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| Meditation |
How to Train Your Mind For Meditation
The object of meditation is the mind. For the moment, it is simultaneously
confused, agitated, rebellious, and subject to innumerable conditioned and
automatic patterns. The goal of meditation is not to shut down the mind or
anesthetize it, but rather to make it free, lucid, and balanced.
According to Buddhism, the mind is not an entity but rather a dynamic stream
of experiences, a succession of moments of consciousness. These experiences
are often marked by confusion and suffering, but we can also live them in a
spacious state of clarity and inner freedom.
We all well know, as the contemporary Tibetan master Jigme Khyentse
Rinpoche reminds us, that “we don’t need to train our minds to improve our
ability to get upset or jealous. We don’t need an anger accelerator or a pride
amplifier.” By contrast, training the mind is crucial if we want to refine and
sharpen our attention; develop emotional balance, inner peace, and wisdom; and
cultivate dedication to the welfare of others. We have within ourselves the
potential to develop these qualities, but they will not develop by themselves or
just because we want them to. They require training. And all training requires
perseverance and enthusiasm, as I have already said. We won’t learn to ski by
practicing one or two minutes a month.
REFINING ATTENTION AND MINDFULNESS
Galileo discovered the rings of Saturn after devising a telescope that was
sufficiently bright and powerful and setting it up on a stable support. His
discovery would not have been possible if his instrument had been inadequate or
if he had held it in a trembling hand. Similarly, if we want to observe the subtlest
mechanisms of our mental functioning and have an effect on them, we absolutely
must refine our powers of looking inward. In order to do that, our attention has
to be highly sharpened so that it becomes stable and clear. We will then be able
to observe how the mind functions and perceives the world, and we will be able
to understand the way thoughts multiply by association. Finally, we will be able
to continue to refine the mind’s perception until we reach the point where we are able to see the most fundamental state of our consciousness, a perfectly lucid and
awakened state that is always present, even in the absence of the ordinary chain
of thoughts.
WHAT MEDITATION IS NOT
Sometimes practitioners of meditation are accused of being too focused on
themselves, of wallowing in egocentric introspection and failing to be concerned
with others. But we cannot regard as selfish a process whose goal is to root out
the obsession with self and to cultivate altruism. This would be like blaming an
aspiring doctor for spending years studying medicine before beginning to
practice.
There are a fair number of clichés in circulation about meditation. Let me
point out right away that meditation is not an attempt to create a blank mind by
blocking out thoughts—which is impossible anyway. Nor is it engaging the mind
in endless cogitation in an attempt to analyze the past or anticipate the future.
Neither is it a simple process of relaxation in which inner conflicts are
temporarily suspended in a vague, amorphous state of consciousness. There is
not much point in resting in a state of inner bewilderment.
There is indeed an element of relaxation in meditation, but it is connected with
the relief that comes from letting go of hopes and fears, of attachments and the
whims of the ego that never stop feeding our inner conflicts.
A MASTERY THAT SETS US FREE
As we shall see, the way we deal with thoughts in meditation is not to block
them or feed them indefinitely, but to let them arise and dissolve by themselves
in the field of mindfulness. In this way, they do not take over our minds. Beyond
that, meditation consists in cultivating a way of being that is not subject to the
patterns of habitual thinking. It often begins with analysis and then continues
with contemplation and inner transformation.
To be free is to be the master of ourselves. It is not a matter of doing whatever
comes into our heads, but rather of freeing ourselves from the constraints and
afflictions that dominate and obscure our minds. It is a matter of taking our life
into our own hands rather than abandoning it to the tendencies created by habit
and mental confusion. Instead of letting go of the helm and just allowing the
boat to drift wherever the wind blows, freedom means setting a course toward a
chosen destination—the destination that we know to be the most desirable for ourselves and others.
AT THE HEART OF REALITY
Meditation is not a means of escaping reality, as some people think. On the
contrary, its object is to make us see reality as it is, right in the midst of our
experience, to unmask the deep causes of our suffering, and to dispel mental
confusion. We develop a kind of understanding that comes from a clearer view
of reality. To reach this understanding, we meditate, for example, on the
interdependence of all phenomena, on their transitory character and on the
nonexistence of the ego perceived as a solid and independent entity.
Meditations on these themes are based on the experience of generations of
meditators who have devoted their lives to observing the automatic, mechanical
patterns of thought and the nature of consciousness. They then taught empirical
methods for developing mental clarity, alertness, inner freedom, altruistic love,
and compassion. However, we cannot merely rely on their words to free
ourselves from suffering. We must discover for ourselves the value of the
methods these wise people taught and confirm for ourselves the conclusions they
reached. This is not purely an intellectual process. Long study of our own
experience is needed in order to rediscover their answers and integrate them into
ourselves on a deep level. This process requires determination, enthusiasm, and
perseverance. It requires what Shantideva calls “joy in virtuous ways.
Thus we begin by observing and understanding how thoughts multiply by
association with each other and create a whole world of emotions, of joy and
suffering. Then we penetrate behind the screen of thoughts and glimpse the
fundamental component of consciousness: the primal cognitive faculty out of
which all thoughts arise.
LIBERATING THE MONKEY MIND
To accomplish this task, we must begin by calming our turbulent mind. Our
mind behaves like a captive monkey who, in his agitation, becomes more and
more entangled in his bonds.
Out of the vortex of our thoughts, first emotions arise, and then moods and
behaviors, and finally habits and traits of character. What arises spontaneously
does not necessarily produce good results, any more than throwing seeds into the
wind produces good harvests. So we have to behave like good farmers who
prepare their fields before sowing their seeds. For us this means that the most important task is to attain freedom through mastering our mind.
If we consider that the potential benefit of meditation is to give us a new
experience of the world each moment of our lives, then it doesn’t seem excessive
to spend at least 20 minutes a day getting to know our mind better and training it
toward this kind of openness. The fruition of meditation could be described as an
optimal way of being, or again, as genuine happiness. This true and lasting
happiness is a profound sense of having realized to the utmost the potential we
have within us for wisdom and accomplishment. Working toward this kind of
fulfillment is an adventure worth embarking on.
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