Some Pointers after 12 Years of Meditation

Meditation is an invisible skill, which makes it especially prone to confusion and obfuscation.

I wanted to jot down some pointers and opinions about meditation that have served me at one point or another. Any opinion about meditation is to be held lightly and verified experientially, of course, but maybe they can serve someone else:

1. Think of attention as a spotlight. It can move around and narrowly focus its beam on sounds or the breath or thoughts. Or it can widen to cover all objects in awareness. Each has its merits, but I generally prefer a wide lens.
2. ‘Concentration’ isn’t a good descriptor. It carries too much baggage from test taking and studying; a kind of bearing down and self-admonition to focus harder. ‘Relaxed openness’ or ‘absorption‘ or ‘unification’ is closer to the mark. Think of the kind of effortless concentration in flow states.
3. Some absorption (samadhi, in Pali) is needed to do anything useful in meditation, and the best way to build it is to lean towards pleasure and wellbeing. Ask “can I enjoy this moment as fully as possible just as it is?” Or “Where in my body feels nice?” Or do loving-kindness (Metta, in Pali).
4. Metta is an extremely useful skill to build. It allows you to soften any adversarial posture towards experience. It’s a creative practise. Whatever image or phrase or approach creates a feeling and intention of good-will is mint. If you don’t know where to start, think of a baby or puppy, or baby riding a puppy.
5. Trying to feel good, or to summon any particular experience, will guarantee boredom and frustration. The correct verbs are allow and play.
6. The first woo idea to adopt is the notion of energy. With some concentration, feelings in the body become less solid and body-shaped and more fluctuating and cloud-shaped. Describing those fluctuating clouds as energy helps decouple immediate experience from the solidified map of experience you keep in your head.
7. Samadhi is the skill of how-to-maximize-enjoyment in any particular moment. The other, arguably deeper skill in meditation, is insight, which is the skill of how-to-lessen-clinging. These skills are related but not synonymous.
8. The species of clinging we’re interested in is subtle and pervasive. You never have to ask yourself ‘am I clinging right now’? You can safely assume the answer is yes. Clinging shows up in experience as tacit convictions that things - yourself, people, objects, situations - are a certain way. A close cousin to clinging is craving. Clinging is a closed fist. Craving is the clenching.
9. That’s not actually a metaphor. Craving shows up in experience as clenching. This can be muscular clenching, but more subtle craving shows up as energetic clenching (see point 6), a narrowing of the spotlight of attention (see point 1), or as thinking, aka a tiny brain clench.
10. Some degree of faith and devotion, even if ill-defined or secular, is extremely helpful. I’m agnostic, but have no problem taking thy will be done as a mantra. Why? Because it lessens clinging around volition and desire.
11. Play with space. For example, notice how all experience takes place within the same space - there is no inside or outside. Or conceive of space as an infinite invisible mirror, in which all experience dances as reflections. Or as a perfect void from which all experience emerges and into which it disappears.
12. The Zen master Suzuki Roshi was once asked if he could put Buddhism in a nutshell. He said “everything changes.” I don’t take this as a literal summary of Buddhist philosophy, but as an indication of how fundamental impermanence is. Why? Because seeing that things don’t last and aren’t solid lessens clinging.
13. A potent Koan: What would your relationship to experience be like if there was absolutely nothing to change?
14. Meditation, like anything effective, carries risks. Worldview, self-identity and narrative, deeply held beliefs, and countless everyday assumptions are all examples of clinging. Some of them might be load bearing, and taking them apart can be disruptive. Most people meditating less than 30 minutes a day don’t need to worry, but it’s worth being aware of and managing them. For starters, a teacher, community, and relatively stable mental health are all protective.
15. No one thinks meditation is cool or cares. This is a good thing.
16. Meditation alone may or may not make you more charismatic, empathic, ethical, emotionally regulated, or less of an ass. It will definitely build the capacity to reduce a specific type of suffering (dukkha, in Pali).
17. Dukkha is also subtle and pervasive. It’s sometimes translated as unsatisfactoriness, or stress. The exact translation is something like ‘a wheel with a bad axle’. Again, this is so pervasive that you don’t have to ask “is this dukkha?” The answer is yes.
18. Experience without dukkha (or with less dukkha) is not neutral. It is naturally free, perfect, awe-inducing. This is what some traditions call Buddha Nature. I take realizing this as the ultimate point of practise.