properly to
other systems of meditation and have nothing to do with Vipassana practice. Before we
proceed, it behooves us to blast some of the residue out of our own neuronal circuits so
that new information can pass unimpeded. Let us start with some of the most obvious stuff.
We are not going to teach you to contemplate your navel or
to chant secret syllables. You are not conquering demons or harnessing invisible energies.
There are no colored belts given for your performance and you don't have to shave your
head or wear a turban. You don't even have to give away all your belongings and move to a
monastery. In fact, unless your life is immoral and chaotic, you can probably get started
right away and make some sort of progress. Sounds fairly encouraging, wouldn't you say?
There are many, many books on the subject of meditation.
Most of them are written from the point of view which lies squarely within one particular
religious or philosophical tradition, and many of the authors have not bothered to point
this out. They make statements about meditation which sound like general laws, but are
actually highly specific procedures exclusive to that particular system of practice. The
result is something of a muddle. Worse yet is the panoply of complex theories and
interpretations available, all of them at odds with one another. The result is a real mess
and an enormous jumble of conflicting opinions accompanied by a mass of extraneous data.
This book is specific. We are dealing exclusively with the Vipassana system of meditation.
We are going to teach you to watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached
manner so you can gain insight into your own behavior. The goal is awareness, an awareness
so intense, concentrated and finely tuned that you will be able to pierce the inner
workings of reality itself.
There are a number of common misconceptions about
meditation. We see them crop up again and again from new students, the same questions over
and over. It is best to deal with these things at once, because they are the sort of
preconceptions which can block your progress right from the outset. We are going to take
these misconceptions one at a time and explode them.
Misconception #1
Meditation is just a relaxation technique
The bugaboo here is the word 'just'. Relaxation is a key
component of meditation, but Vipassana-style meditation aims at a much loftier goal.
Nevertheless, the statement is essentially true for many other systems of meditation. All
meditation procedures stress concentration of the mind, bringing the mind to rest on one
item or one area of thought. Do it strongly and thoroughly enough, and you achieve a deep
and blissful relaxation which is called Jhana. It is a state of such supreme tranquility
that it amounts to rapture. It is a form of pleasure which lies above and beyond anything
that can be experienced in the normal state of consciousness. Most systems stop right
there. That is the goal, and when you attain that, you simply repeat the experience for
the rest of your life. Not so with Vipassana meditation. Vipassana seeks another
goal--awareness. Concentration and relaxation are considered necessary concomitants to
awareness. They are required precursors, handy tools, and beneficial byproducts. But they
are not the goal. The goal is insight. Vipassana meditation is a profound religious
practice aimed at nothing less that the purification and transformation of your everyday
life. We will deal more thoroughly with the differences between concentration and insight
in Chapter 14.
Misconception #2
Meditation means going into a trance
Here again the statement could be applied accurately to
certain systems of meditation, but not to Vipassana. Insight meditation is not a form of
hypnosis. You are not trying to black out your mind so as to become unconscious. You are
not trying to turn yourself into an emotionless vegetable. If anything, the reverse is
true. You will become more and more attuned to your own emotional changes. You will learn
to know yourself with ever- greater clarity and precision. In learning this technique,
certain states do occur which may appear trance-like to the observer. But they are really
quite the opposite. In hypnotic trance, the subject is susceptible to control by another
party, whereas in deep concentration the meditator remains very much under his own
control. The similarity is superficial, and in any case the occurrence of these phenomena
is not the point of Vipassana. As we have said, the deep concentration of Jhana is a tool
or stepping stone on the route of heightened awareness. Vipassana by definition is the
cultivation of mindfulness or awareness. If you find that you are becoming unconscious in
meditation, then you aren't meditating, according to the definition of the word as used in
the Vipassana system. It is that simple.
Misconception #3
Meditation is a mysterious practice which cannot be understood
Here again, this is almost true, but not quite. Meditation
deals with levels of consciousness which lie deeper than symbolic thought. Therefore, some
of the data about meditation just won't fit into words. That does not mean, however, that
it cannot be understood. There are deeper ways to understand things than words. You
understand how to walk. You probably can't describe the exact order in which your nerve
fibers and your muscles contract during that process. But you can do it. Meditation needs
to be understood that same way, by doing it. It is not something that you can learn in
abstract terms. It is to be experienced. Meditation is not some mindless formula which
gives automatic and predictable results. You can never really predict exactly what will
come up in any particular session. It is an investigation and experiment and an adventure
every time. In fact, this is so true that when you do reach a feeling of predictability
and sameness in your practice, you use that as an indicator. It means that you have gotten
off the track somewhere and you are headed for stagnation. Learning to look at each second
as if it were the first and only second in the universe is most essential in Vipassana
meditation.
