Yes!: East meets West in the Deep South. An overcrowded maximum-security prison—the end of the line in Alabama’s correctional system—is dramatically changed by the influence of an ancient meditation program. Behind high security towers and a double row of barbed wire and electrical fence dwells a host of convicts who will never see the light of day. But for some of these men, a spark is ignited when it becomes the first maximum-security prison in North America to hold an extended Vipassana retreat, an emotionally and physically demanding course of silent meditation lasting ten days. Read more here.
vipassana
Blaise Pascal: “All of man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room”
Everyone is prey to distractedness, to seeing solace in activity as an escape from experiencing ourselves. In fact this is one of the major obstacles to a meaningful life. Bodhipaksa argues, however, that the force underlying our distractedness is a creative one, and that properly channeled it can take us all the way to enlightenment.
I’ve always been fond of this saying from Pascal’s Pensées, which reminds me that not being at peace with ourselves is a human condition rather than a uniquely modern one. All people at all times have suffered the pains of boredom, self-doubt, loneliness, irritability, restlessness, and anxiety that come from not being at peace with ourselves. I’ve experienced my fair share of that.
Like many people I have an ideal of being at peace and of enjoying rest. I struggle in my life to live and even sometimes to accomplish something meaningful, and all the time with the idea that sometime in the future — in a few weeks or perhaps next year — life will be more spacious and restful and I’ll have more time for meditating and reflecting, and for doing things that I find truly meaningful. And yet when by some rare combination of circumstances I have some free time, I find that I soon start to think about what I can do with it. And then I’m back to square one.
It’s part of the human condition to be restless.
It’s part of the human condition to be restless, to be seeking something better than we have at the moment. The Buddhist word for this is tanha, which literally means thirst. We all have a sense of thirst at the core of our being, a dissatisfaction that drives us to find meaning and happiness. But all too often we don’t actually move in the direction of finding meaning and happiness. We just move. Without self-awareness we are inclined simply to find diversion (the word “diversion” usually means “distraction” but its root meaning is “to turn away from”). We fill our lives with busyness, with distraction. And having done so we are temporarily released from our thirst. In the white heat of activity we are less aware that we are suffering.
Often the first thing that happens when someone begins to meditate is that they realize how distracted they are.
Inevitably though, we crave a lull in activity, being exhausted of or bored by the activities we’re engaged in. Running around pursuing happiness can be exhilarating, but it fails to address our deep-seated longing for meaning and happiness, and in the midst of busyness our thirst re-asserts itself, driving us towards stillness. And so we cycle through activity, a craving for respite, a brief experience of rest, and a renewed desire for activity.
When we pause and reflect — assuming we can find enough time and mental space in which to do so — we can become aware of this cycle and become dissatisfied with it. We can decide to make a break with our habitual avoidance of our real needs. And so we can decide to make a more conscious effort to find real meaning in our lives. That’s where meditation and mindfulness often come into our lives. We get to the point where the same-old-same-old looks tired and worn out and unattractive, and we intuit that we’ll really have to work with ourselves if we’re going to make a real change in our lives.
Inner restlessness is a powerful force within that drives us onwards.
What is meditation (or, more broadly, mindfulness) if not learning how to sit quietly in a room? Often the first thing that happens when someone begins to meditate is that they realize how distracted they are. And that’s the first opportunity to learn to be at peace with ourselves. When we see the inner tumult of our minds we have a choice: to become frustrated or to be forgiving with ourselves. It takes time and practice, but we can learn to accept that the mind is restless. Paradoxically, realizing this brings a measure of peace because we are less caught up in fighting with ourselves.
Our tanha — the inner thirst that drives us to look for a more satisfying way of being — now has a sense of direction and clarity. We develop more of an instinctual sense that the way to happiness is through facing ourselves rather than running away from ourselves. We realize that we have to transform states of mind that lead to unhappiness and cultivate those that lead to a deeper sense of fulfillment.
J’ai découvert que tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
We learn simply to observe our thoughts rather than to get caught up in fantasies; our mindfulness deepens. We stand back from our thoughts, just noticing them; our patience becomes stronger. We find it’s possible to let go of anger and develop kindness. We find that the mind becomes less restless and that there’s a greater sense of calmness. Rather than being caught up with inner conflicts we are more at ease and happiness arises. We feel a sense of direction manifesting in our lives and we experience greater confidence.
