Meditation is training, brain training. In fact, the word the historical Buddha used for meditation - bhavana - means cultivation. Meditation is about cultivating mind and heart states. So much of your present mental state is based on habits. Your mind tends to behave the way it has tended to behave. Sounds simple, but it is deceivingly complex, partly because it is not written in stone. Just because your mind has tended to behave a certain way in the past, that doesn’t mean that it is destined to behave that way in the future. This is what scientists now call “neuroplasticity.” The catch is that, without effort, the habits of the past will determine your mental states in the present and the future. It is only with sustained effort that one can control (somewhat) one’s states of mind and heart. This is how Buddhism explodes the dichotomy of free will vs. determinism: you have volition in terms of the states of mind and heart that you generate, sustain, and allow to continue, but when states of mind and heart arise regularly, they become habitual, and they tend to arise spontaneously. In short, from the perspective of a meditator, free will isn’t willing something to happen just once; for it to stick, one needs to will it to happen again and again, until it becomes a habit that, ironically, determines what happens from that point. Viewed this way, free will is a course change that is taken over a long period, with lots of effort. Good intentions are the incremental course corrections that one does over and over again.
An important aspect of a sustainable meditation practice involves not being attached to the outcomes of meditation. This is another ironic - or paradoxical - aspect of meditation. Since most of what one does on the cushion is training for life, it is helpful to identify how not being attached to the outcomes of meditation practice parallel how to live a life of contentment. The Buddha identified four Noble Truths:
(1) There is unsatisfactoriness in life,
(2) The unsatisfactoriness in life comes from craving for things to be other than as they are,
(3) There is a way to avoid unsatisfactoriness, and that is by letting go of craving, and
(4) There are eight practices that one can follow to put that way into action and let go of craving for things to be other than as they are.
Quite simply, the second Noble Truth explains that we suffer, because we want things to be different from the way that they are. We want to avoid things that we don’t like, and we crave the things that we do like. The simplest way to avoid the trap of unsatisfactoriness is to be happy with things as they are in a profoundly accepting way. The problem is that “things as they are” includes a wide range of circumstances, ranging from the itch that you can’t scratch while meditating to the certainty of one’s eventual demise. One can only avoid suffering by practicing radical acceptance, or by completely surrendering to the way that things are.
An important aspect of a sustainable meditation practice involves not being attached to the outcomes of meditation. This is another ironic - or paradoxical - aspect of meditation. Since most of what one does on the cushion is training for life, it is helpful to identify how not being attached to the outcomes of meditation practice parallel how to live a life of contentment. The Buddha identified four Noble Truths:
(1) There is unsatisfactoriness in life,
(2) The unsatisfactoriness in life comes from craving for things to be other than as they are,
(3) There is a way to avoid unsatisfactoriness, and that is by letting go of craving, and
(4) There are eight practices that one can follow to put that way into action and let go of craving for things to be other than as they are.
Quite simply, the second Noble Truth explains that we suffer, because we want things to be different from the way that they are. We want to avoid things that we don’t like, and we crave the things that we do like. The simplest way to avoid the trap of unsatisfactoriness is to be happy with things as they are in a profoundly accepting way. The problem is that “things as they are” includes a wide range of circumstances, ranging from the itch that you can’t scratch while meditating to the certainty of one’s eventual demise. One can only avoid suffering by practicing radical acceptance, or by completely surrendering to the way that things are.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Practicing the Noble Eightfold Path does not involve indifference to the world or an absence of accountability. In fact, it describes a fairly specific and demanding program of intention, thought, speech, and action. However, a crucial aspect is releasing attachments to outcomes. This is the third Noble Truth: the cessation of the wanting for things to be other than as they are. It is freedom from dissatisfaction, because one is satisfied with things as they are in a profoundly radical way.
This practice of letting go of outcomes is sometimes called “aimlessness;” it is rooted in equanimity and non-duality (the notion that suffering contains within it the essence of its own cessation, since all things inter-are).
As Sharon Salzberg says, “It’s not that we do not care. We do and we should care. We choose to open our hearts and to offer as much love, compassion, and rejoicing as we possibly can, and we also let go of results.” Sometimes the opening of the heart allows for such rejoicing to happen even in the face of the very things that we would naturally spend all of our attention and effort being averse to, were it not for the habits formed while meditating.
This practice of letting go of outcomes is sometimes called “aimlessness;” it is rooted in equanimity and non-duality (the notion that suffering contains within it the essence of its own cessation, since all things inter-are).
As Sharon Salzberg says, “It’s not that we do not care. We do and we should care. We choose to open our hearts and to offer as much love, compassion, and rejoicing as we possibly can, and we also let go of results.” Sometimes the opening of the heart allows for such rejoicing to happen even in the face of the very things that we would naturally spend all of our attention and effort being averse to, were it not for the habits formed while meditating.
The Tigers and the Strawberry
(From http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/zen-stories.html)
A man walking across a field encounters a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little began to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine in one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
A man walking across a field encounters a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little began to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine in one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
Another irony (or another paradox) is that letting go of results allows us to be much more effecting in achieving results. When we act with aimlessness, we act with an open-heartedness that allows our intentions to be the best that they can be - unclouded by the stress and counter-productive agenda-making that comes with attachment to outcomes.
If the Buddha had formulated the Serenity Prayer, he might have done so thusly:
May I have the mindfulness to see how things truly are,
The energy to commit myself to skillful intentions, thoughts, speech, and action,
And the equanimity to accept things as they are, regardless of the outcome of my efforts.
As is often the case, work on the cushion mirrors the human condition in everyday life. As you train yourself to openly accept all that happens on the cushion, the habits you form - the neural nets you build - start to be accessible in life. I encourage you to surrender to what is, both on the cushion and in everyday life.
If the Buddha had formulated the Serenity Prayer, he might have done so thusly:
May I have the mindfulness to see how things truly are,
The energy to commit myself to skillful intentions, thoughts, speech, and action,
And the equanimity to accept things as they are, regardless of the outcome of my efforts.
As is often the case, work on the cushion mirrors the human condition in everyday life. As you train yourself to openly accept all that happens on the cushion, the habits you form - the neural nets you build - start to be accessible in life. I encourage you to surrender to what is, both on the cushion and in everyday life.