Category Archives: Meditation

Meditation 14: The hindrance of doubt

There are two possible senses of ‘doubt’, just as there are two senses of ‘confidence’ as its opposite. Doubt can be a disabling paralysis preventing us engaging in actions we have decided upon, or it can be a liberating questioning of views that have previously been understood dogmatically. How do you tell the difference? Well, disabling doubt is disintegrating and disempowering, but liberating doubt is integrating and empowering. Disabling doubt is a voice making negative dogmatic assertions that undermine you without justification, whereas liberating doubt is balanced and merely makes us aware of our degree of uncertainty as embodied beings.

This distinction between two types of doubt is found in the traditional Buddhist discussion of doubt as a hindrance in meditation. Doubt as a hindrance is a translation of the Pali term vicikiccha, and is something every meditator will have come across regularly. Unfortunately this is sometimes badly translated as ‘sceptical doubt’, which can only be based on a major misunderstanding of scepticism: I much prefer the translation ‘disabling doubt’ which tells you about its practical effects. Sceptical doubt as I understand it is liberating doubt, enabling us to let go of attachments to dogmatic claims wherever they are found.

The way I experience disabling doubt in meditation is as a loss of confidence that meditation is worth doing, or is worth persisting in. For example, I could sit for a while, find myself going round a spiral of distractions, and conclude “There’s no point in sitting here any longer – I’m just wasting my time.” Or  maybe I don’t even start in the first place. Perhaps I get up in the morning, feeling a bit groggy, and “Oh, it’s obviously not worth trying to meditate this morning – I’ll never get anywhere.” At this point I also hear the voice of past meditation teachers from somewhere in my superego saying “Ah! But that just goes to show that meditation is the very thing you need most!”, but, if the disabling doubt is disabling enough, I will of course ignore them.Doubting Thomas Johann Jaritz

How do I know that this disabling doubt is not liberating, sceptical doubt? A case could be made. Perhaps I am hanging onto an idea that I should be meditating every day, regardless of the evidence. But perhaps it really isn’t very useful to try meditating at this juncture. Meditation is not a panacea for every situation, as you need a basic degree of starting integration to make any progress with meditation in the first place. Perhaps this doubtful voice is just saving me the trouble of wasting my time when meditation would indeed be fruitless? Perhaps I am also attributing dogmatic authority to the voices of past meditation teachers?

Of course, this is possible, but I think there are also some ways to spot disabling doubt when it tries to assume the mantle of liberating doubt. One, that I’ve already mentioned, is that disabling doubt is negative dogma. It won’t be open to real examination of the question of whether meditation would be useful – it will just be offering rationalisations to support a feeling of not wanting to meditate. If it’s liberating doubt, you should be aware of arguments on both sides, and be in a position to weight them up. Ask yourself whether that’s really the case. Another way of spotting disabling doubt is that it will probably be accompanied by quite a negative emotional state: a retractive, shrinking away from things.

The traditional Buddhist answer to doubt is usually ‘faith’ – involving at least an element of unconditional commitment to metaphysical claims, such as the Buddha’s enlightenment. Interpreted in this way, I don’t think that approach is any help at all. At best it is a way of experiencing group pressure to conform and do the things that the group does, symbolised by their metaphysical commitments. You might decide that some group pressure will help you stick to your commitments, but this will just be repressive if the commitments themselves are made under group pressure, especially if this is reinforced by appeals to tradition.

Instead, I’d suggest that, yes, we do need to commit ourselves to meditation practice, and follow it with some sense of discipline, in order to make it work. If we allow ourselves to re-assess that commitment every time we meditate, regardless of the mental state we are in, it will undermine the practice. However, in order for meditation practice to be justified by experience rather than group pressure and dogma, we do need to review it regularly and thoroughly. Is it really worth doing? Is it really making progress? The answer ‘no’ has to be a real possibility if you are really asking these questions, rather than just going through the motions to satisfy a group that claims to be open and critical but isn’t. If you know that you have thought through your commitment to practice for the time being, it makes sense to suppress (not repress) any contrary impulses for the moment, and just sit down and meditate regardless.

My personal experience is that sometimes I have answered ‘no’ when I asked myself if meditation was working for me. At that point it wasn’t. But I have always come back to it, because if I don’t do it then I miss it and notice the effects. By allowing doubt free enquiry in the appreciation of uncertainty, I am reasonably confident that my commitment to meditation is founded in experience rather than dogma.