Misconception #4
The purpose of meditation is to become a psychic superman
No, the purpose of meditation is to develop awareness.
Learning to read minds is not the point. Levitation is not the goal. The goal is
liberation. There is a link between psychic phenomena and meditation, but the relationship
is somewhat complex. During early stages of the meditator's career, such phenomena may or
may not arise. Some people may experience some intuitive understanding or memories from
past lives; others do not. In any case, these are not regarded as well-developed and
reliable psychic abilities. Nor should they be given undue importance. Such phenomena are
in fact fairly dangerous to new meditators in that they are too seductive. They can be an
ego trap which can lure you right off the track. Your best advice is not to place any
emphasis on these phenomena. If they come up, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine,
too. It's unlikely that they will. There is a point in the meditator's career where he may
practice special exercises to develop psychic powers. But this occurs way down the line.
After he has gained a very deep stage of Jhana, the meditator will be far enough advanced
to work with such powers without the danger of their running out of control or taking over
his life. He will then develop them strictly for the purpose of service to others. This
state of affairs only occurs after decades of practice. Don't worry about it. Just
concentrate on developing more and more awareness. If voices and visions pop up, just
notice them and let them go. Don't get involved.
Misconception #5
Meditation is dangerous and a prudent person should avoid it
Everything is dangerous. Walk across the street and you
may get hit by a bus. Take a shower and you could break your neck. Meditate and you will
probably dredge up various nasty-matters from your past. The suppressed material that has
been buried there for quite some time can be scary. It is also highly profitable. No
activity is entirely without risk, but that does not mean that we should wrap ourselves in
some protective cocoon. That is not living. That is premature death. The way to deal with
danger is to know approximately how much of it there is, where it is likely to be found
and how to deal with it when it arises. That is the purpose of this manual. Vipassana is
development of awareness. That in itself is not dangerous, but just the opposite.
Increased awareness is the safeguard against danger. Properly done, meditation is a very
gently and gradual process. Take it slow and easy, and development of your practice will
occur very naturally. Nothing should be forced. Later, when you are under the close
scrutiny and protective wisdom of a competent teacher, you can accelerate your rate of
growth by taking a period of intensive meditation. In the beginning, though, easy does it.
Work gently and everything will be fine.
Misconception #6
Meditation is for saints and holy men, not for regular people
You find this attitude very prevalent in Asia, where monks
and holy men are accorded an enormous amount of ritualized reverence. This is somewhat
akin to the American attitude of idealizing movie stars and baseball heroes. Such people
are stereotyped, made larger than life, and saddled with all sort of characteristics that
few human beings can ever live up to. Even in the West, we share some of this attitude
about meditation. We expect the meditator to be some extraordinarily pious figure in whose
mouth butter would never dare to melt. A little personal contact with such people will
quickly dispel this illusion. They usually prove to be people of enormous energy and
gusto, people who live their lives with amazing vigor. It is true, of course, that most
holy men meditate, but they don't meditate because they are holy men. That is backward.
They are holy men because they meditate. Meditation is how they got there. And they
started meditating before they became holy. This is an important point. A sizable number
of students seems to feel that a person should be completely moral before he begins
meditation. It is an unworkable strategy. Morality requires a certain degree of mental
control. It's a prerequisite. You can't follow any set of moral precepts without at least
a little self-control, and if your mind is perpetually spinning like a fruit cylinder in a
one- armed bandit, self-control is highly unlikely. So mental culture has to come first.
There are three integral factors in Buddhist meditation
--- morality, concentration and wisdom. Those three factors grow
together as your practice deepens. Each one influences the other, so you cultivate the
three of them together, not one at a time. When you have the wisdom to truly understand a
situation, compassion towards all the parties involved is automatic, and compassion means
that you automatically restrain yourself from any thought, word or deed that might harm
yourself or others. Thus your behavior is automatically moral. It is only when you don't
understand things deeply that you create problems. If you fail to see the consequences of
your own action, you will blunder. The fellow who waits to become totally moral before he
begins to meditate is waiting for a 'but' that will never come. The ancient sages say that
he is like a man waiting for the ocean to become calm so that he can go take a bath. To
understand this relationship more fully, let us propose that there are levels of morality.
The lowest level is adherence to a set of rules and regulations laid down by somebody
else. It could be your favorite prophet. It could be the state, the head man of your tribe
or your father. No matter who generates the rules, all you've got to do at this level is
know the rules and follow them. A robot can do that. Even a trained chimpanzee could do it
if the rules were simple enough and he was smacked with a stick every time he broke one.
This level requires no meditation at all. All you need are the rules and somebody to swing
the stick.
