How to choose a meditation practice
August 30, 2011 | 8 Comments
Some thoughts to consider:
1. Choose a practice that is rooted in a lineage that is older than, say, 2,500 years. Not saying you have to adopt another culture or act all eastern, just that it’s good to find something time-tested and honed. Thus you can have confidence–and confidence in the practice is always step one along the spiritual path.
2. Learn the technique from someone who has been trained to teach it. Teaching meditation is more than an explanation, it is a transmission. It is passed down from one who has learned from his teacher, who learned from her teacher, and so on. The longer the chain, in some sense, the greater the power of the practice. (This is only one reason that lineage is important.)
3. Don’t accept anything watered down or instant. There are many skillful and intelligent ways to present the practice simply and I’m not referring to any such attempts. Just that meditation takes effort and will at some point be uncomfortable and boring. Any practice that promises otherwise should be investigated especially carefully. Stay away from things that can be done in 5, 7, or 57 steps. It’s just not that simple.
4. Don’t make stuff up. This is one area of life where it’s really important to get the instruction and follow it very closely, exactly. At some point in your practice maybe you’ll figure out some personal tweaks to the technique. But hold all tweaks for months, years, and lifetimes. The thing with practices that are rooted and long-lasting is that they are soaked in wisdom. They’ve seen all the tricks we do to avoid actually looking at our own lives. Thus, no detail is casual. It’s all there for a reason. Respect and love the technique and it will respect and love you back.
5. At the same time, whatever practice you do, it will only come to life when you make it very, very personal. There are wonderful guides who can help you enter the practice and maybe at some point you will even find a Teacher. In any case, at every step, you are on your own and charged with bringing what you have learned into your own life. You have got to figure it out on your own. Don’t take anyone’s word for anything. Trust, verify. Trust, verify. Repeat. Your experience IS the path; there is no other path. So stick with practices that encourage deep inward looking and personal responsibility.
6. Avoid practices that suggest that the point is bliss. Or transcendence. After all, we want to be right here. No one even knows what bliss is, anyway. I don’t. All I know is that it’s something other than feeling super happy and unaffected. (When asked what bliss felt like, Tibetan meditation master Choygam Trungpa said, “To you, it would probably feel like pain.”) Practice makes you more human, not less. This may not make you all peaced-out, but it will do something way better and, let’s face it, more practical: It will make you more authentic. Practice introduces you to the brilliant, confused, grumpy, joyful, and deeply tender person that you already are and opens door after door for this amazing being to enter the phenomenal world–for her benefit, yes, but also for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Of course, my opinion is that my lineage of Shambhala Buddhism fits all these parameters. I can also heartily recommend the practices associated with other schools of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Zen and Vipassana. But whatever you choose should obviously do more than fit a list of qualifications. We’re talking about your spiritual path, here! Heart connection with a lineage, teacher, or community trumps everything on this list.
So definitely try things out. However, at some point it is important to choose one path (or no path–this is best for some folks) and stay with that way.
Visit your local Shambhala Center. Sit Zazen. Go on a silent Vipassana retreat. Your life will thank you profusely.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Please post below!
categorized in: meditation
8 Comments
Hello Susan. My name is Luiza and I live in Brazil. I come to your blog everyday to look for some inspiration. I´ve been through a difficult break up in the beggining of the year, and I´m not 100% ok until now. I watched most your videos but I still didn´t start to meditate, it seems like I´m never ready or that I should read more before starting practicing. I´m in the middle of a transition, I´m moving from one company to another, and beside I consider myself a very indisciplined person, I´m feeling lost, afraid (of the new responsabilities), and let´s say: lazy. I think I know that I have to do that is start anywhere and just move, but I´m having dificulties about it. I´m also thinking about my feelings and the pain of being left. I feel that I´m a mess. Could you recommend me something to read? I already order your book from Amazon, but it takes a long time to get here. Thank you for your great disposal, your courage and your love (that we can clearly see) in what you´re doing. You´re special. 🙂 Luiza
Hello Luiza,
I too read Susan’s posting as a way for be to begin my day. I know that you were asking Susan for a recomendation, however, could not resist suggesting two that have been very helpful for me in the past. They are both by Pema Chodron and one is, “The Places That Scare You” and “Start Where You Are.” I hope this is helpful.
Hi Luiza. I’m sorry you’re feeling lost. The pain you’re experiencing is so difficult to work with. It’s great that you’re looking for spiritual support. Namita’s book suggestions are really, really great. I also recommend “Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior” by Chogyam Trungpa.
Please keep me posted.
Sending love, Susan
Dear Susan-
Thank you for this post (for all of them, actually- I feel very heartened when I read/watch what you offer). I have a couple of questions about this content, questions I sit with but haven’t really found a good answer for. I would really appreciate any guidance you have.
In point number 2, you say that learning from someone qualified to teach is very helpful (necessary, even). My first question is: where does one go to find a qualified teacher? I have yet to find someplace where teachers are trained and then offer up their services (maybe I’m looking in the wrong place…). Are books okay substitutes? I have found them useful, but not very helpful when I have an actual question…it’s tough to get the book to answer, you know?
Next question: In point 5 you write “…maybe at some point you will even find a Teacher.” What is the difference between someone from whom you learn the lineage and practice and a (capital T) Teacher? And if I have to wait to find a Teacher, what do I do with my questions in the mean time? (I recognize that sitting with them is probably helpful…but when I have a real, honest-to-goodness question, then what?)
I’m new-ish to all this, and often feel frustrated that I don’t have a teacher who can offer the guidance and support one would expect from that role.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to your reply.
