Don't meditate!

The One Human Journey blog has a pretty relevant post right now on striving too hard while meditating. I think that we can all relate to this; certainly I can!

onehumanjourney.blogspot.com/2010/08/dont-meditate.html

In addition to the number of good teaching points in the article, I would add one from Yoda: "Try not! Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."

Do!

There is also the suggestion to Unlearn meditation:

www.buddhistgeeks.com/2010/08/bg-185-unlearning-meditation/

Adyashanti talks about letting go of the meditator and things like that. All the same, noting out loud doesn't really leave much room, at least for me, for myself to get in the way.

One of my observations is that all true spirituality has an experimental quality to it.

In everyday life we are so used to treating things as means to an end that we take that attitude into meditation. Focusing on the breath is means to the end of concentration, say. When a moment is treated as a means in this way, we tend to look past it or through it in anticipation of the end. But, of course, the whole idea of meditation is to treat this very moment not as a means, but as the ultimate end itself. This moment is not attended to for the sake of that moment. This moment is attended to for its own sake.

I came upon this conundrum during a walking meditation. My mind kept drifting to anticipation of getting to my intended destination instead of staying here, in the present. This was like a metaphor for the path itself. How can I stay here when my whole goal is to get there? The answer I settled on is that I should stay here, with this moment, all the while trusting that my feet would take me there, to my destination, by themselves.

I sometimes find it useful to ask myself: if the rest of my sit (or the rest of my day) continued exactly as it is now, would I be OK with that? If the answer is no, I am looking past or through this very moment, rather than looking directly at it.

More generally, I find it useful to treat meditation like an inquiry or investigation rather than like a search or a demand. Not: "find that thing you saw yesterday." But: "hmm, that thing you saw yesterday, is it still here? Let's find out..."

"In everyday life we are so used to treating things as means to an end that we take that attitude into meditation. Focusing on the breath is means to the end of concentration, say. When a moment is treated as a means in this way, we tend to look past it or through it in anticipation of the end. But, of course, the whole idea of meditation is to treat this very moment not as a means, but as the ultimate end itself. This moment is not attended to for the sake of that moment. This moment is attended to for its own sake....

More generally, I find it useful to treat meditation like an inquiry or investigation rather than like a search or a demand. Not: "find that thing you saw yesterday." But: "hmm, that thing you saw yesterday, is it still here? Let's find out...""

Indeed-- I'd always thought that this is what the sage, Siddhartha, had said. It is what makes me consider myself-- if not 'Buddhist', at least 'Buddhish'. And it is what differentiates the current 'science subservient to technology' version from the earlier incarnation of science as the experiential inquiry into phenomena.

One of the earliest scientists in this latter mode was Heraclitus; his dictum about being unable to step into the same river twice was a brilliantly insightful bit of pure science. And I think there are profound implications for meditation practice in it as well.

Less 'is that thing I saw yesterday still here?' than 'If I look in "that place" what is here now?'

Today it dawns on me that Trungpa was speaking less about the commercialism of the spiritual marketplace, than this goal-driven 'spiritual endeavor' when he made his incisive remarks about spiritual materialism. And the problem with it is less that it is 'bad' or morally deficient; the problem is that it overdetermines the result. So Zen wackos yell-- 'Think not-thinking!!'