The next level of morality consists of obeying the same
rules even in the absence of somebody who will smack you. You obey because you have
internalized the rules. You smack yourself every time you break one. This level requires a
bit of mind control. If your thought pattern is chaotic, your behavior will be chaotic,
too. Mental culture reduces mental chaos.
There is a third level or morality, but it might be better
termed ethics. This level is a whole quantum layer up the scale, a real paradigm shift in
orientation. At the level of ethics, one does not follow hard and fast rules dictated by
authority. One chooses his own behavior according to the needs of the situation. This
level requires real intelligence and an ability to juggle all the factors in every
situation and arrive at a unique, creative and appropriate response each time.
Furthermore, the individual making these decisions needs to have dug himself out of his
own limited personal viewpoint. He has to see the entire situation from an objective point
of view, giving equal weight to his own needs and those of others. In other words, he has
to be free from greed, hatred, envy and all the other selfish junk that ordinarily keeps
us from seeing the other guy's side of the issue. Only then can he choose that precise set
of actions which will be truly optimal for that situation. This level of morality
absolutely demands meditation, unless you were born a saint. There is no other way to
acquire the skill. Furthermore, the sorting process required at this level is exhausting.
If you tried to juggle all those factors in every situation with your conscious mind,
you'd wear yourself out. The intellect just can't keep that many balls in the air at once.
It is an overload. Luckily, a deeper level of consciousness can do this sort of processing
with ease. Meditation can accomplish the sorting process for you. It is an eerie feeling.
One day you've got a problem--say to handle Uncle Herman's
latest divorce. It looks absolutely unsolvable, and enormous muddle of 'maybes' that would
give Solomon himself the willies. The next day you are washing the dishes, thinking about
something else entirely, and suddenly the solution is there. It just pops out of the deep
mind and you say, 'Ah ha!' and the whole thing is solved. This sort of intuition can only
occur when you disengage the logic circuits from the problem and give the deep mind the
opportunity to cook up the solution. The conscious mind just gets in the way. Meditation
teaches you how to disentangle yourself from the thought process. It is the mental art of
stepping out of your own way, and that's a pretty useful skill in everyday life.
Meditation is certainly not some irrelevant practice strictly for ascetics and hermits. It
is a practical skill that focuses on everyday events and has immediate application in
everybody's life. Meditation is not other- worldly.
Unfortunately, this very fact constitutes the drawback for
certain students. They enter the practice expecting instantaneous cosmic revelation,
complete with angelic choirs. What they usually get is a more efficient way to take out
the trash and better ways to deal with Uncle Herman. They are needlessly disappointed. The
trash solution comes first. The voices of archangels take a bit longer.
Misconception #7
Meditation is running away from reality
Incorrect. Meditation is running into reality. It does not
insulate you from the pain of life. It allows you to delve so deeply into life and all its
aspects that you pierce the pain barrier and you go beyond suffering. Vipassana is a
practice done with the specific intention of facing reality, to fully experience life just
as it is and to cope with exactly what you find. It allows you to blow aside the illusions
and to free yourself from all those polite little lies you tell yourself all the time.
What is there is there. You are who you are, and lying to yourself about your own
weaknesses and motivations only binds you tighter to the wheel of illusion. Vipassana
meditation is not an attempt to forget yourself or to cover up your troubles. It is
learning to look at yourself exactly as you are. See what is there, accept it fully. Only
then can you change it.
Misconception #8
Meditation is a great way to get high
Well, yes and no. Meditation does produce lovely blissful
feelings sometimes. But they are not the purpose, and they don't always occur.
Furthermore, if you do meditation with that purpose in mind, they are less likely to occur
than if you just meditate for the actual purpose of meditation, which is increased
awareness. Bliss results from relaxation, and relaxation results from release of tension.
Seeking bliss from meditation introduces tension into the process, which blows the whole
chain of events. It is a Catch-22. You can only have bliss if you don't chase it. Besides,
if euphoria and good feelings are what you are after, there are easier ways to get them.
They are available in taverns and from shady characters on the street corners all across
the nation. Euphoria is not the purpose of meditation. It will often arise, but it to be
regarded as a by- product. Still, it is a very pleasant side-effect, and it becomes more
and more frequent the longer you meditate. You won't hear any disagreement about this from
advanced practitioners.