Index of previous meditation blogs

Picture: Doubting Thomas photographed by Johann Jaritz  (Wikimedia Commons)

The MWS Podcast: Episode 21, Claire Kelly from the Mindfulness in Schools Project

In this episode we are joined by Claire Kelly, who is the Operations Director of the Mindfulness in Schools Project. She’s going to talk to us today about why she feels it’s important to introduce children to mindfulness practices, how the project goes about it and how it might relate to the Middle Way.


MWS Podcast 21: Claire Kelly as audio only:
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Meditation 13: The Hindrance of Restlessness and Anxiety

So far in my look at the hindrances I’ve worked through sense desire (meditation 7), ill-will (meditation 9) and sloth and torpor (meditation 11). So now I reach the fourth hindrance, restlessness and anxiety. This might be especially timely, given that  we’re approaching the time of year when many students face the anxiety of examinations.

Restlessness and anxiety is the biggest hindrance for me, and, I suspect, for many other people. Perhaps that’s not surprising given that our age is sometimes described as the ‘age of anxiety’. As Steven Pinker documents, in most of the developed world outward conflict has declined. The long-term trend is for Phone_calls_can_cause_anxiety_in_select_individuals Nervous Nedless violent crime and fewer deaths in war. But perhaps that sense of safety has been purchased at the expense of anxiety, which is a sign of inner conflict. There is constant pressure on us to meet social expectations in a rather unpredictable environment, whether that’s through examinations, the market, sexual expectations, responsibility for vulnerable children, or the whims of powerful bosses. Our social environment is increasingly fluid, but also increasingly competitive, and competition breeds anxiety.

So, it’s not surprising that when we sit down (or even stand up) to meditate, anxiety is one of the things that readily surfaces. The distinction between restlessness and anxiety is an incremental one, resting on whether it’s more of a physical twitchiness or more of a mental rumination. The way I experience restlessness is just a sense that it’s impossible to stay on the cushion. Sometimes I even get up without reflection. Anxiety, on the other hand, is likely to take the form of a list of things to be done, or things that ought to be said, or other expectations that need to be met, all of which pile into your awareness, and make it apparently impossible to gain the basic stillness needed to settle into a meditation practice.

In my experience there is only one way of tackling this hindrance that has any chance of working, and that is physical awareness. The thing that can unify your divided, speedy, unreflective thoughts is simply the fact that you have a body, and that this body has sensations. Particularly, the centre of your experience in the lower middle of your body can act as a focal point for physical awareness. This might be aided by scanning all the parts of your body systematically and noting your sensations, or by focusing on the movements of your diaphragm as you breathe.

A good posture can really help this sort of awareness. Assuming that you are doing a sitting meditation, your sense of secure seatedness can also be given an edge of positive energy by aligning your spine in an upright but not rigid posture, and allowing energy to rise up your spine. In my experience, that energy by itself can begin to calm anxiety.

If you’re a bit more of a greed-type and less of a hate-type than I am, you might also find it helpful to reflect on something that inspires you. Rather than scrappy little ruminations that just reflect group pressure on your life, think about something that you really want and that nourishes you in the longer-term. It might be inspiring ideas, inspiring people, great works of art, awe-inspiring landscapes. If you realise that you’re anxious before you start meditating, reading a poem beforehand, or listening to exactly the right sort of calming music, might help you get into the right frame of mind.

Each reasonably successful meditation, where you find a centre, makes it slightly less likely that you will be quite so anxious next time round. But there are always still pressures of anxiety in our lives that make it likely that it will return. A lasting answer to anxiety requires heroic persistence and commitment.

Index of previous meditation blogs

Picture by Nervous Ned (Wikimedia Commons) – Creative Commons licence

Meditation 12: Mahasi Vipassana (or The Art of Noting) – Part 2

Some people consider meditation to be nothing more than an insular form of escapism, whereby the meditator retreats to a quiet place, free from the distractions of the modern world and immerses themselves in a state of tranquil bliss.  I think that this is a misunderstanding, albeit an understandable one .  When most people do engage in formal meditation practice they usually  seek out the type of place described above and to anyone observing, said meditator is doing anything but engaging with the world around them.  Although it is quite possible to experience a state of tranquil bliss while meditating and it can be beneficial to practice in a quiet place, these things do not form the purpose of meditation – rather the purpose as I see it is to learn how to engage the world with greater clarity and understanding.  Consequently, it is at some point necessary to employ the techniques of meditation outside of the formal setting.

In part 1 of this series I provided a brief description of the Mahasi Vipassana (or Noting) meditation technique and discussed how I use this method as part of my own formal practice.  In part 2 I will try to describe how the noting technique can easily be practised in many situations and can help us to experience many of the things that we take for granted more fully and in a more satisfying way.