Ultimately, Pascal points out in that same passage in his Pensées, our desire for diversion is an avoidance of the sense of our own mortality. Our “weak and mortal condition” is a “natural misfortune” that afflicts us and renders us inconsolable. Our being, he points out, is contingent (we might never have been born had circumstances been different) and impermanent (it’s certain we will die). And thus there is a deep-seated fear of non-existence, to which the ego tries to blind itself by embracing diversion and removing any possibility for deeper reflection. Meditation helps here as well.
As we continue to observe the mind we realize that all of the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that arise in our experience are impermanent. Within ourselves we can find nothing that is unchanging and enduring. Everything is in flux. All is change. Where then, is the “self” that we fear will die? With continued examination we begin to realize that “death” is happening in every moment. To change is to die, and change is taking place in every instant. And if that’s true, then rebirth is also taking place in every moment. As something changes, it becomes something else, and that “something else” is born. Looking a little deeper, we see that there is no “thing” to change. There is just process. The ego, upon examination, simply ceases to exist (at least in the way we used to think about it). There’s no permanent self to be found in our experience. And since the ego has ceased to exist we no longer have to fear its destruction. Death has lost its sting. Life has found its ultimate meaning. Contentment has been victorious over restlessness.
I have to keep saying “no” to distractions in order to say “yes” to my dreams.
Our tanha is not something to be seen as “bad” or even (in Buddhist terms) “unskillful.” It’s actually a powerful force within that drives us onwards. Without awareness it will drive us in circles where we make the same mistakes over and over. With awareness it leads us on to greater fulfillment and happiness.
In my own life I’ve found that I’m managing to live out my dream of being a full time writer. It takes discipline and mindfulness. I have to turn away from seductive diversions — even diversions like teaching that I find fulfilling and enjoyable in their own right. But I have to keep saying “no” to distractions (even to creative opportunities) in order to say “yes” to my dreams. And it’s challenging: the scary thing about the prospect of living your dream is that you may, when you get there, discover that it’s not what you want to do after all — and then where would you be? But it’s also rewarding and nourishing.
At the same time I have to bear in mind that no career — not even writing — can bring me true happiness. For that I have to face up to the “natural misfortune of my weak and mortal condition.” I have to cultivate insight. I have to learn to be able to sit — not writing — in a quiet room.
Freedom in prison
The New York Times: The teachings of the Buddha infiltrate a maximum-security prison in “The Dhamma Brothers,” a thinking-head documentary about finding answers within for those who can’t get out.
Visit the film’s web site and view a trailer here.
Filmed in 2002 at the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Ala., one of the most violent prisons in North America, this provocative film follows a small group of inmates through a strict course of Vipassana meditation. Read more here.
Journey to enlightenment
Yuma Sun: It took one book about meditation to put Jean Myers on the road to enlightenment – and now she wants other Yumans to join her on her journey.
“I read a book called ‘Original Goodness’ by Eknath Easwaran. My husband Carl (and I) were so impressed by it,” Myers said.
“It enabled people from Western traditions to get a handle on meditation because I thought meditation was something weird. I didn’t know what it was at all.”
Myers, along with others in the community involved with the meditation group Insight Meditation Yuma, will be offering residents the opportunity to lower stress levels and embark on “a journey toward enlightenment” in a free three-week introductory course on insight meditation beginning Jan. 13 at Serenity Yoga Studio, 720 E. 22nd St.
Myers said meditation faces a stigma brought on by Western traditions and religions, but the benefits have extended themselves to every aspect of her life.
“Some people say meditation is not doing anything good for the world because you are just going off by yourself to think. But what I have found is when I am in a more clear place in my own mind, then whatever I do, I can do with more compassion.”
The course will include the benefits and techniques of meditation with an emphasis on insight meditation.
“Insight meditation is one of the types of meditation that the Buddha taught 2,500 years ago. Basically, we usually start off with focusing on an object like your breath.
“It’s kind of difficult to have new people jump in the group that haven’t meditated before, so we’re offering this free class to teach people the meditation process. That’s what we will be teaching people to do in the introduction: how to concentrate and bring their mind into their own control a little more.”
Myers, who with her husband leads the course, said some of the benefits of meditation include lower blood pressure, a decrease in stress symptoms and an overall change in mentality to include more patience and a calmer frame of mind.
“People are looking to achieve something more than what their lives are giving them, more than what their everyday life offers. Meditation certainly does do that, but it can do even more than that. It depends on how much people want to get into it.
“Basically most meditations are concentration exercises, which means you learn to focus your mind but gain more control over what you think. A lot of us sort of feel like anything that comes into our minds we have to believe it. Or those thoughts are because that’s who we are … and it isn’t.”
Myers said meditation helps to control one’s thoughts to allow for the choice to decide if a thought is helpful or not.
