The Psychology of meditation
Ultimately, through a meditative approach to analysis, we are hoping for a different kind of insight. We are hoping for something more felt and instantaneous in consciousness, something that words can only try and make room for but that cannot be found in words themselves, but in the pauses between them. This is a shift away from the tendency to name, explain and pathologize our struggles as conditions of a self-like-structure. It is an invitation into an appreciation of the self as an unfolding process in relationship to a world it is embedded in.
For an Existential Phenomenologist, the task of the philosopher is to skeptically enter her own stream of consciousness and describe what she finds there. This fits neatly with the ambitions of insight-based meditation or Vipassana and the intention of “being with what is, no matter what it is”. Even though Irvin Yalom (esteemed Existential Psychotherapist) is not a meditator he prescribes solitude, silence, time, and freedom from distractions, as the ultimate therapeutic method. However, as Montaigne might have proposed, solitude without method can be at best fruitless and at worst dangerous. Traditional Buddhist methods of solitude can also be rather mentally destabilising for the average Westerner. Solitude does not even have to mean being completely cut off from other people or our everyday lives. Solitude (as an attitude) can simply be a method of making it possible to attend to what is really going on, right here and now. This could be awareness of a particular anxiety; a strong craving; or ways in which we may be feeling relatively stuck or depressed. Vipassana offers us a specific way of being aware of these states of mind, in their moment to moment unfolding, saving us from being overly swept away by them. Although it can be seen as a kind of training exercise, this way of being in the moment does not only apply to when we are formerly sitting on a meditation cushion. Ultimately, it is a means of practicing coming to terms with what is really going on and what it means to be alive.
In a recent interview with Trevor Noah, Jim Carey summarises existence as “None of this is real and all of it is true.” When it comes to thought and emotions, how do we distinguish what feels real from what is true? Vipassana offers a method for this; a systematic means of attempting to see things as they arise, or as the phenomenologist would say – as they are given to us in consciousness.
The origins of Mindfulness
Vipassana emerged out of Southeast Asian countries, such as Burma. Due to increasing contact with the West there was a need to preserve aspects of their own culture, therefore returning to some of their own original teachings. Simultaneously, there was a growing interest from some Westerners (partly brought on by the influence of psychedelics) in exploring what human consciousness was all about. Western curiosity and distilled Buddhist teachings found a meeting place in these countries. Vipassana is now widely considered by many Buddhist teachers as foundational to meditation and is particularly secular in its focus. Vipassana is sometimes knows as “insight-based meditation” but in the western world it has become popularised as “mindfulness”.
The Basic Method
The basic method is to start with finding calm. This is followed by the main task – sustained attention to the “present moment”. From this perspective, access to the “present moment” lies in our sensorial experience. Most typically we rest our attention on either our breath or sound. These are known as meditation “supports” or “anchors”. The anchor you choose can have a slightly different impact on your experience, each with its own challenges and benefits. Following your breath tends to help you achieve calm, it puts you in touch with our own facticity (the fact that you are in a living breathing body) and it is a sign of life that is unfolding in the moment. However, even though breathing happens automatically, we have the ability to manipulate our breath which can get in the way of an attitude of being with things as they are. Allowing your attention to rest on the sounds around you can sometimes be a bit more difficult to access, but sound is truly a phenomenon of this moment. Sounds tend to arise and fall much like thoughts do and attention to this coming and going can help one ease into a meditative attitude. Our tendency, however, is to name and embellish the sounds, make more of them then what is actually there.
The objective is to have no objective, to try and inhabit a sense that there is nothing to be done and nothing to be achieved. We spend most of our day in a doing, thinking, achieving mindset. It is often taught that one should imagine you had two minds, one for thinking and one for observing and it is the observing mind that you want to enter into. My phenomenological critique is that it is unlikely that there is an observer behind consciousness from which we experience the world. It is, nevertheless, fascinating that there is a faculty of consciousness that takes on this experiencing role – the reflective awareness that an experience is being had. We won’t go into this now but there are likely to be many cognitive faculties involved here, including working memory. However, what seems to make room for this ability to observe rather than become swept away in participation is an attitude of “impartiality”. Part of this artistry lies in resting our attention on our sensory experience “effortlessly”. The most common challenge is that we try too hard.
The inevitable arising
What you will experience is the inevitable arising of thoughts. Thoughts simply stir up of their own accord. This is not thinking. Thinking then occurs in how we engage in these original stirrings in the mind. It is remarkable to notice just how attached we are to our own thoughts and thinking. The task from here is perplexingly simple – when you realise that you have been swept away by your own thinking, you notice this, where you mind has taken you, and you gently bring yourself back to the sensory support. This helps us achieve a stance of impartiality we are hoping to develop. It is important to note here that the task is not to achieve a state of no thought: thoughts and thinking are inevitable, but the Buddhist attitude is that “thoughts in themselves have no power”.
As we continually bring ourselves back to the anchor, we start to make room for a clearer view of things as they are, that is less clouded by our own reactivity. As we become more rooted in a stance of being able to observe ourselves with impartiality, we get an increasing sense of “things as they are”. Over time, this gives rise to a more spontaneous kind of insight. In other words, this is not a cerebral kind of insight but a simple seeing and accepting things for what they are. Over time, regular practice allows for a clarity of mind that, ironically, cannot be the achieved through striving to achieve it. Although the initial practice is to continually bring yourself back to the meditation support, training sustained attention, practitioners like Stephen Batchelor promote a progression to attending to all that is given to us in consciousness, thoughts included. It is, therefore, important not to enter into a wrestling match with your own thoughts but to reach a point where you can attend to their naturally arising as if they were a passing sensation. The outcome is necessarily about achieving a state of bliss or calm, but rather practicing being with things as they are without becoming overly reactive, making room for a quality of attention to experience that helps brings insight. This is not easily achieved at first and so what follows are a few basic suggestions drawn mostly from Stephen Batchelor.
