Q: If your life is somewhat shallow, can you still meditate?
A: That would probably make it easier. Meditation is not about thinking, not about profundity by thought.
Q: What is it about?
A: A very good way of explaining it is via brain science. Meditation is moving from the Left to the Right Brain. Move from the everyday analytical, linear, logical to the immediate, holistic, and intuitive. Wisdom and insight are the result of direct seeing, not distant thinking about seeing.
Q: So should I do yoga and dance, laugh and sleep?
A: Yes, but not all yogas have a meditation-positive effect. Avoid Bikram; look into Hatha and the Indian original, Ashtanga.
Yes, but not all dance is helpful. Try free-form styles like Contact Improv and Nia rather than Line or Competitive; it's about letting go and flowing.
Yes, laughter is good, particularly belly laughs or Laughter Yoga or the kind of laughter that makes you feel better after experiencing (which means most modern stand-up comedy -- which is angry, derisive, small minded, or sexist/racist -- doesn't help).
Yes, sleep is good, very good. But sleepiness is not. Jhana is halfway to sleep yet still mindful, only without thinking/noting/judging. One is getting out of the Left (that counts and measures) and into the Right (that senses and experiences). Even mindfulness meditation (vipassana) is not about thinking and evaluating. Most people fail to do sati (mindfulness) because they never get calm enough to begin with. The mind has to quiet down first. That's jhana (meditative absorption). Then one increases mindfulness in a very methodical way. In practice, people sit there doing neither with "cool boredom" (Shambhala-style) or endless pondering instead. There are Five Hindrances to sidestep:
- Lust
- Ill-will
- Drowsiness
- Restlessness
- Scepticism
Thinking won't sidestep them. Struggling certainly won't sidestep them. And things based on the Hindrances won't sidestep them (getting lost in erotic/tantric fantasies, getting angry about not making enough progress fast enough, getting sleepy/dreamy or zombified, getting impatient and trying to rush the process that purifies and leads us to equanimity, or thinking and wondering and doubting and becoming perplexed. These five roads certainly do not lead to calm and insight.
Q: So the path is just life?
A: No. Zen may say that, and others may not know what to say. But the Path is very much a gradual way. It begins with ethics and personal virtues. It proceeds to calm and concentration (collectedness, the power to focus to the exclusion of everything else, purifying absorption*). And it culminates in insight and attainments (liberating wisdom such as stream-entry).
*The Buddha constantly defined "right concentration" (samma samadhi) as the first four jhanas. See magga (Noble Eightfold Path) in Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines (Ven. Nyantiloka). Of course, there are other weaker kinds of concentration (neighborhood or upacara-samadhi). That is not the time to move onto vipassana (insight practices). Full concentration (appana-samadhi).
No comments:
Post a Comment