“If it isn’t, then I can toss it out. Because I have been learning concentration, I can see what my mind has been doing more. When you don’t have that, your mind will go a mile a minute in every which way.”
Each of the Sunday afternoon courses, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., affords students the opportunity for silent meditation in the Serenity Yoga Studio as well the ability to ask questions and share experiences, she said. Integrating meditation into students’ daily life will also be emphasized.
“The insight part comes after you have been meditating awhile you start to see life differently, you start to see things with a lot deeper perspective. So these insights aren’t something that you have to believe because someone tells you, it’s something that you have discovered yourself. That’s why, to me, it’s so powerful because it’s my own journey and my own discovery.
“I have been doing this for many years, 15 years, and you just can’t imagine life without it after awhile.”
Seeing Eye to Eye
Stephen Cope, Yoga Journal: When it comes to practicing mindfulness, the yoga and Buddhist traditions have much in common.
Not long ago, I was flying from Boston to San Francisco late at night. As the plane roared down the runway, the young woman sitting next to me appeared to be meditating. Given the restraints of air travel, she had adopted a remarkably good posture–eyes closed, sitting with her hands palms-up on her thighs. She sat that way for a good 30 minutes.
Later, as the flight attendant began to serve snacks, my seatmate introduced herself as Beverly. She had just been on a retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, a well-known New England center for vipassana meditation. I told her that I was a yoga teacher and I had done many different kinds of meditation, including vipassana. We dived into a long conversation about yoga and meditation, and after a while she stopped for a moment, clearly thinking hard about something. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked, furrowing her brow. “If you teach yoga, how can you be doing vipassana without getting confused? I thought yogis taught samadhi practice and Buddhists taught the insight practices.”…
Indeed, Beverly was voicing an interesting and persistent misunderstanding that the yoga meditation traditions teach only what she referred to as samadhi–by this she meant concentration practices–and that the Buddhist traditions primarily stress insight, or vipassana, practice. This misperception is often flavored with the view that samadhi is really about “blissing out,” while insight is about the more serious business of seeing clearly. I have noticed that this confusion has become a stumbling block–especially for the many yoga students who are learning the deeper practices of meditation almost exclusively from Buddhist teachers.
The word samadhi has different meanings in the yoga and Buddhist lexicons. To Buddhists, it usually refers to a whole spectrum of concentrated mind states. (The Buddha said, “I teach only sila, samadhi, and panna”–ethical practice, concentration, and insight.) To yogis, on the other hand, samadhi frequently refers to advanced stages of practice–stages that may, in fact, include much of what the Buddha referred to as both samadhi and panna. In classic yoga, of course, samadhi is the eighth and final limb of the eight-limbed (ashtanga) path.
This confusion has led to the misperception that the classic meditation traditions in yoga–those based on Patanjali‘s Yoga Sutra–rely exclusively on concentration techniques for enlightenment. This is not so. There are many views about the role of meditation–not only between practitioners of Buddhism and yoga, but also within each of those wide-ranging traditions. But my seatmate and I were in luck: She practiced a form derived from Theravadan Buddhism (based on the Pali Canon), and I practiced a form derived from classic yoga. As it turns out, both are part of the same classic meditation tradition; each relies on sophisticated methods of training in both concentration and insight.
It All Starts with Concentration
In each of these classic paths, practice begins with the cultivation of the mind’s natural capacity for concentration. This capacity reveals itself all the time in daily life. For example, while on a recent vacation in Florida, I was lying on a beach reading a book. My body and mind were already relaxed–an important precondition for attentional training. I lifted my eyes for a moment, and they drifted to a tiny red granite rock that was just in front of my towel. I was fascinated by its color and shape. My attention sank into the rock and examined it. The rock held my attention for a couple of delightful minutes of spontaneous samadhi.
Several curious things happen when one’s attention sinks into something in this fashion: The stream of thoughts in the mind narrows; external, distracting sensory input is tuned out (I was no longer aware of the sun burning my skin); brain waves lengthen; feelings of oneness with the object arise; a peaceful and calm mind state emerges. These experiences happen to us more frequently than we think. At the symphony, the mind gets locked onto a beautiful violin line in a Bach concerto. At dinner, we find a morsel of food particularly remarkable. Both of these experiences involve a natural emergence of one-pointed attention.
It turns out that this natural capacity for attention can be highly trained. The mind can learn to aim at an object, stay on it, penetrate it, and know it. The object can be either internal, like the breath or a body sensation, or external, such as an icon or a candle. As concentration develops on the object, the mind becomes still and absorbed in the object.