Basic steps to Vipassana
Attending
Simply bring your awareness to your own breath. Actively using your breath to achieve a sense of calm in your body. Taking deep, deliberate breaths at first. Begin to follow the breath all the way in and all the way out. Perhaps taking special note of the pause between breaths. Allow the sensation of your breath to bring attention to the fact that you are sitting here in a living breathing body, pinned to the world by gravity. When you are ready, allow your breath to return to its natural rhythm. Try not to interfere with the breath any longer. Simply notice how your body breaths, on its own accord. This is where we can begin to practice approaching experience as an impartial witness, entering into the capacity to experience yourself experiencing. Let your attention come to rest on your breath. See if you can allow your attention to ride your breath all the way in and all the way out.
Arising
Even though you are attending to your breath. It is simply your anchor. You can still cultivate an openness to whatever is going on in this very moment: bodily sensations; the natural and inevitable arsing of thoughts; underlying feelings or attitudes (even towards yourself); the sounds of life around you. It is remarkable how thoughts inevitably arise as brought in from some deeper current stirring in the mind. It is difficult to sense their moment of origination and by the time we know they have arrived, we are usually already caught up in them: usually taking the form of fantasies about the future or rehearsals of the past. This is also where our Ahamkara (“self-making”) becomes most obvious through our preferences of like – don’t like; want – don’t want; me – not me: an ongoing tendency of grasping and aversion. But, when you find yourself lost in thoughts and thinking, you simply notice that where you have ended up, what you are doing there, perhaps even how you get there and remind yourself that you can anchor back into the sensory support. In this way the sensory experience (usually your own breath or the sounds around you) serves as a reference point for the what is going on here and now. This is not so much about clearing your mind of all thoughts but in gaining perspective on your own experience and, especially, on how thoughts and thinking colour that experience. The problem is not the thoughts in themselves but how we involve a self in these thoughts. A good term for this is reactivity.
Reactivity
Thoughts arise seemingly out of nowhere. They don’t seem to require much conscious involvement from us in their initial arising. But as they arise, we become more and more involved in them. There are many habitual ways in which we become involved in them. Some unique to ourselves but, overall, we seem to have many shared tendencies (especially within any given culture). For example, we make constant comparisons – “is this good or bad” and react accordingly through either clinging on to that which we like and showing aversion for that which we don’t. This seems obvious and harmless but it is the foundation of the “I” position we discussed in Day 2. Not only do we establish an “I” but when we judge these thoughts as good or bad we judge ourselves for thinking them. The intention is to participate as little as possible in the arising of thoughts as we take note of the shape and shaping of these thoughts. Over time, this gradually introduces us to the reactive nature of our minds. The hope is to move away from habitual reactions to more conscious responsiveness. Much like the relation between dreaming and lucid dreaming – there is a quality of awareness that we would like to introduce that enables us to participate more effectively in our own lives. The basic premise is that unnecessary suffering is caused by attempts at escaping things as they are. From this perspective, the therapeutic outcome is a facilitation of “embracing the totality of experience” to use a phrase by Stephen Batchelor. Perhaps following from his interest in Buddhism, R.D. Laing suggested that:
“There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. ”
Sati Sampajanna
What we call “mindfulness” in the West refers to the Sanskrit term Sati Sampajanna which can be translated to “remember the present”. In order to “remember the present”, we continually bring ourselves back to the meditative support: something to hold us in the here and now. It is our senses that give us the most reliable access to the present, but they can also serve a place of refuge from how incessantly restless and reactive our minds are. If we break this term down – to remember the present – it may not just be about being in the moment (as is commonly understood) but in re-collecting ourselves around this moment. It would be almost impossible to function only in this moment and only from moment to moment. Much of life requires an anticipation of the future. It may even be possible to hide from life in the present moment. The objective here is, therefore, much more therapeutically minded – to use the reminder of the sensuous immediacy of what is happening here and now to help prevent us getting overly consumed by neurotic and delusional preoccupations with past and future. The preservation of a “self”, the “I” position that arises in relation to thoughts and experience seems instrumental in perpetuating our neuroses and delusions.
Spaciousness
Over time, what we intend to cultivate is a certain openness or spaciousness where the habitual patterns of the mind tend to lose their momentum. This may allow for a bit more freedom from our own reactivity to what we believe is going on in the here and now (often clouded by past ideas and experiences). This is where ideas about our “self” become less fixed and where we might find it a bit easier to “be with what is”. This also requires the practice of letting go of attachment to our thoughts, feelings, aversions, and cravings. The present moment, therefore, serves to hold us as we let go of the fixed grasp we have on an ”I” position (this is me, this is mine) in relation to experience. Experienced meditators often describe this as a feeling of spaciousness.
Coming to terms with our habitual tendencies:
1) What are particularly habitual thoughts you may be having at the moment?
2) What kind of reaction do you have to these thoughts?
3) What “I” position is involved in these thoughts?
For example: 1) “Did I leave the stove on?” 2) “The house is going to burn down” 3) “I am such an idiot, I always ruin things”.
Can you see how, when the self takes up a certain position towards a thought or experience, there is usually some sort of identity attached to this position – “I am such an idiot”. There is usually also a theme or story in your life that form part of this identity formation – “I always ruin things”. This identity and these themes tend to inform what we anticipate about the future. But, what if we made room for something new?