-Joanna
Joanna, I so appreciate your questions. The Open Heart Project was created for you and for anyone who may not find it easy to connect with a dharma center or meditation teacher.
RE question #1: If you live in a medium or large town, it’s possible there is a Shambhala Center near you. You can check here. You can also go to the websites of lineages that may interest you and email or call them for their suggestions about getting meditation instruction remotely. As a participant in The Open Heart Project, you are already getting instruction from a trained teacher (me!), although I know this is definitely not the same as meeting with someone face to face. In the meantime, however, I hope you’ll continue to use this instruction and send me your questions via blog comments or directly, via email. You are warmly invited to do so.
RE question #2: There are meditation teachers (like me) and then there are master teachers or gurus or whatever you might call the person to whom you would entrust your spiritual life. To find such a Teacher, it’s good to go study with them directly by enrolling in their workshops or going to hear them speak. You could start by reading their books and seeing if any of them speak to you on a particularly deep level. In the meantime, as you ask, you could talk to your meditation teacher about current questions (for now, that’s me!)
Sitting with your questions is a great idea, but it’s also great to have someone to talk to. Reading is also great, as is enrolling in online classes. If the Shambhala lineage speaks to you, please do investigate their online offerings. They are many chances to take workshops with truly wonderful teachers and you can find the listings here. For example, “Meditation in Everyday Life” (beginning on October 2) would be a good choice and the teacher, Michael Greenleaf, is awesome. Really smart and clear and also funny.
I hope this is useful.
Keep me posted.
Susan-
I greatly appreciate all that you post here. But I have a question about the insistence upon lineage. This may simply have to do with my own particular psychological/spiritual idiosyncrasies, but I can’t imagine I’m entirely alone in having such feelings.
I find myself greatly resisting the idea that lineage is central and crucial to a meditation practice. I grew up Jewish (Conservative) and never felt at home in a religious path that was so circumscribed, prescriptive, and relatively intolerant of diversity, both internal and external. As an adult I feel no attachment to any organized religion, even as I feel a deep attachment to spiritual matters. To me, thoughts and beliefs and practices that are connected to ancient teachers do not guarantee truth or wisdom, at all. I’ve seen too many people attach themselves to ancient beliefs, born in an entirely different day and age, that stifle rather than inspire.
I understand I am rather over-sensitive to the prescriptive bearing of most organized religion, but I find this to be a troubling stumbling block whenever I have encountered the idea that I cannot take some informed, straightforward meditation instruction– from you, for instance– and develop it, over time, within my own inner realm.
If you have the chance to respond, I’d be most interested in your thoughts on the matter.
Jeremy
Jeremy, it is my pleasure to respond to this comment. Thank you very much for posting it.
First, please don’t hear me as “insisting” on lineage. I don’t mean to enforce this or any other view. As always, your own intelligence and intuition are the superior guides and I only mean to make suggestions.
When I talk about lineage, what I mean to say is that it can be helpful to practice with a connection to some tradition or other–but I don’t mean only traditional traditions, not by any means. For example, you could consider yourself a part of the lineage of people who eschew lineages. Or the lineage of solitary travelers. Of untethered thinkers. Of those who seek the essence without the trappings. There may be specific individuals who exemplify this kind of behavior and they may or may not be connected directly to you or to each other. Nonetheless, they provide a sense of lineage.
There are people we admire and attitudes we aspire to. That’s is basically what I mean by lineage. For me, I admire and feel the commonality of writers such as Bob Dylan, Emily Dickinson, and Rainer Maria Rilke. To me, they are true artists and independent thinkers and I aspire to emulate them in my own way. This lineage has no name, nor does it need one, but I hold these three beings in special esteem and feel tremendous respect for them.
Conversely, as a Buddhist, because of commitments I’ve made that stem from a true (and impossible to have predicted) heart connection, I feel a part of the lineage that stretches from Padmasambhava to Chogyam Trungpa to Sakyong Mipham. This is a very traditional line, and I feel deeply connected to it.
The benefit in feeling a connection to lineage, whether traditional or not, is that there are wisdom holders (not having anything to do with ritual or belief systems) whose energy and spirit can inspire and support you as you walk your path. They can’t provide a crutch or absolve you of any responsibility. But feeling a part of something bigger than yourself (even if it’s a group of people who do not believe in any such thing) may help in those moments when our own self-generated inspiration may fail. Cultivating such a connection in good times (when there is plenty of inspiration, say) means that in those lean times when you feel lost, it will be there.
Ultimately though, if the idea of lineage is anathema, you should totally trust that and feel absolutely free and good about excluding this aspect from your practice. Your practice is yours.
Hope this clarifies and I’d love to hear your thoughts. All best, Susan
Susan-
Thanks so much for the thoughtful and helpful reply. I can definitely relate to the idea of feeling part of something bigger than myself– and kind of enjoy the idea of a lineage of people who eschew lineages. 🙂 There is actually a good name for that– a transcendentalist, as this is what the original Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau, et al) believed — in the authority of the Self, but guided by wisdom from beyond-the-Self. Or something like that. As much as any historical group I have learned about, they’re the ones I feel connected to, lineage-wise, although of course it’s kind of a paradoxical lineage because they themselves, yes, eschewed lineages.
My issue has always been with prescriptive “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” As such it’s not surprising that I do, despite my hesitancy about lineages, find much of resonance in the Buddhist path. The Buddha himself is famous for saying “Find out for yourself what is truth, what is real.”
In any case, thank you again for your words, which were both clarifying and inspiring. I feel one long-time stumbling block suddenly clearing out of the way.
Jeremy