The side effects of this highly concentrated state are quite delightful and can include equanimity, contentment, and–sometimes–rapture and bliss. These concentration experiences are, in fact, sometimes even referred to as “the experiences of delight.” In Buddhism, they are highly cultivated in a series of concentration stages called the jhanas (absorptions). In the classic yoga tradition, a similar, but not identical, series of stages is identified in the development of the final three limbs of the path–dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi.
As our concentration matures through these stages, we are trained to sustain attention on the object without lapses for longer periods of time. Our uninterrupted concentration now becomes powerful–like a laser beam–and we see only the “bare” qualities of the object, beyond categorization and discriminatory thinking.
At these deepest levels of the training, another remarkable result emerges: The mind becomes secluded from the pull of distressing emotions and is temporarily free of craving, clinging, and aversion. In Western psychological terms, we might say the mind is completely secluded from conflict. As a result, concentration techniques provide a much-needed haven for the mind.
Insight: Exploring the Steady Mind
Through the practice of concentration, the mind becomes a highly attuned instrument. And as the mind matures in steadiness, something extraordinary begins to happen: This concentrated mind develops the capacity to explore itself. It becomes capable of systematically examining the ways in which all phenomena–thoughts, feelings, and sensations–arise and pass away into the stream of consciousness. Mental phenomena previously too fleeting to be noticed begin to fall within perceptual range. In effect, the mind may begin to take itself as its own object.
The rudiments of this subtle investigative mind are perhaps not so common in everyday life as the rudiments of a concentrated one. Nonetheless, anyone who has entered a contemplative mode may have experienced them. Sitting in church, at prayer, we are suddenly aware of the ways in which other thoughts intrude. Or, resting quietly under a tree, we watch as a wave of difficult feeling moves through the stream of consciousness like a dark storm cloud and then drifts away.
It turns out that this investigative capacity of the mind can be systematically developed and trained. And this training, as you might imagine, depends on an altogether different attention strategy: Rather than narrowing the stream of attention, we learn to methodically widen it and observe the endless fluctuation of thoughts, feelings, images, and sensations.
Through insight practices, the meditator learns to attend to as many mental and physical events as possible exactly as they arise, moment to moment. The meditator sees precisely how the world of ordinary experience and the Self are actually constructed. (“I have seen the builder of the house,” said the Buddha on the night of his enlightenment.)
This type of training is known as insight training, and though it has been well developed in the Buddhist meditation traditions in America, it has not been quite understood in the yoga traditions as they’ve been transmitted to us. This explains our misperception–and Beverly’s–that insight practice does not exist in the yoga tradition.
The question of why the insight series of Patanjali‘s program remains neglected in actual practice–at least in America–is a fascinating subject for another time. (Yet it’s undeniable that his program does depend on the development of insight—as the conclusions of Books Three and Four of his Yoga Sutra make clear.)
Once Patanjali lays out the training in concentration–dharana, dhyana, and samadhi–he instructs the practitioner to use the resultant attention skills to explore all phenomena in the created world, including the mind itself. The yogi learns to use the “perfect discipline” (samyama) of concentrated mind to explore the entire field of mind and matter. Indeed, much of the third book of the Yoga Sutra, which is widely believed to be just about the attainment of supernormal powers, actually contains Patanjali‘s instructions for a systematic exploration of the field of experience.
Moments of insight can be more than a little terrifying. Some Buddhist traditions will even refer to these as “the experiences of terror” because, as we begin examining experience closely, we discover that the world is not at all as it appears to be. Insight practices in both traditions effectively deconstruct our ordinary way of seeing ourselves and the world. Learning to bear this moment-to-moment reality can be fragmenting and can cause considerable anxiety. As a result, we need a regular return to concentration and calm. In order for our practice to proceed successfully, we must develop a systematic interplay between the experiences of delight and the experiences of terror.
Reaching a Clearer View of Reality
At the conclusion of these meditation paths, meditators in both traditions see thousands of discrete events arising and passing away in each millisecond. Patanjali describes the most momentary vision of phenomena that he believes humanly possible–dharma megha samadhi, in which they are seen as a rainstorm in which each separate raindrop is perceived.
Meditators in both traditions see how all phenomena (including the Self) simply arise and pass away due to causes and conditions. Buddhists discover the so-called three marks of existence, which consist of suffering (duhkha), no self (anatman), and impermanence (anicca). Yogis discover the similar “four erroneous beliefs”: the belief in the permanence of objects, the belief in the ultimate reality of the body, the belief that our state of suffering is really happiness, and the belief that our bodies, minds, and feelings comprise who and what we really are.