Misconception #9
Meditation is selfish
It certainly looks that way. There sits the meditator
parked on his little cushion. Is he out giving blood? No. Is he busy working with disaster
victims? No. But let us examine his motivation. Why is he doing this? His intention is to
purge his own mind of anger, prejudice and ill-will. He is actively engaged in the process
of getting rid of greed, tension and insensitivity. Those are the very items which
obstruct his compassion for others. Until they are gone, any good works that he does are
likely to be just an extension of his own ego and of no real help in the long run. Harm in
the name of help is one of the oldest games. The grand inquisitor of the Spanish
Inquisition spouts the loftiest of motives. The Salem witchcraft trials were conducted for
the public good. Examine the personal lives of advanced meditators and you will often find
them engaged in humanitarian service. You will seldom find them as crusading missionaries
who are willing to sacrifice certain individuals for the sake of some pious idea. The fact
is we are more selfish than we know. The ego has a way of turning the loftiest activities
into trash if it is allowed free range. Through meditation we become aware of ourselves
exactly as we are, by waking up to the numerous subtle ways that we manifest our own
selfishness. Then we truly begin to be genuinely selfless. Cleansing yourself of
selfishness is not a selfish activity.
Misconception #10
When you meditate, you sit around thinking lofty thoughts
Wrong again. There are certain systems of contemplation in
which this sort of thing is done. But that is not Vipassana. Vipassana is the practice of
awareness. Awareness of whatever is there, be it supreme truth or crummy trash. What is
there is there. Of course, lofty aesthetic thoughts may arise during your practice. They
are certainly not to be avoided. Neither are they to be sought. They are just pleasant
side-effects. Vipassana is a simple practice. It consists of experiencing your own life
events directly, without preference and without mental images pasted to them. Vipassana is
seeing your life unfold from moment to moment without biases. What comes up comes up. It
is very simple.
Misconception #11
A couple of weeks of meditation and all my problems will go away
Sorry, meditation is not a quick cure-all. You will start
seeing changes right away, but really profound effects are years down the line. That is
just the way the universe is constructed. Nothing worthwhile is achieved overnight.
Meditation is tough in some respects. It requires a long discipline and sometimes a
painful process of practice. At each sitting you gain some results, but those results are
often very subtle. They occur deep within the mind, only to manifest much later. and if
you are sitting there constantly looking for some huge instantaneous changes, you will
miss the subtle shifts altogether. You will get discouraged, give up and swear that no
such changes will ever occur. Patience is the key. Patience. If you learn nothing else
from meditation, you will learn patience. And that is the most valuable lesson available.
Chapter 3
What Meditation Is
Meditation is a word, and words are used in
different ways by different speakers. This may seem like a trivial point, but it is not.
It is quite important to distinguish exactly what a particular speaker means by the words
he uses. Every culture on earth, for example, has produced some sort of mental practice
which might be termed meditation. It all depends on how loose a definition you give to
that word. Everybody does it, from Africans to Eskimos. The techniques are enormously
varied, and we will make no attempt to survey them. There are other books for that. For
the purpose of this volume, we will restrict our discussion to those practices best known
to Western audiences and most likely associated with the term meditation.
Within the Judeo-Christian tradition we find two
overlapping practices called prayer and contemplation. Prayer is a direct address to some
spiritual entity. Contemplation in a prolonged period of conscious thought about some
specific topic, usually a religious ideal or scriptural passage. From the standpoint of
mental culture, both of these activities are exercises in concentration. The normal deluge
of conscious thought is restricted, and the mind is brought to one conscious area of
operation. The results are those you find in any concentrative practice: deep calm, a
physiological slowing of the metabolism and a sense of peace and well-being.
Out of the Hindu tradition comes Yogic meditation, which
is also purely concentrative. The traditional basic exercises consist of focusing the mind
on a single object a stone, a candle flame, a syllable or whatever, and not allowing it to
wander. Having acquired the basic skill, the Yogi proceeds to expand his practice by
taking on more complex objects of meditation chants, colorful religious images, energy
channels in the body and so forth. Still, no matter how complex the object of meditation,
the meditation itself remains purely an exercise in concentration.
Within the Buddhist tradition, concentration is also
highly valued. But a new element is added and more highly stressed. That element is
awareness. All Buddhist meditation aims at the development of awareness, using
concentration as a tool. The Buddhist tradition is very wide, however, and there are
several diverse routes to this goal. Zen meditation uses two separate tacks. The first is
the direct plunge into awareness by sheer force of will. You sit down and you just sit,
meaning that you toss out of your mind everything except pure awareness of sitting. This
sounds very simple. It is not. A brief trial will demonstrate just how difficult it really
is. The second Zen approach used in the Rinzai school is that of tricking the mind out of
conscious thought and into pure awareness. This is done by giving the student an
unsolvable riddle which he must solve anyway, and by placing him in a horrendous training
situation. Since he cannot flee from the pain of the situation, he must flee into a pure
experience of the moment. There is nowhere else to go. Zen is tough. It is effective for
many people, but it is really tough.
Another stratagem, Tantric Buddhism, is nearly the
reverse. Conscious thought, at least the way we usually do it, is the manifestation of
ego, the you that you usually think that you are. Conscious thought is tightly connected
with self-concept. The self-concept or ego is nothing more than a set of reactions and
mental images which are artificially pasted to the flowing process of pure awareness.
