No easy path
If you want a quick and easy path to greater happiness, you’ve picked the wrong universe to live in. Better luck next time! Since it may take some time to find another universe in which personal change is swift and straightforward, you might want to bite the bullet and experiment with letting go of any lingering assumptions you may have that you’re going to be able to change without doing any work.
This isn’t to say that there are not great joys to be found on the path. In fact, although changing has its challenges it also brings great joys – just as a hike in the country is both hard work and invigoratingly enjoyable. But the challenges are definitely there. Sometimes your patience is going to be tested. Sometimes you will despair at the rate at which you are changing. Sometimes you’re going to be plain confused. Sometimes you’re going to feel like giving up.
All of these obstacles are not really obstacles at all. They are not rocks blocking your way, but are stepping stones to change. They are opportunities to get to know yourself better, and to develop fortitude, courage, and patience.
Your difficulties are going to be your greatest teachers, for we often learn most about ourselves when we are stretched to our limits – or to what we think are our limits, since often those limitations turn out to be illusory. We are all capable of far more than we know. Having our patience challenged is an opportunity to expand our understandings of what we are capable of. It is a call to a greater depth of understanding and acceptance of ourselves and others, and a call to let go of resistance to change.
Despair at the rate of change we are experiencing is an opportunity to learn about our preconceptions about what we think should happen, and an opportunity to learn acceptance. Any true artist has to know his or her materials intimately; has to understand how they will perform under different conditions. We have, as developing human beings, to learn the nature of the material with which we are working, and in meditation our material is our own mind. It would be wonderful if the nature of our minds was such that we could flick a switch and be happy. But that’s not how things are. Despair arises when we have a false understanding of how quickly it is possible to change or of what conditions are necessary for such change. This is obviously one of the main areas in which we can learn through meditation.
Doubt and confusion, rather than being looked at as experiences of failure, can be looked at as a healthy part of change. Confusion arises when we leave behind one set of preconceptions and suppositions, but have not yet found a new way to make sense of what is going on. We’ve let go of a false certainty, and are on the way to finding a new and truer understanding. That is a sign of progress, not failure.
No failure…
Ultimately, all suffering is a message that we have something to learn; that there is some skill that we have not yet mastered, that there is some idea we have that is false, that there is pattern of behavior we have that is not delivering the results that we expect of it.
In one psychological discipline, they say that in communication there is no failure but only feedback. I believe that this is true in meditation. If what we experience in meditation is not to our liking, then it is not a sign that we are not cut out to be meditators, or that we need to give up, or that we need to find a new meditation practice, but that we have something more to learn. Not only that, but we are often being given an indication of what it is that we must learn.
This feedback can be very precise. Meditating can be a bit like scrutinizing our lives with a microscope and seeing what we most need to work on. When we repeatedly experience tiredness in meditation, this can teach us about the need to look after ourselves and to guard our own sources of nourishment. When our minds are making lists and anxiously planning, we can see that we need to become more organized in our daily lives. When we find that we are spending our meditation mulling things over, this can teach us of the need to set aside more time to reflect. Inner arguments show us that there are important conflicts that we have yet to resolve, whether by forgiving and letting go of grievances, or by working things through with another person.
The concept of failure in meditation is profoundly disempowering. It leads to giving up. In meditation there is no failure, only feedback. Remember that your difficulties will turn out to be your teachers, your obstacles will turn out to be stepping stones, and that the sometimes hard and rocky path of meditation will turn out to be the way to greater fulfillment and deeper contentment. Learning is not always easy, but it is always beneficial in the long term. Let go of the idea of failure, and embrace the notion that everything you experience in meditation is feedback, and the path will be immeasurably more enjoyable and enriching.
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Comments
Comment from David
Time: May 9, 2008, 1:42 am
Hello,
I know you said not to worry about failure, since everything can be learned from, but whenever I meditate thoughts come into my mind that I cannot get rid of, particulary failure. When I try to get rid of them, or I tell myself that there is no failure, only feedback, and that I should get my head down and just meditate, the problem worsens!
