A Tibetan monk said THIS?!
Okay, so here’s the story.
I’m at a workshop with my friend, Yeshe (I’ve changed his name to protect him… you’ll see why in a moment).
Yeshe is a high-ranking Tibetan monk. You might even recognize him if you saw him.
Anyway, the workshop leader asked Yeshe to teach the group a Tibetan meditation practice. And, so, he did.
It was a basic meditation technique from what I call “The Path of Purification,” where you follow your breath in and out, but with a Tibetan twist, of visualizing colored light in your body as you breath in and out.
After about 10 minutes of meditating, we ring a Tibetan bowl, everyone opens their eyes, and Yeshe asks for comments.
Lots of people expressed their gratitude, their happiness that Yeshe had shared this with them, their wishes that he was staying around so they could do more. The few people who commented on their actual experience were mostly lost in daydreams. Some had a relaxing time, but that seemed as much from just sitting quietly for 10 minutes as anything else.
Then one woman at the back of the room nearly exploded.
“I’m sorry, I have to say this…”
Every head swiveled to her. Yeshe and I sat up a bit straighter. I think we both knew what was coming, though.
“This just didn’t work for me at all. I’ve tried meditating, and I just can’t do it. I can’t concentrate, I can’t sit still, my mind wanders. I didn’t really feel anything.”
There was almost a collective gasp, as if admitting meditation didn’t work — especially in a New Age workshop — wasn’t, well… you just didn’t do that!
Then Yeshe said something that floored me. Not because I didn’t know it, but because he, an important Tibetan lama, was the one saying it… in public.
“You know,” he started, in his raspy voice, “The monks at the monastery who practice for many hours each day… when they leave the monastery and come down into the city, into shopping malls, they have the same trouble, too.”
My eyes must have opened an extra inch. I’d never heard anyone admit in public that meditation practices from The Path of Purification are NOT EASY, even for the professionals… especially when they’re not alone on the mountaintop with no distractions from a normal life.
(As an aside: A few years earlier, I’d seen a letter written by the head of a different meditation lineage that also uses techniques from The Path of Purification, complaining that none of his thousands of students were attaining the levels of meditation he expected, and he didn’t know why. I wasn’t supposed to have seen the letter and, as far as I can tell, it has since disappeared.)
The woman was kinda relieved to hear that this wasn’t just HER problem, but she was still grasping for something… “What do I do?” she asked.
“Practice more,” Yeshe said.
“WHAT?!” I shouted… well, I only shouted in my head, since I didn’t want to make a scene. But later I confronted Yeshe.
“First you said that even the monks who practice for hours and hours every day would have the same difficulties if they were in a householder’s life… and then you say the solution is ‘practice more’? How will sitting for 20 or 30 minutes per day be the answer, when hours and hours without distraction isn’t the answer?”
“Oh…” Yeshe said, realizing the logical problem with his answer.
As I’d seen in other meditation lineages that use techniques from The Path of Purification, “practice more” is always the answer, no matter what the question.
It was after 30 years of “practicing more” and, like the woman at the workshop, not getting the results I expected, that I gave up the Path of Purification. Then, much to my surprise, discovered the Path of Recognition and a series of techniques that actually DID work, reliably, consistently, easily, quickly… and instead of having to worry about “losing it” if you have a real life, you can do these practices in the middle of a busy life. Even in the middle of a busy street.
Tags: meditation // 10 Comments »
Oh it is so much about purification. We are energy! Our thoughts
have an energetic vibration. Many years ago a book hit the stands called
You Are What You Eat if I am not mistaken we are also what we think. Almost everything is manifested from thought energy. It appears before us and it is manifests energetically within our phyiscal form.
I love the Buddhist concept of Dharma. A few weeks ago I had this wonderful opportunity to talk to an Atheist. He asked me about the Dharma and I said as I experience it. it is both the Teacher and the student, the lesson and the answer, the beginning and the end of all of this. It appears to be interactive. One might even call it God but I don’t know if it really is. Our mission might be twofold the cultivation of being an Oasis in this world and the waking up,ending the story of me,realization that we are in a living in a virtual “Green Room” consciousness or whatever you want to call this” School
Room?” One thing I do know is we should consider letting go of our sense of separation because it makes us afraid and therefore angry. One day we will all wake up and walk away from all of our stuff and SEE.
Damn right Roz!
I thought it was just me! What incredible persistence those monks have. Oh, wait a minute I “meditated” for 20 years, mostly in an ashram type setting, and when I went in to cook in the kitchen it seemed to fly out the door. Couldn’t maintain the “meditative consciousness”. Makes me wonder what state is “natural”. We go in and out of “consciousness”, ebb and flow. It is all part of one rhythm, whether we “feel” it is or not. That allows me to have no judgment and relax. Ahhh. Maybe that is meditation.
As I see it, if you have reached or stumbled upon the timeless state, there is no coming out of it, wherever you are and in whatever circumstances. It is logical because if you come of out it, it cannot be something timeless.