Tantra seeks to obtain pure awareness by destroying this ego image. This is accomplished
by a process of visualization. The student is given a particular religious image to
meditate upon, for example, one of the deities from the Tantric pantheon. He does this in
so thorough a fashion that he becomes that entity. He takes off his own identity and puts
on another. This takes a while, as you might imagine, but it works. During the process, he
is able to watch the way that the ego is constructed and put in place. He comes to
recognize the arbitrary nature of all egos, including his own, and he escapes from bondage
to the ego. He is left in a state where he may have an ego if he so chooses, either his
own or whichever other he might wish, or he can do without one. Result: pure awareness.
Tantra is not exactly a game of patty cake either.
Vipassana is the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices.
The method comes directly from the Sitipatthana Sutta, a discourse attributed to Buddha
himself. Vipassana is a direct and gradual cultivation of mindfulness or awareness. It
proceeds piece by piece over a period of years. The student's attention is carefully
directed to an intense examination of certain aspects of his own existence. The meditator
is trained to notice more and more of his own flowing life experience. Vipassana is a
gentle technique. But it also is very , very thorough. It is an ancient and codified
system of sensitivity training, a set of exercises dedicated to becoming more and more
receptive to your own life experience. It is attentive listening, total seeing and careful
testing. We learn to smell acutely, to touch fully and really pay attention to what we
feel. We learn to listen to our own thoughts without being caught up in them.
The object of Vipassana practice is to learn to pay
attention. We think we are doing this already, but that is an illusion. It comes from the
fact that we are paying so little attention to the ongoing surge of our own life
experiences that we might just as well be asleep. We are simply not paying enough
attention to notice that we are not paying attention. It is another Catch-22.
Through the process of mindfulness, we slowly become aware
of what we really are down below the ego image. We wake up to what life really is. It is
not just a parade of ups and downs, lollipops and smacks on the wrist. That is an
illusion. Life has a much deeper texture than that if we bother to look, and if we look in
the right way.
Vipassana is a form of mental training that will teach you
to experience the world in an entirely new way. You will learn for the first time what is
truly happening to you, around you and within you. It is a process of self discovery, a
participatory investigation in which you observe your own experiences while participating
in them, and as they occur. The practice must be approached with this attitude.
"Never mind what I have been taught. Forget about
theories and prejudgments and stereotypes. I want to understand the true nature of life. I
want to know what this experience of being alive really is. I want to apprehend the true
and deepest qualities of life, and I don't want to just accept somebody else's
explanation. I want to see it for myself." If you pursue your meditation practice
with this attitude, you will succeed. You'll find yourself observing things objectively,
exactly as they are--flowing and changing from moment to moment. Life then takes on an
unbelievable richness which cannot be described. It has to be experienced.
The Pali term for Insight meditation is Vipassana Bhavana.
Bhavana comes from the root 'Bhu', which means to grow or to become. There fore Bhavana
means to cultivate, and the word is always used in reference to the mind. Bhavana means
mental cultivation. 'Vipassana' is derived from two roots. 'Passana' means seeing or
perceiving. 'Vi' is a prefix with the complex set of connotations. The basic meaning is
'in a special way.' But there also is the connotation of both 'into' and 'through'. The
whole meaning of the word is looking into something with clarity and precision, seeing
each component as distinct and separate, and piercing all the way through so as to
perceive the most fundamental reality of that thing. This process leads to insight into
the basic reality of whatever is being inspected. Put it all together and 'Vipassana
Bhavana' means the cultivation of the mind, aimed at seeing in a special way that leads to
insight and to full understanding.
In Vipassana mediation we cultivate this special way of
seeing life. We train ourselves to see reality exactly as it is, and we call this special
mode of perception 'mindfulness.' This process of mindfulness is really quite different
from what we usually do. We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us.
We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects
for the reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought stream that reality flows by
unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of
pleasure and gratification and an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend
all of our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are
endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and
untasted. In Vipassana meditation we train ourselves to ignore the constant impulses to be
more comfortable, and we dive into the reality instead. The ironic thing is that real
peace comes only when you stop chasing it. Another Catch-22.
When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real
fulfillment arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real beauty of
life comes out. When you seek to know the reality without illusion, complete with all its
pain and danger, that is when real freedom and security are yours. This is not some
doctrine we are trying to drill into you. This is an observable reality, a thing you can
and should see for yourself.