Some aspects of the views at the end of the paths are not identical. Yogis discover that behind this “shower” of phenomena lies an abiding pure awareness (purusha)–unborn and unchanging–while Buddhist meditators see pure discontinuity and momentariness, an emptiness that gives rise to form.
Nonetheless, it does seem apparent to me that what is truly freeing in both traditions is much more similar than either tradition seems to realize. In the final stages, meditators in both traditions see that the world of ordinary experience and the Self are actually constructions, compounds in nature rather than “real things” in and of themselves.
The great classic meditation traditions are interested in two outcomes: helping the practitioner end suffering and helping her see reality more clearly. Both traditions discovered that these dual goals are intimately connected, and that only the strategy of methodically training both concentration and insight can accomplish these astonishing end states. It is for this reason that both traditions are valued as authentic and complete paths toward liberation.
ABOUT OUR EXPERT
Stephen Cope is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and senior scholar in residence at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health located n Lenox, Massachusetts. He is the author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (Bantam, 1999) and The Complete Path of Yoga: A Seeker’s Companion to the Yogasutra (Bantam, available in 2004).
“The State of Mind Called Beautiful,” by Sayadaw U Pandita
Visiting IMS in the 90s, I heard U Pandita speak during a three-month retreat. His key image was a dying tree, its water supply cut off. It was actually a recommendation: remove the causes of kilesa (unwholesome reaction), and kill the kilesa tree. I found the image upsetting. Yet I was impressed with the man.
Kate Wheeler, who edits this new book, calls Sayadaw “a Buddhist version of fire and brimstone.” His style is certainly hard-hitting. Indeed, without the funny anecdotes in her preface showing his sincerity and depth of insight, one could take offence at Sayadaw’s moral injunctions, even dismiss him as simplistic: but one would be quite wrong.
What makes this book new and special is Sayadaw’s lively communication of the moral dimension of meditation training. Chapter One is an overview of Dharma training in which we are shown how lack of moral sensitivity “chars” and darkens the mind, making us reckless of the disturbing consequences of moral breaches. Sayadaw is particularly clear on the dark inner detail of our personal kilesas. For example: “if that person appears to be happily getting away with what they have done, one may well decide to take matters into one’s own hands, gaining satisfaction even from petty meannesses such as ignoring them.”
Writers on meditation rarely go into this territory, perhaps because of the popular wrong view that meditation is a one-stop practice through which we simply get high, bypassing any need for ethical consideration. Some meditation teachers feel that since people are generally good hearted, it is inappropriate to stress Buddhist ethics or precepts. This seems to be something of an avoidance. The reality is that the awareness induced by meditation often exposes our petty-mindedness in the most humiliating way.
Pointing out that nearly all of our outer problems are in fact caused by kilesa, in the following two chapters U Pandita presents two “Guardian” meditations that in particular protect from moral defilement. According to him, the essence of the first, the Buddha-anussati or recollection of the Buddha’s virtues, is the recognition that the Buddha is an enlightened being. We approach this recognition through a detailed enumeration of exactly why Buddhas are so amazing. This includes an illuminating discussion of the importance, for any Dharma teacher, of developing both wisdom and compassion. Sayadaw also comments interestingly on the relationship between a general lack of moral training and current world politics.
Metta or loving kindness, and the other brahmaviharas (compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity), are given detailed treatment. Issues such as the distinction between metta and selfish love (tanha-pema), and the near and far enemies of each stage of practice, are tackled in the context of each of the brahmavihara meditations. This chapter is very useful for practitioners of meditation and would on its own justify buying the book.
Chapters four and five are at least as useful, since here U Pandita gives an excellent presentation of insight meditation. Chapter four contains notes on helpful attitudes to practice, qualities necessary for success, suggestions for retreat schedules, and some basic instructions.
Chapter five is a “Technical Discussion of Satipatthana Vipassana” which is pure upadesha, commentary on practice arising straight from the master’s experience. I found this to be the best part of the book, offering much to reflect on. Sayadaw manages to communicate here his deep passion for mindfulness and insight, making it into an exciting prospect – it’s a rare and inspiring gift he has.
The book concludes with a Question/Answer session and a Pali-English glossary.
Take a breather on the tube (Guardian, UK)
The Guardian:
When I put my ticket into the barrier at the station what I am sometimes reminded of is one of the most famous collections of Zen koans – the “gateless gate” of Wu-men Huik’ai, the 13th-century Chinese meditation master. We feel that there is a gate that “separates” us from enlightenment, but once we pass through it – should we be lucky enough – we turn around and realise that the gate was never there in the first place. We are already enlightened – we just don’t know it.
