Someone on an internet discussion forum asked about the best path. I replied with something like this:
In my opinion the purpose of meditation is not to achieve a breakthrough, it is to prepare the mind for investigating the origin of dukkha and the cessation of dukkha in daily life. Understanding the origin and cessation of dukkha in your own mind is what causes change.
- Relax - Deactivate the sympathetic nervous system. Activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
- Stay Lucid - Observe thoughts and emotions without getting carried away by them. Be in the moment. Engage your mind in something that does not involve letting your mind wander or problem solving (See Hear Feel Deactivate the default mode network in the brain.). Do not suppress thoughts and emotions, let them come and go, notice the feelings in your body that may accompany them. In this way you will learn how dukkha arises and ceases.
- Surrender - Relax and stop resisting reality, stop mentally fighting against the way things really are, against things you don't like. This doesn't mean you ignore problems, it means you work for solutions in a compassionate rational way rather than letting unpleasant emotions cloud your judgement.
Do this as a formal practice but also develop the habit of doing this in daily life when possible. When you practice in daily life you train your mind to be awakened (not to attain awakening). Practicing in daily life does not mean you don't engage your mind in other things. You can allocate time to solve problems, think about your emotions, plan for the future etc. these activities are not "bad", but you don't have to let them take over your mind.
How does this produce awakening?
As you learn how dukkha arises and ceases, you will become better at not producing it and letting go of it if you do produce it. If meditation elevates your mood, it makes you more open to accepting that dukkha is produced by the mind and not by circumstances or events.
Awakening = The process of letting go of attachments and aversions (including attachments to self, attachments to awakening, and attachments to pleasant feelings produced by meditation) = Ending dukkha. Awakening is not something that arises instantaneously in a perfected state. It is something that develops over a lifetime.
Attachments and aversions express themselves as unpleasant emotions such as disliking and craving.
When you are relaxed, you are not experiencing any unpleasant emotion ie. you are not experiencing dukkha. You can develop the ability to relax as a skill that you can become better at with practice. This is equivalent to learning to let go. Upekkha, letting go or equanimity, is the seventh of the seven factors of awakening.
One reason it is important not to suppress thoughts and emotions during meditation is because many attachments and aversions exist in the mind as faint mental impressions that have large effects on our emotions and actions. In order to let go of them you must be aware of them. Surrender. Observe thoughts and emotions as they arise but also don't let them take over your mind. Stay lucid. When your mind is not wandering, it is not getting carried away by attachments and aversions and not producing dukkha. Dukkha requires some type of cognition to arise in the mind.
(This does not apply to emotions due to purely organic causes such as some types of anxiety and depression but it could apply to a person's attitudes toward having to live with anxiety and depression.)
Copyright © 2021 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.
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