Buddhism is 2500 years old, and any thought system of that
vintage has time to develop layers and layers of doctrine and ritual. Nevertheless, the
fundamental attitude of Buddhism is intensely empirical and anti-authoritarian. Gotama the
Buddha was a highly unorthodox individual and real anti-traditionalist. He did not offer
his teaching as a set of dogmas, but rather as a set of propositions for each individual
to investigate for himself. His invitation to one and all was 'Come and See'. One of the
things he said to his followers was "Place no head above your own". By this he
meant, don't accept somebody else's word. See for yourself.
We want you to apply this attitude to every word you read
in this manual. We are not making statements that you would accept merely because we are
authorities in the field. Blind faith has nothing to do with this. These are experiential
realities. Learn to adjust your mode of perception according to instructions given in the
book, and you will see for yourself. That and only that provides ground for your faith.
Insight meditation is essentially a practice of investigative personal discovery.
Having said this, we will present here a very short
synopsis of some of the key points of Buddhist philosophy. We make not attempt to be
thorough, since that has been quite nicely done in many other books. This material is
essential to understanding Vipassana, therefore, some mention must be made.
From the Buddhist point of view, we human beings live in a
very peculiar fashion. We view impermanent things as permanent, though everything is
changing all around us. The process of change is constant and eternal. As you read these
words, your body is aging. But you pay no attention to that. The book in you hand is
decaying. The print is fading and the pages are becoming brittle. The walls around you are
aging. The molecules within those walls are vibrating at an enormous rate, and everything
is shifting, going to pieces and dissolving slowly. You pay no attention to that, either.
Then one day you look around you. Your body is wrinkled and squeaky and you hurt. The book
is a yellowed, useless lump; the building is caving in. So you pine for lost youth and you
cry when the possessions are gone. Where does this pain come from? It comes from your own
inattention. You failed to look closely at life. You failed to observe the constantly
shifting flow of the world as it went by. You set up a collection of mental constructions,
'me', 'the book', 'the building', and you assume that they would endure forever. They
never do. But you can tune into the constantly ongoing change. You can learn to perceive
your life as an ever- flowing movement, a thing of great beauty like a dance or symphony.
You can learn to take joy in the perpetual passing away of all phenomena. You can learn to
live with the flow of existence rather than running perpetually against the grain. You can
learn this. It is just a matter of time and training.
Our human perceptual habits are remarkably stupid in some
ways. We tune out 99% of all the sensory stimuli we actually receive, and we solidify the
remainder into discrete mental objects. Then we react to those mental objects in
programmed habitual ways. An example: There you are, sitting alone in the stillness of a
peaceful night. A dog barks in the distance. The perception itself is indescribably
beautiful if you bother to examine it. Up out of that sea of silence come surging waves of
sonic vibration. You start to hear the lovely complex patterns, and they are turned into
scintillating electronic stimulations within the nervous system. The process is beautiful
and fulfilling in itself. We humans tend to ignore it totally. Instead, we solidify that
perception into a mental object. We paste a mental picture on it and we launch into a
series of emotional and conceptual reactions to it. "There is that dog again. He is
always barking at night. What a nuisance. Every night he is a real bother. Somebody should
do something. Maybe I should call a cop. No, a dog catcher. So, I'll call the pound. No,
maybe I'll just write a real nasty letter to the guy who owns that dog. No, too much
trouble. I'll just get an ear plug." They are just perceptual and mental habits. You
learn to respond this way as a child by copying the perceptual habits of those around you.
These perceptual responses are not inherent in the structure of the nervous system. The
circuits are there. But this is not the only way that our mental machinery can be used.
That which has been learned can be unlearned. The first step is to realize what you are
doing, as you are doing it, and stand back and quietly watch.
From the Buddhist perspective, we humans have a backward
view of life. We look at what is actually the cause of suffering and we see it as
happiness. The cause of suffering is that desire- aversion syndrome which we spoke of
earlier. Up pops a perception. It could be anything--a beautiful girl, a handsome guy,
speed boat, thug with a gun, truck bearing down on you, anything. Whatever it is, the very
next thing we do is to react to the stimulus with a feeling about it.
Take worry. We worry a lot. Worry itself is the problem.
Worry is a process. It has steps. Anxiety is not just a state of existence but a
procedure. What you've got to do is to look at the very beginning of that procedure, those
initial stages before the process has built up a head of steam. The very first link of the
worry chain is the grasping/rejecting reaction. As soon as some phenomenon pops into the
mind, we try mentally to grab onto it or push it away. That sets the worry response in
motion. Luckily, there is a handy little tool called Vipassana meditation which you can
use to short-circuit the whole mechanism.
Vipassana meditation teaches us how to scrutinize our own
perceptual process with great precision. We learn to watch the arising of thought and
perception with a feeling of serene detachment. We learn to view our own reactions to
stimuli with calm and clarity. We begin to see ourselves reacting without getting caught
up in the reactions themselves. The obsessive nature of thought slowly dies. We can still
get married. We can still step out of the path of the truck. But we don't need to go
through hell over either one.