Commuting has much to offer the spiritual seeker, perhaps because it puts our focus back on to ourselves. Public transport, with its enforced passivity, induces a meditative frame of mind. There is something beautifully Zen about the paradox of train travel – we are in motion, but we are also stationary. Nothing encourages more reverie about the meaning of it all than lives glimpsed from a train window: the poignancy of patio chairs, tilted, as if in prayer, to let rain run off them; figures momentarily looking up from sinks, as if in an Edward Hopper painting; a child’s empty climbing frame. Such sights bring home the simple, uniform melancholy of all our lives and can leave one aching for an answer. There are times when it seems I have spent all my life on the permanent way and spent a good deal of it musing on just that, the Permanent Way.
Trains are a good example of Buddhism’s core beliefs about reality. Everything is impermanent (anicca), nothing has an eternal, independent self (anatta) and thus, since all objects, mental and physical, are subject to arising and passing away and have no abiding essence, any reliance upon them can only lead to suffering (dukkha). Your train is far from permanent; indeed, it is often not there at all. It won’t last for ever – rolling stock and liveries change. And suffering? Well, enough said.
The Buddha, whom one can regard as a sort of celestial ticket collector in this context, offered an escape from this predicament. In one of his most intriguing statements he said: “There is a field of experience that is beyond the entire field of matter, the entire field of mind, that is neither this world nor another world nor both, neither moon nor sun. This I call neither arising, nor passing away, nor abiding, neither dying nor rebirth. It is without support, without development, without foundation. This is the end of suffering.”
To Buddhists this is Nibbana; to Christians it is Heaven, perhaps – the ultimate terminus for our spiritual train. The Buddha is describing that which cannot be described. He referred to it as “the unconditioned” – that which needed no conditions for it to arise, that which always has been and always will be – a state beyond birth and death.
How can it be reached? Or, more accurately, how can we become aware of its constant presence? In seemingly the simplest of ways, he suggested – a way echoed in that hiss of breath when the train doors open. It is extraordinary to think that in the act of conscious respi ration, of watching one’s breath, of apparently doing nothing, we can gain everything. Nibbana, God, the kingdom of heaven, the season ticket to the beyond.
The proof? The 2,500-year-old vipassana tradition of insight; meditation, based on the Buddha’s Satipatthana Sutra (four foundations of mindfulness discourse). “Ever mindful he breathes in, ever mindful he breathes out,” states this text. So simple to say, so hard to do. Yet it is claimed that the breath is a bridge from the known to the unknown, and the Zen master Dogen, even said that the whole universe is the breath. Modern teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh bring breath awareness to everyday activities – even commuting. Larry Rosenberg’s Breath By Breath is a good introduction to an inspiring subject.
The Buddha’s teaching on the breath is inscribed on palm leaves in monasteries, libraries and institutes throughout south-east Asia. The west complains about leaves on the line – for many these ancient lines on the leaves provide an answer.
Metta in Motion (Yoga Journal)
Anne Cushman, Yoga Journal: Learn how to infuse your hatha yoga practice with the meditative quality of metta, or "lovingkindness."
Early last year, in the heart of a stormy winter during which the country was hurtling toward war and my own life felt like it was falling apart, I decided to use yoga to dive into an extended investigation of the Buddha’s teachings on the four brahmaviharas—literally, the “divine abodes” of lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, which are also extolled in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra.
At the time, I was worried and brokenhearted. A funky left knee, an inflamed wrist, and chronic exhaustion as a toddler’s mother kept me from taking refuge in a sweaty, endorphin-inducing yoga flow. The brahmaviharas seemed to be exactly what I needed to focus on in my spiritual practice.
They also seemed, quite frankly, as remote as Jupiter. But the teachings of both yoga and Buddhism assured me that these luminous qualities were my true nature, a heavenly inner realm into which I could be reborn at any moment, and that my job in my spiritual practice was simply to find my way back to them…
Hatha yoga has always been one of my primary tools for conjuring up the qualities I want more of in my life. So I asked the students at a class I co-lead (along with several other yoga teachers and vipassana teacher Anna Douglas) at the Buddhist meditation center Spirit Rock to join me in an exploration: Could we infuse our asana practice with the spirit of the brahmaviharas? Could yoga’s physical techniques, in turn, induce an embodied experience of these spiritual qualities, which we could then express in the world? Could the brahmaviharas be touched through bones and muscle, blood and prana, in the midst of our ordinary lives of e-mails and diapers and credit-card bills and listening to NPR in freeway traffic?