As for the effect of meditation lasting for a longer or shorter time, it is just an experience which you are trying to capture again and again, which in itself is frustrating and leads to more disturbance in the mind!!!
So the question still remains why do we meditate? Is it to gain something or just because we want a peaceful experience in that moment.
Still quite confused over that.
You’ve hit the nail on the head, Neville.
The questions you’re asking are often left unaddressed or, worse, ignored by most teachers and lineages. Of course each person may have their own reasons — some of which may be valid (that is, attainable) and others may not be. The lineages, though, usually make promises of what can be attained… and never look carefully to see how likely that attainment is (e.g. what % of practitioners “get it”?), what other causes may be at play for those who seem to get it (e.g. what’s unique about them… or why doesn’t EVERYONE get it?).
And then there’s the problem of using language in a way that’s not accurate and leads to misunderstanding. As you pointed out, calling something the “timeless state” is fraught with contradiction and problems. The challenge is that that using language that’s more accurately descriptive doesn’t sound as cool or as desirable… which brings us back to the question: Why?
(This is something we explore quite a bit in the I AM course, actually… and often find that by examining the question from a radical new perspective, our reasons, relationships, and practice itself can change quite dramatically and easily.)
Thank you Neville,
you said everything in short lines!
In my opinion and my experience, the higher states in meditation exists, but they will go away soon. And it is good that they go away, because we all grasp “nirvana” to avoid life, it is a proof that we really dont want to live here on Earth!!! And with meditation practice comes so much judging from our side, which really is ugly (self involment-EGO)..
So for me the basic question is, can I make the whole life meditation, without preparation or protection?
And if I need to prepare-protect, the how to do it and not to move to far from my own heart.
best wishes ; Vikas
Actually it’s not surprising at all. It’s well known that meditating will make you
more open to other people’s energy, so meditating in the densely populated areas, like cities, opens you up to the mindstreams of the millions of people who live there. And that is not helpful for meditation.
Our teachers (Tibetan lamas) recommend earplugs, meditating in the early hours of the morning before others are awake, and meditating first thing before you have exposed your mind to media, conversation, and your own preoccupations.
No, it’s really not surprising at all if you understand how meditating works on the mind (and body).
Wow! I am blown away by the comments on your site, Steven – thank you so much for the opportunity to contribute. I love the way roz expresses it. It’s so hard to ‘get it’ if you try. If you don’t try, it’s so easy to forget what it is you were trying for, or even to realise that you’ve forgotten. Still with me? It’s a bit like staring at one of those pictures that’s got two totally different images in one. A white vase on a black background, or two black faces looking at each other on a white background. Or the old crone and the young woman in a feathured hat. Know the ones? Sometimes you can stare and stare at the picture, but you just can’t see the other image even though you know it’s there. So, for me, meditation techniques are the equivalent of staring at the picture. There comes a point when your mind relaxes, you stop trying to see and the switch in perception occurs. But still you can’t know exactly when or how it happened. It just did. But that’s not very satisfactory, because when you put the picture down (stop the meditation practice) the experience is over. There’s no realisation attached to it. It was just a trick.
The lady who was brave enough to announce that she just wasn’t getting it was probably the only one who actually did. She just didn’t realise it. The problem I’ve had for the past 30 years is that nobody would tell me what it was that I was trying to find. They just said ‘practice more’. so I did, and nothing changed. When someone finally came along and pointed to it and said ‘that’s what you’ve been looking for’, I was able to recognise it. It was here all the time! Thanks Steven!
What is the difference between the path of purification and the path of recognition?
The Purification practices are based on the idea that you need to change something about yourself — your “energy”, your chakras, your thoughts (what kind you have, whether you have them or not, whether you’re focussed or not, etc.) — and that once you have “fixed” that problem, then you’ll finally get to the goal. It takes continued application and effort, there are (ostensibly) stages along the way that show you if you’re getting closer to the goal (though, usually, the first stage is REALLY far away). The practices typically *sound* simple (e.g. watch your breath without interruption), but prove to be more than challenging, and it usually takes quite a bit of time to “get into the groove” of them.
The Path of Recognition practices are not simple-sounding-but-hard. Instead of asking you to change your attention or perception, they give you pointers which direct your attention some interesting phenomenon: actual processes of attention and/or perception. That is, they point out aspects of the way we experience the world that are often overlooked, not noticed, habituated to, or that happen quickly enough that we usually miss them. It just so happens that noticing these ways we perceive (or don’t perceive, as the case may be), shifts our experience of subject/object to one that is open, spacious, focused-without-effort, relaxed, et cetera…. but it does so in just a few moments, and can be done anywhere, any time.
I like to say that the Recognition practices are like balancing a bike. Learning to balance is an internal process. It’s like you know what balance feels like, but you just hadn’t applied it to bikes yet. Once you know how to balance, though, you can easily hop on a bike, find that balanced feeling inside you, and start riding. The Recognition practices are like finding that meditative (balanced) place that’s already inside of you… and once you know how to find/feel it, you can tap into it whenever you like.
That help?