This escape from the obsessive nature of thought produces
a whole new view of reality. It is a complete paradigm shift, a total change in the
perceptual mechanism. It brings with it the feeling of peace and rightness, a new zest for
living and a sense of completeness to every activity. Because of these advantages,
Buddhism views this way of looking at things as a correct view of life and Buddhist texts
call it seeing things as they really are.
Vipassana meditation is a set of training procedures which
open us gradually to this new view of reality as it truly is. Along with this new reality
goes a new view of the most central aspect of reality: 'me'. A close inspection reveals
that we have done the same thing to 'me' that we have done to all other perceptions. We
have taken a flowing vortex of thought, feeling and sensation and we have solidified that
into a mental construct. Then we have stuck a label onto it, 'me'. And forever after, we
threat it as if it were a static and enduring entity. We view it as a thing separate from
all other things. We pinch ourselves off from the rest of that process of eternal change
which is the universe. And than we grieve over how lonely we feel. We ignore our inherent
connectedness to all other beings and we decide that 'I' have to get more for 'me'; then
we marvel at how greedy and insensitive human beings are. And on it goes. Every evil deed,
every example of heartlessness in the world stems directly from this false sense of 'me'
as distinct from all else that is out there.
Explode the illusion of that one concept and your whole
universe changes. Don't expect to do this overnight, though. You spent your whole life
building up that concept, reinforcing it with every thought, word, and deed over all those
years. It is not going to evaporate instantly. But it will pass if you give it enough time
and enough attention. Vipassana meditation is a process by which it is dissolved. Little
by little, you chip away at it just by watching it.
The 'I' concept is a process. It is a thing we are doing.
In Vipassana we learn to see that we are doing it, when we are doing it and how we are
doing it. Then it moves and fades away, like a cloud passing through the clear sky. We are
left in a state where we can do it or not do it, whichever seems appropriate to the
situation. The compulsiveness is gone. We have a choice.
These are all major insights, of course. Each one is a
deep- reaching understanding of one of the fundamental issues of human existence. They do
not occur quickly, nor without considerable effort. But the payoff is big. They lead to a
total transformation of your life. Every second of your existence thereafter is changed.
The meditator who pushes all the way down this track achieves perfect mental health, a
pure love for all that lives and complete cessation of suffering. That is not small goal.
But you don't have to go all the way to reap benefits. They start right away and they pile
up over the years. It is a cumulative function. The more you sit, the more you learn about
the real nature of your won existence. The more hours you spend in meditation, the greater
your ability to calmly observe every impulse and intention, every thought and emotion just
as it arises in the mind. Your progress to liberation is measured in cushion-man hours.
And you can stop any time you've had enough. There is no stick over your head except your
own desire to see the true quality of life, to enhance your own existence and that of
others.
Vipassana meditation is inherently experiential. It is not
theoretical. In the practice of mediation you become sensitive to the actual experience of
living, to how things feel. You do not sit around developing subtle and aesthetic thoughts
about living. You live. Vipassana meditation more than anything else is learning to live.
Chapter 4
Attitude
Within the last century, Western science and
physics have made a startling discovery. We are part of the world we view. The very
process of our observation changes the things we observe. As an example, an electron is an
extremely tiny item. It cannot be viewed without instrumentation, and that apparatus
dictates what the observer will see. If you look at an electron in one way, it appears to
be a particle, a hard little ball that bounces around in nice straight paths. When you
view it another way, an electron appears to be a wave form, with nothing solid about it.
It glows and wiggles all over the place. An electron is an event more than a thing. And
the observer participates in that event by the very process of his or her observation.
There is no way to avoid this interaction.
Eastern science has recognized this basic principle for a
very long time. The mind is a set of events, and the observer participates in those events
every time he or she looks inward. Meditation is participatory observation. What you are
looking at responds to the process of looking. What you are looking at is you, and what
you see depends on how you look. Thus the process of meditation is extremely delicate, and
the result depends absolutely on the state of mind of the meditator. The following
attitudes are essential to success in practice. Most of them have been presented before.
But we bring them together again here as a series of rules for application.
1. Don't expect anything. Just sit back and see
what happens. Treat the whole thing as an experiment. Take an active interest in the test
itself. But don't get distracted by your expectations about results. For that matter,
don't be anxious for any result whatsoever. Let the meditation move along at its own speed
and in its own direction. Let the meditation teach you what it wants you to learn.
Meditative awareness seeks to see reality exactly as it is. Whether that corresponds to
our expectations or not, it requires a temporary suspension of all our preconceptions and
ideas. We must store away our images, opinions and interpretations someplace out of the
way for the duration. Otherwise we will stumble over them.