Many of the benefits of meditation are likely to be subtle, incremental and sub-concious.  It is unrealistic to expect that one will be able to actively employ mindfulness in every situation, this should happen gradually overtime.  It is also doubly unlikely that one will be able to actively  ‘note’ in many everyday situations – imagine trying this when being in conversation – it wouldn’t work.  Nevertheless, there are many situations where we can ‘note’ effectively, thereby extending the practice outside of the quiet retreat and into the ‘real’ world.  I will give three examples of activities that might lend themselves well to the practice of noting; walking, eating and cleaning the toilet.

Walking

As far as I can tell most Buddhist teachers incorporate walking meditation into their teachings.  This seems to be an attempt to break down the barrier between meditation practice and life as we know it, adding – as it does – the movement of the body and the movement through space, and as such it seems like a good place to start with the noting technique.  Meditative walking, like noting itself, is an artificial and deliberate facsimile of something that we normally do without thinking, only in this context the idea is to perform the task (walking) with a much greater degree of concentration and focus.  If you have found noting to be useful in ‘sitting’ meditation then it is likely that you will find it equally useful in walking meditation.

Begin from a standing position and perhaps do whatever you do before any meditation session – deep breathing, body scan, etc.  Before you begin to take your first step note the intention to step; ‘intending… intending’.  Then being to lift one of your legs and as you do so note ‘lifting… lifting’.  Keeping it simple, slowly bring the foot forward and as you lower it note ‘placing… placing’ or ‘putting… putting’, then it is back to lifting and the cycle starts again.  As with all noting, the intention is to aid us with our concentration – the focus is really on the sensation and experience of walking, not on the formation of words.

As you become used to this simple noting it is possible to add a greater degree of detail, so ‘intending… lifting… placing… lifting… placing…’ might become ‘intending… lifting… pushing (as you push your leg forward)… placing… lifting… pushing… placing’.  Because we are focusing on a specific activity in this meditation there is more focus than with the sitting.  If anything else grabs the attention then note it, before intentionally returning the focus to the walking.  In my experience this type of walking meditation is very slow and deliberate and requires a fair degree of concentration, so the mind is less likely to wander anyway.

Noting can also be used when walking normally, although it is not realistic to note every movement of the leg, as described above.  Instead, you can do something more akin to the sitting meditation.  As you walk just note ‘walking… walking… walking…’ and experience the whole bodily sensation of walking.  Like the noting of the breath described in part 1, walking can be the base from which your attention can roam.  If something grabs your attention then note it for as long as it is the main focus.  If it is the sound of a bird singing, note ‘listening… listening…’ or ‘sound… sound…’ and if an emotion arises from the listening then note it too – ‘happy… happy…’ or ‘irritation… irritation’.  If there is no particular focus then return your attention the the sensation of walking.

It should hopefully be fairly clear how this technique can be applied to all sorts of activities and so, with the assumption that the noting technique is now understood, I will only skim over the next two examples.

Eating

One thing that I have gained from meditation (specifically this method and the Soto Zen technique of Zazen) is an understanding that each moment consists of a magnificent symphony of sensation, emotion and thought – a symphony that I was almost completely unaware of, despite the fact that it is present at all times.  There have been several occasions when this realization has been strongly reinforced and one of those was when I was on retreat learning Mahasi Vipassana, and applying it to the act of eating.

On the first day all I seemed to note was ‘intending… chewing… swallowing’.  This was fine, but as the retreat went on the noting words that I was able to use increased to such an extent that I felt quite overwhelmed and surprised at just how complex the experience of eating was.  There was the lifting of the spoon, the temperature of the food, the sounds (spoon hitting teeth or squelch of saliva), the texture of the food, the emotions and thoughts that arose as a direct consequence of eating – the list seemed endless.  However, the thing that surprised me the most was that ‘taste’ was the very last thing that I noted.  Now,  one might assume that the food must have been tasteless and I have to admit that, being the first time that I had lived on a purely vegan diet, I was previously concerned that it would be.  This was not the case – the food tasted wonderful and yet the sensation that is usually the only one that holds my attention when eating took a back seat, there was so much other stuff going on of which I am usually completely unaware.

As with walking this can be done as a formal type of meditation – with each bite being taken slowly and deliberately, but it can also be applied to ‘normal’ eating – although the detail of the noting will naturally be less.

Cleaning the Toilet

The example of cleaning a toilet as a mindful activity has been used by other before and there are good reasons for this – it is unpleasant, it is something that most of us would rather avoid and when we do it we often do anything rather than fully focus on the job at hand.  My understanding of the application of mindfulness is that it should not be reserved only for those activities that we enjoy – it is equally important to apply it to the less pleasant experiences of life.