The Basics of Metta
In the oldest forms of Buddhism, the first brahmavihara that practitioners work to cultivate—the cornerstone of all the rest—is metta, a Pali word translated as “love” or, more often, “lovingkindness.” Metta is not the emotional train-wreck version of love celebrated in Danielle Steel novels or television shows like Married By America. It’s not passion or sentimentality; it’s not laced with desire or possessiveness. Rather, metta is a kind of unconditional well-wishing, an openhearted nurturing of ourselves and others just as we all are. And—most crucially—it’s a quality that can be methodically cultivated through formal practice.
In traditional metta meditation, we systematically offer lovingkindness to ourselves and others through the silent repetition of classic phrases. We begin by offering metta to ourselves: May I be safe. May I be healthy. May I be joyful. May I be free. We then extend the same wishes to others: first a dear friend or benefactor; then a neutral person, such as a checkout clerk at our local supermarket; then someone we find extremely difficult. (According to Patanjali, difficult people are especially suitable recipients of lovingkindness.) Ultimately, we extend metta to all beings everywhere, in an expansive blessing that takes in everyone and everything from the mosquito buzzing around our head to space aliens in distant galaxies.
Practice Metta on the Mat
To invite more metta into our hatha yoga practice, my students and I began taking five or 10 minutes, when we first came to our mats, to hold ourselves in the embrace of loving awareness. We’d set ourselves up in a receptive, nurturing posture; my personal favorite was Supta Baddha Konasana (Bound Angle Pose), a reclining supported backbend that gently opened my heart and belly. Then we would take some time to notice—without judgment—the emotional weather in our hearts and the precise physical sensations that accompanied it. Did our hearts feel like clenched fists, budding orchids, buzzing bees, ice cubes? Did we have a hard time finding them at all?
Next we’d set an intention to move through our yoga with lovingkindness. Sometimes we’d focus this intention with metta phrases: May I be peaceful and joyful. May my body be well. One student said it helped her to synchronize these phrases with her breath—she’d visualize flooding her body with metta as each breath poured in. Sometimes I found it helpful to use an image instead, such as rocking myself in my own arms the way I rock my son Skye when he wakes up crying. Some days, we’d direct our metta to body parts that particularly needed attention. We’d wrap our attention around our aching hip joints, our throbbing knees, our exhausted eyes. Then we’d direct our good wishes there: May you find ease and well-being.
As we began to move through our asana practice together, I’d invite my students to modify my suggested poses to cherish their own unique bodies, taking special care to support, not aggravate, any weaknesses or injuries. In my own practice, I tried to choose the postures and techniques that would nurture me most. This didn’t mean that I spent an hour just lolling around on the floor. If I came to my mat after a morning of answering e-mail, what felt kindest was a vigorous sequence of standing poses that wrung out the tension from my muscles and sent prana pulsing and coursing through my body. When Skye had kept me up all night with nightmares about dogs in his crib, it was kinder to drape myself over some bolsters and just breathe deeply.
To generate and intensify feelings of metta, my students and I found it particularly useful to explore poses that opened our heart chakras, such as backbends, side stretches, and twists. It was easier to send and receive love, we found, when our physical hearts were less constricted. Kindness came easier when our breaths were full and deep. We could come to our mats seething with resentment and yet leave after a vigorous vinyasa flow with our hearts singing.
As I focused on practicing with metta, I began to notice how much of my inner dialogue on the mat was subtly oriented toward critiquing what was wrong with my body and my practice: a subliminal commentary on my pooching belly, my wandering mind, the place where my hip froze during Revolved Triangle. I saw ways that my yoga practice had been reinforcing and refining my ability to criticize myself, rather than training my capacity to wish myself well.
Metta practice gave me a systematic way to shift this inner narrative.When I was struggling in a pose, I experimented with sending metta to the shoulder or hip or muscle that was squawking the loudest: May you be happy. Then I’d let the correct response arrive intuitively: whether to stay in the pose and continue to send metta, adjust it, or exit. One of the things I found useful about my metta exploration was that it was so nonprescriptive—it wasn’t dogma but an infinitely creative response to each situation.
Find Your Metta In Meditation
Cultivating lovingkindness in asanas felt like a good start, but I knew it was only scratching the surface of true metta practice, which aims to transform our relationship not just with ourselves but with the world. To build on the insights from our asana practice, my students and I would follow it with a period of seated metta meditation in which we practiced extending to others the lovingkindness we had been cultivating on the mat.