2. Don't strain: Don't force anything or make grand
exaggerated efforts. Meditation is not aggressive. There is no violent striving. Just let
your effort be relaxed and steady.
3. Don't rush: There is no hurry, so take you time. Settle
yourself on a cushion and sit as though you have a whole day. Anything really valuable
takes time to develop. Patience, patience, patience.
4. Don't cling to anything and don't reject anything:
Let come what comes and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental
images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of
it as equal and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens. Don't fight with what you
experience, just observe it all mindfully.
5. Let go: Learn to flow with all the changes that
come up. Loosen up and relax.
6. Accept everything that arises: Accept your
feelings, even the ones you wish you did not have. Accept your experiences, even the ones
you hate. Don't condemn yourself for having human flaws and failings. Learn to see all the
phenomena in the mind as being perfectly natural and understandable. Try to exercise a
disinterested acceptance at all times and with respect to everything you experience.
7. Be gentle with yourself: Be kind to yourself.
You may not be perfect, but you are all you've got to work with. The process of becoming
who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.
8. Investigate yourself: Question everything. Take
nothing for granted. Don't believe anything because it sounds wise and pious and some holy
men said it. See for yourself. That does not mean that you should be cynical, impudent or
irreverent. It means you should be empirical. Subject all statements to the actual test of
your experience and let the results be your guide to truth. Insight meditation evolves out
of an inner longing to wake up to what is real and to gain liberating insight to the true
structure of existence. The entire practice hinges upon this desire to be awake to the
truth. Without it, the practice is superficial.
9. View all problems as challenges: Look upon
negatives that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn
yourself or bear your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for
the mill. Rejoice, dive in and investigate.
10. Don't ponder: You don't need to figure
everything out. Discursive thinking won't free you from the trap. In mediation, the mind
is purified naturally by mindfulness, by wordless bare attention. Habitual deliberation is
not necessary to eliminate those things that are keeping you in bondage. All that is
necessary is a clear, non-conceptual perception of what they are and how they work. That
alone is sufficient to dissolve them. Concepts and reasoning just get in the way. Don't
think. See.
11. Don't dwell upon contrasts: Differences do
exist between people, but dwelling upon then is a dangerous process. Unless carefully
handled, it leads directly to egotism. Ordinary human thinking is full of greed, jealousy
and pride. A man seeing another man on the street may immediately think, "He is
better looking than I am." The instant result is envy or shame. A girl seeing another
girl may think, "I am prettier than she is." The instant result is pride. This
sort of comparison is a mental habit, and it leads directly to ill feeling of one sort or
another: greed, envy, pride, jealousy, hatred. It is an unskillful mental state, but we do
it all the time. We compare our looks with others, our success, our accomplishments, our
wealth, possessions, or I.Q. and all these lead to the same place--estrangement, barriers
between people, and ill feeling.
The meditator's job is to cancel this unskillful habit by
examining it thoroughly, and then replacing it with another. Rather than noticing the
differences between self and others, the meditator trains himself to notice similarities.
He centers his attention on those factors that are universal to all life, things that will
move him closer to others. Thus his comparison, if any, leads to feelings of kinship
rather than feelings of estrangement.
Breathing is a universal process. All vertebrates breathe
in essentially the same manner. All living things exchange gasses with their environment
in some way or other. This is one of the reasons that breathing is chosen as the focus of
meditation. the meditator is advised to explore the process of his own breathing as a
vehicle for realizing his own inherent connectedness with the rest of life. This does not
mean that we shut our eyes to all the differences around us. Differences exist. It means
simply that we de-emphasize contrasts and emphasize the universal factors. The recommended
procedure is as follows:
When the meditator perceives any sensory object, he is not
to dwell upon it in the ordinary egotistical way. He should rather examine the very
process of perception itself. He should watch the feelings that arise and the mental
activities that follow. He should note the changes that occur in his own consciousness as
a result. In watching all these phenomena, the meditator must be aware of the universality
of what he is seeing. That initial perception will spark pleasant, unpleasant or neutral
feelings. That is a universal phenomenon. It occurs in the mind of others just as it does
in his, and he should see that clearly. Following these feelings various reactions may
arise. He may feel greed, lust, or jealousy. He may feel fear, worry, restlessness or
boredom. These reactions are universal. He simple notes them and then generalizes. He
should realize that these reactions are normal human responses and can arise in anybody.
The practice of this style of comparison may feel forced
and artificial at first, but it is no less natural than what we ordinarily do. It is
merely unfamiliar. With practice, this habit pattern replaces our normal habit of egoistic
comparing and feels far more natural in the long run. We become very understanding people
as a result. we no longer get upset by the failings of others. We progress toward harmony
with all life.