Delving into the Essence of Meditation: Choosing the Right Practice

Deep Dive Series of How to Meditate by Pema Chodron (Part 2 of 5)

May 24, 2024

Reading Time: 7 mins. If you’d like to listen to this edition on the go, you have the voiceover right above this note.

Meditation As Path of Awakening

A decade ago, my psychologist offered me mindfulness exercises to help me navigate my moods. I tried them a couple of times, and they were a disaster.

In hindsight, after practising for a while, I now know that those practices of staying in the moment with senses like sound would not have been helpful for my emotional state.

As I read, inquire, study, contemplate, and practice meditation, I am beginning to see why it is important to understand why we want to cultivate a meditation practice and what meditation practices may suit us.

Pema also goes on to say,

Extensive research shows the benefits of mindfulness: reduced stress, increased resilience, neuroplasticity of the brain, increased ability to concentrate, pain management, better sleep, reduced anxiety, and overall better physical, mental, and emotional health. Mindfulness is widely taught in workplaces to reduce stress and improve performance.

However, these were never the goals around which the meditation practices in the Buddhist lineages were designed. The goal was and continues to be enlightenment.

Meditation is taught in the Buddhist lineages as the path of awakening or enlightenment. All meditation practices based on Buddha’s teachings work towards this goal. This is important for us to understand, especially now, as “mindfulness” is taught in a “secular” or “scientific” context.

Even Buddhist monks and nuns who teach mindfulness secularly or scientifically have a strong basis and motivation for enlightenment and liberation, which is why they continue to be ordained monks or nuns.

They may not teach that explicitly to the general public who are learning meditation in a “secular” context. Still, that strong desire is cultivated and becomes the blazing fire which feeds their meditation practice.

Whatever benefits we may attain from meditation or mindfulness practice in the Buddhist lineages are fringe or side-products, not the practice’s primary goal.

Be Clear About What You Want From Your Meditation Practice

When we decide to cultivate a regular meditation practice, we need to be clear about why we meditate and whether the practice we pick is intentionally designed to give us those benefits.

If I am having a hard time relaxing and am constantly wired in anxiety, which for a long time I was, then a sitting meditation, as taught by Pema and other Buddhist teachers, may not work for me in alleviating my anxiety in the short term.

If I have a knife poked into my stomach, I need emergency surgery, not Ayurveda or acupuncture treatment for the long term. I need treatment now with anaesthesia, painkillers, antibiotics and a trauma surgeon to stitch me up.

Understanding what we want from our lives at this point in time can help us determine whether meditation offers those benefits and what different practices we can choose to achieve those benefits.

From my experimentation and study, I have concluded that there are a few reasons why we want to meditate. There could be many more, and here are some pointers to help you start thinking about why you want to cultivate or keep a meditation practice going.

1. When we want to relax or rest

2. When we want to fall asleep (sleep and rest are two different things, but sleep need not involve rest, and rest need not involve sleep)

3. When we want to manage distress emotional state - panic, anxiety, anger

4. When we want to alter our states of consciousness

5. When we want to set an intention

6. When we want to manifest something externally

7. When we want to experience special meditative states (the jhanas, the kundalini opening, microcosmic orbit of chi)

8. When we want to cultivate expansive qualities like equanimity, compassion, loving-kindness or sympathetic joy

9. When we want to open our hearts to the suffering of other people

10. When we want to see clearly what is going on with ourselves and understand our habitual patterns

11. When we want to develop our powers of focus or concentration

12. When we want freedom, enlightenment and awakening

My practice will need to be designed based on why I am choosing the path of meditation.

Pick A Practice That Works For Your Needs

For a few years, I struggled with a chronic sleep disorder. I was finding it very hard to sleep through the night, and my short periods of sleep would be interrupted by seizures, panic attacks and nightmares.

As a last resort, when doctors couldn’t find a way to fix this for me, I explored Yoga Nidra as a way of falling asleep. Yoga Nidra helped me relax my body during sleep time, but it was not enough for me to fall asleep. I then found out that a guided hypnosis script was much more helpful for me to fall asleep.

At that time, if I were to watch my breath or be in touch with any of my five senses (all of which are traditional mindfulness practices), it wouldn’t have helped me at all. During panic attacks, I have used guided SOS breathing techniques to calm me down, and at that point, trying to find my breath would have been futile.

The practice taught by Pema Chodron in this book is about learning to be in the present moment and facing life with a more settled and open-hearted space. This practice is not about reducing stress, altering consciousness, or manifesting. It is about awakening.

Our meditation practice will flex and change depending on where we are in our lives, how settled we are, and what our needs are. It is important to be aware of our needs and design our practice accordingly.

There is no right or wrong way to practice. If you intend to have meditation as an integral part of your life, then being flexible is essential.

If you go into the Insight Timer app, there are more than 200,000 free guided meditations, but the intent for each one is very specific. For a few years now, I have focused on being more awake to my life, so I have a practice centered around Shamata (calm abiding), and I use breath as an anchor in my meditation practice.

I also use another form of meditation to deepen my ability to connect with my intuition, which takes a very different form. I will also start using Tonglen, Metta, and other practices while working on heart-opening practices.

What are your needs in the present season of your life? Does your meditation practice accommodate your needs? If not, what would you like to change?

If you have a specific intention and would like practice suggestions, please don’t hesitate to write to me. I’d be happy to offer them.

In the next edition, we will explore the universal attitudes we can bring into our meditation, irrespective of the type of practice.

We conclude this edition with our tiny story of the week from the Modern Love Series.

P.S. I am quickly running out of stories! Send me one of your favourites, and I’d love to feature them in the newsletter.

Quietly Simmering

I was having a tough time. Big, capitalized, one-syllable problems: Work. Life. Stress.

A rainy Tuesday night, my buddy texts: “Hey dude, u home?” An hour later he presses a Tupperware box into my hand. Homemade pasta Bolognese.

He taught me the secret to a good ragù is time. Simmer that stuff for three hours if you can. The longer the better. Let the pot bubble away, quietly determined, always there in the background.

We’ve been friends for 22 years and would never dream of saying “I love you, man.” We don’t need to. We just keep the pot bubbling. — Daniel Seifert, published in NY Times, Tiny Modern Love Stories