To link our meditation practice to our asana practice—and truly embody our insights—we tracked the effects of the metta meditation on our bodies. As we sent metta to ourselves and others, we observed the subtle and not-so-subtle ways our hearts contracted and released, the tightening or softening of our pelvic floors, the deepening or constriction of our breaths. As we explored sending metta to friends, acquaintances, and difficult people, we brought to mind how we responded to the pleasant, neutral, and difficult sensations in our asana practice. For instance, was there any similarity between the way I responded to my intransigent hip joint and the way I responded to the neighbor who was threatening to sue me for floodwater runoff into her yard?
Like many of my students, I quickly discovered that it was infinitely easier to generate a rush of warmth and tenderness toward a good friend than toward myself. One of the blessings of regular metta practice is that it puts me in touch with how many people I truly love—and feeling this love, I discovered, could be an immediate, somatic source of nourishment and joy, no matter how much stress I was under. Metta could connect me, in an instant, to people I cared about near and far—from my son, asleep in the next room, to his former baby-sitter, now volunteering on an organic mulberry farm in Laos. It could also connect me to people I’d never even met, like a child in Iraq whose face stared out at me from the front page of the Times. And this sense of connection flooded not just my heart but my whole body with positive sensations.
Certain days, my students and I discovered, our hearts felt full of lovingkindness; other days, we were anxious and agitated and angry, and doing metta seemed only to make us more upset. We tried not to use our metta practice as an excuse for beating ourselves up about not being more loving. As our vipassana teacher, Anna Douglas, noted, “Metta is a purification practice, so it often brings up its opposite.” Just as our attempts to focus on the breath illuminate, first of all, how unsteady our minds are, our attempts to contact our innate lovingkindness may immediately illuminate the ways in which we have been conditioned to be less than loving and kind. This does not mean that the practice is not working. On the contrary, it means it’s working perfectly.
The Meta of Metta
One of the delights of metta practice is that it’s so portable. I am finding it tailor-made to my current life as a mom, in which I spend more time reading Winnie-the-Pooh books and walking at a toddler’s pace to the park than I spend on the meditation cushion.
One of my students, a stay-at-home mom, told me she likes to send metta to her family while folding their laundry: May you be joyful, she says as she holds her daughter’s sock in one hand and vainly looks for its match. May you be safe.
Another friend tells me she pretends that her stationary bike at the gym is a Tibetan prayer wheel; instead of watching CNN, she pumps out metta to the recipient of her choice with every cycle of her legs. Someone else I know uses every stoplight or traffic jam as a signal to send metta to the person in the car in front of him.
One student reports she has been regularly practicing metta while watching various political leaders on the news. Instead of raging and arguing with the television set, she silently sends them metta: May you be happy. May you be well. “I figure that happy people rarely start wars,” she tells me.
And me? As I’m falling asleep, instead of retraveling the day’s peaks and swamps in my mind, I send metta to myself and the people I love. (I’ve found metta particularly helpful when struggling with insomnia at 2 in the morning.) Sending metta to strangers I read about in the paper has transformed the way I experience the headlines. And in the midst of an argument, I try to remember to take a few breaths and sense what’s going on in my heart and belly, just as I do on my yoga mat. I silently send metta to myself and the other person. Then I go on with the conversation and see if it proceeds differently.
Like most of the students in my class, I’ve found that consciously infusing my yoga practice with lovingkindness has given me greater access to it throughout my life—even when my life is not going precisely the way I’d like. Metta practice helps us not just understand but feel that we are woven into a great web of relationships, which we can light up through the power of our attention. And it helps us shift our focus from getting love to creating it, from improving our bodies to cherishing them, and from fixing life to embracing it.
See also Cultivate Goodness: How to Practice Lovingkindness
About our author
Anne Cushman is the author of Enlightenment for Idiots and From Here to Nirvana: A Guide to Spiritual India.
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Youngsters take to meditation (Hobart Mercury, Australia)
Meditation classes for children are gaining popularity in Tasmania as young people look for tools to combat stress.Children aged between eight and 12 studied basic meditation techniques during a one-day course at Dromedary yesterday. Course teacher Jacquie Stephens said young people were keen to learn ways of managing internal conflict.
“Just like adults, children have tensions, anxiety and stresses,” Mrs Stephens said. “This is a way they can calm their mind down — a tool they can use in daily life.” Mrs Stephens, who runs the course at the Vipassana Meditation Centre, said children could acquire techniques to help them for life.
“The younger people learn about meditation the better,” she said. “I wish I had learnt this when I was a kid because it would have saved me a lot of stress in my teenage years.” She said children’s minds were open to the concepts of meditation and often grasped techniques better than adults. “They find it easier because they don’t have as much intellectual garbage as we adults do,” she said. “They take to it like ducks to water.”
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