Do you have any advice for a “noobie” about the problem of thoughts that cannot be removed?
Comment from Bodhipaksa
Time: May 9, 2008, 7:14 am
Hi David,
I sympathize with the problem of intrusive and unwanted thinking. I can suggest a few approaches.
One is that you make these thoughts themselves into the object of your meditation for as long as they persist. This approach involves recognizing that the thoughts are not “things” that are permanently lodged in your mind (“cannot be removed” as you put it) but are impermanent processes that arise, seem to exist for a while, and then pass away. Now you may be saying, “But they keep coming back, so they are permanent,” but what’s happening in fact is that similar thoughts are being recreated over and over again. If you watch any one thought you’ll see that it wasn’t there, then it is (apparently), and then it’s not. Each thought is impermanent.
Over time, if you keep doing this, you’ll start to recognize that these thoughts are simply passing through. And if they’re just passing through you’ll start to recognize that they’re not fundamentally part of you. You are not your thoughts; your thoughts are not you.
It’s also not the most helpful approach to think in terms of “getting rid” of unwanted thoughts. When we try to get rid of thoughts we’re engaged in an impossible, and therefore fruitless, task. The thoughts will get rid of themselves — all you have to do is keep coming back to the breath (or wishing yourself well).
Another thing I’d strongly suggest is that when these thoughts arise you notice the pain that follows on their heels. Actually, I’m sure you do notice the pain, but what I suggest is that you notice specifically where in the body this pain is located — what size and shape is the pain, what texture does it have — and cultivate lovingkindness for that pain: direct the thoughts, “May you be well,;may you be happy; may you be free from suffering” towards your pain, as if your pain was a suffering friend.
May you, and all beings, be well!
Comment from David
Time: May 9, 2008, 2:54 pm
I tried again this evening, I still had some trouble, but I took your advice to heart and felt some difference. Not a large one, but it is still my first day :p
Thanks, and I wish you and all things well.
Comment from Bodhipaksa
Time: May 9, 2008, 3:24 pm
Hi again, David.
“Some difference” is good, especially after one session. Those small changes mount up over time and eventually our approach to life is substantially different to what it once was. “Mony a puckle maks a muckle” as we say in Scotland.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
Comment from Dorothy Valin
Time: January 25, 2009, 12:52 pm
I have been meditating off and on for some years now. I am finding it so difficult to be regular with my meditation. I will do it daily for a few weeks and then can’t seem to do it at all. I have a very demanding job in the hospital-get up at 5 am daily go to work and usually get home around 8 pm. I am very tired when I get home and sometimes just eat dinner and go to sleep. I don’t want to live like this but have to support myself-I am single and don’t know what else to do. Any thoughts? Thanks so much for your kindness in responding to this comment. Dorothy
Comment from Bodhipaksa
Time: January 27, 2009, 10:14 am
Hi Dorothy,
Life can be very demanding sometimes, and there are bound to be times when sitting just isn’t possible. At those times you may have to settle for practicing meditation in action — for example eating your lunch as a meditation and walking as a meditation. Perhaps you could even take two-minute breaks during the day at your office or in a staff-room or rest-room, and just sit and center yourself.
A wider issue is where we decide (sometimes unconsciously) not to keep up a habit because we can’t do it perfectly. People giving up smoking sometimes do this — if they have one lapse they decide it’s not worth persevering with being smoke-free. And we sometimes do this with good habits like meditation: if we miss a day we decide to give up because we label that as failure and we don’t like to fail. But actually any meditation we do is a success in some sense, because we’re making an effort. And meditating on a less-than-daily basis is better than not meditating at all.
It’s possible you’ve set yourself an unattainable ideal of daily meditation, given how busy you are. Maybe you could make a promise to yourself to do a full-length meditation on every one of your days off and on working days that you have the time and energy, and a reduced schedule on days when you’re simply too tired or busy. On those days I’d suggest, as above, creating space for some short sits as well as practicing mindfulness throughout the day.
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