Bad Words 3

Shift The Meaning
Meditation is generally thought of, and employed as, a verb. I’m meditating, doing meditation. “I’m learning how to meditate. So far, so good” – Steely Dan. That raises the question, how shall I meditate? What do I have to do to meditate? And this is where the various techniques come in, so we can do meditation. This is not that, and everything that follows requires defining meditation differently.

Think of meditation as something that happens, if you let it. An event rather than an activity. You don’t do it; if you let it, it will do you. This piece is about giving it its best chance, getting out of its way. Shutting the fuck up.

Distraction
What prevents it (whatever we want to call it) from happening is distraction, physical and mental. We’re constantly being distracted by this or that, this and that, buffeted in a continuous state of interruption we accept as normal. We seek out new distractions, getting bored with the old ones. Swipe the screen, click the link.

Dealing with distraction is simple, which is not to say it’s easy. Base requirement (non-negotiable) is somewhere quiet to sit on your own for half an hour or so. Not under the influence of drugs, not sick or in a foul mood. Dress comfortably, no tightness around the waist. No phone, no watch – put them well out of reach and sight and hearing. If you wear glasses, take them off.

This is not a group activity, and having nobody but your bad self for company can be a daunting prospect. You don’t have to keep to a schedule – taking advantage of opportunity is better. And there is, perhaps disappointingly, no way to measure your progress, no “getting better” at it. The only metric you should note is the time passed before you decided to stand up. Generally, the longer, the deeper. It will cease to matter.

Body
You don’t want to stand – keeping your balance is an added difficulty. Neither do you want to lie down – if you’re tired, go to bed.

Assuming you can’t sit comfortably on the floor, the chair is important – a plain dining chair (no arms) that allows you to sit upright at right angles, with thighs parallel to floor at right angles to body and calves. Feet flat on the floor, right angles to calves. A stool is okay, but you may appreciate some support for the small of the back. Put your hands palm down on your thighs where they’re comfortable – no mystical palms-up gestures necessary. Keep this posture for around what you think is half an hour. Five minutes is nothing. You need a certain amount of time to appreciate what’s happening, and thirty minutes is about right. If you get on with yourself, time will cease to have a grip on you, and you could find you’ve lost an hour or more out of your life without counting.

Catch yourself if you start to slump – keep shoulders back, back straight, neck back and up, chin in. Snooze, you lose. This will need constant vigilance. No special breathing techniques, just breathe normally through nose or mouth, whichever is comfortable. Your jaw relaxed, hanging loose, tongue not stuck to the roof of your mouth or touching your teeth. No fidgeting, swallowing, sniffing, scratching, or changing position. When you start to itch somewhere, as you inevitably will, don’t scratch, or you’ll have to start over, and it’ll come back and multiply and you’ll have spent half an hour scratching yourself. Congratulations! There is some discipline involved, and your only overseer, your only teacher, is you. Is such a little thing as an itch going to best the Mighty You?

Relax your face, let your eyelids close a little so you’re gazing down and a little ahead. There shouldn’t be anything distracting or even interesting down there for your eye to focus on or follow. Gaze down and a little ahead, and try not to blink – the urge will be more out of habit than necessity. You should be able to feel the weight of your face as the muscles relax. All these requirements are small, simple, interdependent, and non-negotiable.

If this sounds suspiciously like technique, it’s to help reduce distraction, which is what all this is about. The aim is not to shut down all systems, like a sensory deprivation tank, but to dial the senses down to the level where they’re apparent but not distracting. You’ll hear traffic in the street or birdsong or whatever ambient sounds are happening, and you’ll feel your body’s weight and your hands on your thighs, and you’ll be aware of your breathing, any stiffness in your body. You’re not consciously thinking about this stuff, just aware of it being there. You’re not directing anything, not reacting to anything. So that’s the physical aspect sorted. That’s all there is to it. You’re not actually meditating at all.

Brain
Controlling the brain’s activity is where everything starts to get tricky. Thoughts and thinking, which should be productive and helpful in daily routine, become the major interior distraction, and you can’t turn them off. If your thoughts get out of control, like doomscrolling, they amp up into emotions. Your face registers emotions almost before you’re aware of them. If you feel your face muscles tensing (frowning, gritting your teeth) make a focused effort to relax them. Emotions make you fidget, they up your heartbeat and body temperature, and they’re disruptive. Calm them down to neutral thinking (scrolling without the doom).

The Buddhist model of the brain being a sense organ, and thoughts being the sensations, is very helpful here. The brain thinks like the ear hears. You’re aware of sounds without identifying with or investing in them, so thoughts can be dealt with in the same way: through passive attention. Treat your thoughts as you do ambient sound – you can’t turn them off, they’re just there, but you don’t have to inhabit them, any more than you are the light coming into your eyes, or the touch of your hands on your thighs.

A level of thinking slyly opens up, the “thinking about thinking”, where you add a commentary to your thinking. Notice the commentary and back away from it. Sooner or later the words will become a procession you’re not involved in, they’re scrolling past on automatic pilot, and the core “you” becomes a silent observer of all the distractions, the mental and the physical.

There’s nothing mystical or spiritual about any of this. There is no door you pass through to some blessed state; in a very real sense you are that door. The mind, the body, the world, you; distractions. Not delusions or illusions, they’re actual and real and concrete, and understanding how they are leading you astray, muddying the water, raises the question: what are we being distracted from?

And that is what Buddha was on about. This is where you come in.

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