Silence and the Question of Meditation
El silencio y la pregunta de la meditación
A conversation about what meditation actually is, why definitions fall short, and what has proven genuinely useful: curiosity, a living teacher, and the friction of relationship.
Silence and the Question of Meditation
A conversation about what meditation actually is, why definitions fall short, and what has proven genuinely useful: curiosity, a living teacher, and the friction of relationship.
This was a great question and a mind-expanding answer. I haven't heard these things put this way before. I've asked people in the past, "What is meditation?" and it almost puts me to sleep. I go into some hazy space, just hanging there and clueless. The not-knowing is so big. I'd love to hear what you have to say about it.
About what is meditation?
Yes. What the heck are we talking about?
I would have to say I don't know either, in a certain sense. The closest thing to it is something I mentioned in the meditation itself: silence. Only silence can describe it truthfully. I could say so many things, talk about all kinds of meditations, fill books and books with content, and everything would still seem poor, because it is really experiential. That is why the most real way to answer the question, "What is meditation?" is to meditate. A guided meditation, a community sitting, a practice: these explore and discover it. But if I must put it into words, I would say meditation is something that can reveal what the mind is, so that we can discern mind from reality.
What counts as meditation
What would you say is not meditation?
I have to say everything is meditation. I know that is a very limited answer, and it becomes a kind of semantic game. If we are simply defining meditation, it could be a practice where you are sitting, standing, dancing, or doing breathing exercises. Whatever you call a meditation practice, that is meditation.
Maybe a more pointed question would be: what has been useful for you in your own practice?
What proved useful
The most useful thing has been to sit with a teacher and to relate to a teacher, and then, in my own practice, to explore what was taught by that teacher and by others. More specifically, what I found useful was that when I sat to meditate, I was not following a meditation structure by the letter, like an obedient practice-follower. When I was alone, what was useful was to follow my curiosity, to explore.
I spoke to my teacher about this, because I checked with him: is this a bad thing? He said no, that is great. You can stop following the meditation structures he was giving, since he gave them for people who did not even have an interest. If you do not have the interest or the motivation, if you do not naturally have a practice, then it is better to follow a directive. It is like physical exercise. If you are not working out on your own, it is better to go somewhere structured. But if you are already doing it naturally, you do not need the structure.
In my case, if anything was effective, it was that curiosity to explore and inquire in all kinds of forms, while always coming back to someone I could speak with one-on-one, directly. That has been really important for me.
Not confined to one teacher
I was never too closed-minded about only one person or one teacher being able to help. In all the years I was with my teacher, I spoke to others, and he was very aware of it and encouraging of it. But that is also not a formula. I was following my own intuition and curiosity, and that is how it played out for me. For the next person, it could be very different. So it comes back to that: following and developing my own intuition, my own curiosity.
What I hear is: as long as it is not the mind telling me what to do. How do I know that? I don't ultimately know, but if my intent is to go beyond mind, maybe that is a kind of guiding light. Anything beyond concept, beyond, I don't know the word, but something like that.
In that case, I would say: anything you have the experience of, you know whether it is true or not. That is why being able to speak to a teacher who is not just a book or a dead teacher is so invaluable. With all their errors and mistakes, they will more likely than not be able to attune to where you are and guide you toward what is mind and what is not.
Relationship as practice
Another thing, which might be surprising, is relationship. To have a relationship, a romantic one, for example, with someone who is also committed to this work and committed to mirroring each other, with all of the frictions and conflicts, that is a great meditation practice.
Because that is where we usually have the most resistance to truth. I want to be right, or it's your fault, those kinds of things.
Yes. It is really where any kind of resistance shows itself.