Meditation is when one has entered into a
meditation posture (sitting, lying, standing, or walking)
with the "intent to meditate." Just the fact
that one has decided to meditate makes that activity meditation;
for all intents and purposes, one has started a meditative
process, no matter what happens.
That meditative process however may not be
the same for everyone or the same for one person all the
time. The process is affected by the intention one has
for meditation, as well as by the state of mind one is
in. Often one defines meditation by the nature of the
intention (the meditation practice) one chooses and not
by the state of mind one is in at the beginning. But what
if one were to define meditation by the states of mind
that condition one's meditative process rather than the
intentional activity one brings to meditation?
Meditation may then be "initiated"
by the intention to meditate but not restricted by the
intention to do a particular meditation practice. This
is an important distinction. When most people meditate,
they do a particular practice through which meditation
then becomes defined. They become meditators who use a
certain mantra, do Vipassana, count their breaths, etc.
What happens when the intention to meditate does not include
such practices? The intention to meditate then becomes
not "doing a meditation practice" but rather
a willingness to be open to one's current state of mind.
ACTUAL MEDITATIVE PROCESS
Seeing the actual meditative process is seeing
the dynamic nature of states of mind. It is known through
becoming conscious of one's relationship with the content
of one's meditative experience. I have delineated six
distinct meditative processes which are based on the shifting
relationship one has with the content of one's meditation
sittings. They are as follows:
1. Conflicted: experiencing some kind of inner struggle
or turmoil.
2. Connected: being settled or focused, including being
connected with an object of concentration.
3. Generative/experimental: generating a state of mind
to replace an existing state of mind or conducting an
inquiry, an experiment, or a prescribed contemplation.
4. Receptive/open: being passive and receptive in regard
to one's experiences or becoming open to all that arises.
5. Explorative: exploring the nature of one's experiences,
through recollection and/or in the moment, by seeing what
is occurring alongside, underneath, and within the experiences
one is having.
6. Non-taking up: experiencing while not taking up the
experience.
Meditation practices have emerged out of
people experiencing these processes. A well-known example
of this is the Buddha's story as to how he discovered
that awareness of breathing leads to absorption (a connected
process). He saw how connection occurs through awareness
of breathing and then was able to teach a "meditation
practice" based on it. To invent a practice without
knowing where it leads would have been absurd.
A "conflicted process" by its very
nature will be judged as not meditating. It is meditating
because it occurs within meditation, and needs to be deemed
an acceptable experience before it can truly be allowed
into one's meditation sittings. So during the transition
that occurs at the beginning of a sitting, while not doing
any prescribed practice, one may be in conflict as to
what one should be doing. One will most likely doubt that
this is meditation and be confused as to what meditation
really is, and attempt to resolve this conflict by doing
some kind of meditation practice. Knowing that the conflicted
process will be a significant part of one's meditation
practice, learning to be with it in an accepting and gentle
manner, will do a great deal to make it more tolerable,
and turn it into an arena of interest and exploration
as opposed to it becoming something to be avoided or eliminated.
What tends to happen within a conflicted
process when an attempt is made to do a particular meditation
practice is that an additional layer of conflict is created
within the meditation sitting. When one has difficulty
doing a connected practice, such as keeping one's attention
on the breath, it is often due to the fact that one is
in a conflicted process and is trying to get past it.
The effort to become connected with the breath turns into
an effort to stop one's mind from wandering away from
the breath, which creates internal struggle and additional
inner conflict. When one stops trying to impose a "connected"
practice on a conflicted process, a noticeable decrease
in tension and conflict can be perceived.
When is the correct time for doing a connected
practice (such as being with the breath)? It is when a
connected process is already evident. Awareness of the
breath at this time may only require a gentle redirecting
of one's attention to the breath. If awareness of the
breath is indeed capable of furthering a connected process
at that time, one's attention will stay there with minimal
effort. But if the connected process is to be furthered
by one's attention going to bodily sensations, visual
images, or thought activity, for instance, then it may
be difficult to hold one's attention on the breath without
using some kind of stronger effort or force. It may be
wiser to let the connected process inform one of what
kind of object is to be connected with at any given time,
for that can reduce desire and aversion in the connected
process.
In the explorative process, the nature of
investigating what goes on in meditation changes from
a directed inquiry (or prescribed contemplation) to an
exploration of what is occurring receptively in one's
meditation sittings. This type of exploration can occur
after-the-fact and involve recollection of a prior experience,
as well as thoughtful contemplation or analysis of that
experience. The type of thinking that goes on can be analytic
in the sense of breaking down the experience into parts,
but may not have the added psychoanayltic component of
seeking childhood causes or seeing experiences through
the lens of developmental theory.
Such a thought process can also go on concurrently
with the experience being explored, even as the experience
is changing rapidly and distinctly. This kind of exploration
may yield occasional understandings, but, for the most
part, will be open-ended and culminate without any conclusions
being reached. Even when conclusions are reached, those
conclusions will also be subjected to investigation. This
is not an intentional process, as an inquiry or contemplation
would be, but rather a secondary process that forms out
of the receptive process, whereby what is experienced
receptively can be known and fully comprehended. Someone
who goes through this type of exploration in meditation
may then re-define meditation as an explorative process,
where one's mind is capable of looking into one's experiences
without aversion, greed, or attachment.
Any one of these six processes can be used
to answer the question "What is meditation?"
For one who values the connected process, meditation is
the focusing on, and connecting with, a particular object
of meditation. With the generative process, one is able
to create and sustain "better" states of consciousness
through reciting phrases, guided imagery, and active imagination.
The receptive process alone leads to defining meditation
as "letting go" of everything and being with
just what is. While the explorative process leads to a
definition of meditation as exploring and examining what
one experiences. Finally, the non taking up process fosters
a definition of meditation as not holding on to anything
or being identified with any part of one's experience.
Now no one will define
meditation as a conflicted process. The reason for that
is meditation has always been looked at as going beyond
conflicted states of mind. By including the conflicted
process in one's overall definition, meditation begins
to include many elements and experiences that have occurred
within sittings that have been deemed non-meditative and
have been struggled with as distractions, interruptions,
failings. It is important to have the conflicted process
in one's definition of meditation, for it is a significant
part of one's meditative life. So added to one's definition
will have be that meditation includes sitting with doubts,
confusion, restlessness and agitation, sleepiness and
apathy, boredom, and just plain resistance to meditating.