When I clean the toilet I distract myself, I might plan the rest of the day or mull over a conversation from yesterday – the act of cleaning is done automatically and I do not give it my full attention.  It is reasonable to ask why we should need to give this task our full attention – what is wrong with distracting ourselves anyway?  The answer to this requires a much fuller explanation of the benefits of mindfulness and I will not cover them here, indeed I do not feel qualified to cover them fully anywhere, but if you are asking yourself why bother then I urge you to seek more expert advise and make your own mind up from there.

If you do subscribe to the benefits of mindfulness then using the noting technique while cleaning the toilet, or doing any other unpleasant activity is a good way to practice.  Start by noting the intention to clean or even the intention to move your arm and go from there.  It might only be the physical acts associated with the cleaning that hold your attention, and that is fine.  Don’t, however, restrain four focus – if there is a particularly nasty something that grabs your attention then don’t avoid it, but also don’t feed it with detailed thought.  You might just note a thought; ‘that is disgusting’, and so note something like ‘thinking’, then you may notice an emotion that this thought has lead to – this might be something like ‘disgust’ or ‘revulsion.’  From this the attention will probably move to the intention to clean said something, then on to the physical activity of cleaning it and then, maybe, a feeling of satisfaction may arise.  As with the formal meditation the idea is only to use the noting words to aid our focus, not to intellectualize – so it is best not to note anything like ‘moving my hand’ or ‘I am repulsed’ rather ‘moving’ or ‘revulsion’.

After a while I hope that you too will discover that like eating, cleaning the toilet can be a magnificent and captivating symphony of sensation, thought and emotion.

You may not be convinced by any of what I have suggested and if you are already proficient and well practised at other forms of mediation or mindfulness training then Noting Meditation may be of little use, but I urge you to give it a good go before passing judgement, and if you are really interested in continuing this practice then please seek out more expert advice.  This technique will not be for everybody, but if you are just starting out with meditation and are finding your attention difficult to hold, then you may find it as beneficial as I have and you might find yourself noting as you wash up, drive to work, open a door, get up out of your chair and any other activity that you find yourself taking part in.

 
image taken from www.stain-removal-101.com

Meditation 11: The hindrance of sloth and torpor

Anyone who has meditated will have met this one at some time or another: the irresistible urge to fall asleep! If you are sitting in an upright posture, you won’t actually drop off, but rather keep starting to flop and then waking yourself up with a start as you do so. I find it a painful, uncomfortable state to be in: not sleeping and not meditating either, but unhappily careering from one to the other, and feeling confused and trapped in the cycle.

That experience is sloth, which (strictly speaking) can be distinguished from torpor. Torpor is not exactly falling asleep, but hovering in a sort of blank, half-resolved state just short of it. I haven’t really experienced torpor much myself, and sloth seems to be very much the product of specific circumstances. So one of the best things one can do about sloth, in my experience, is just to avoid those circumstances. It’s just a list of meditation no-no’s really:

  • Don’t try to meditate straight after a meal
  • Don’t try to meditate after consuming alcohol, even a small amount
  • Don’t try to meditate after a long walk or other soporific exercise
  • Don’t try to meditate lying down

Of course, your experience may be different. You may be able to break all of these rules. But my experience of thinking “I don’t need to worry about that: it was only a small glass of wine/ I’m not sleepy really/ I don’t need to be so rigid about this” and attempting to meditate under any of these circumstances, is that it really doesn’t work.

Then there’s the afternoon sag. Perhaps it’s later on in the afternoon, and you’re on retreat, so you sit down to meditate with everyone else because it’s on the programme – but then the irresistible tentacles of sleepiness begin to creep around you and gradually haul you towards them. That octopus of oblivion is just about to engulf you when… Oh yes, I was supposed to be meditating! But the afternoon octopus only goes and hides behind a weak intention for a short while. He’ll be back shortly. Octopus

There are only two ways I know to avoid the afternoon octopus. One is to drink the right amount of caffeinous drink beforehand, so that you’re awake but not over-stimulated. The other, probably more wholesome method, is to have a preparatory afternoon nap.

There are lots of other ways you’re supposed to be able to deal with sloth and torpor. Imagine lots of cold water splashing on your face. Raise the awareness higher in your body. Even visualise your body as full of light. None of these really work for me. In some cases, a degree of sleepiness may just be a way that some other kind of resistance is expressing itself, and if you just work through it, suppressing (but not repressing) the sleepiness, you might end up having an especially rewarding meditation because you’ve found a way of integrating that resistance. But in my experience, that’s exceptional. Most sleepiness is just about the immediate physical situation or one’s immediate bodily state. The usual solution if all else fails is very simple: get up, go off and have a nap!

Index to previous meditation blogs