I often say, paraphrasing my own teacher, that the purpose of Buddhist meditation is not to be calm, but to be real. Being real doesn’t exclude being calm, if that is what is happening. But being real is not some particular state of mind; it is the mind in accord with the actuality of things—“real thinking”, as Suzuki Roshi would say.
I think the notion that we are “supposed” to be calm is a common misunderstanding, and a cause for discouragement, among meditators. “I’ve been meditating for X years, and I still can’t calm my mind!” This may be a particular problem for those of us who are older, because we know, in the way the young can’t, that “the things that happened to happen” can’t ever un-happen. Our irrevocable losses pile up, year after year. It is hard to be calm in the face of those kinds of losses.
Actually, there are three stages, or levels, to mindful awareness. In the first level, we become aware of how busy and distracted our mind is. In the second level, through attention and concentration we are able to calm our mind and actually enjoy that calm as a fruit of meditation. In the third level, the distraction of the third level seems to come back, but with even more force. The disturbances of the third level are actually more real, and more difficult to face because they are so deeply true.
However, there is actually a deep calm in the foundation stones of the third level, one that we may not realize if we just look at the superficial activity of our thinking. Actually, the disturbance we experience as we face our deep and universal problems (like growing old and losing what we love) is only there because of deep acceptance and the power of our meditation effort. The deep acceptance invites those deep problems in, and holds and contains them. It gives us the strength to face them.
It is like the difference between the misbehavior of a stranger, and the misbehavior of our child. The misbehavior of a stranger is like the first level. It irrirates us: Why are they like that? The misbehavior of our child is like the third level. At first it seems to be even more disturbing. “I raised you and loved you and still you are like that!” But actually, our attitude is held and contained by our love. Whatever our children do, we will never abandon them.
According to my teacher, deep meditation practice evolves from the third level. So here’s to being real! (Imaginary cup raised in tribute).
Thanks for this. The poet Mary Oliver has said “to live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones, knowing your own life depends on it, and when the time comes, to let it go, to let it go.”
In some way, it seems that her idea of letting go may be another image of deep acceptance? Can holding and containing be thought of, perhaps, as letting go of what we need those mortal things to be, and deeply accepting life as it is offered to us?
Great post! I had similar thoughts today while sitting. Thank you for sharing.
Dear Lou -
Thank you for this. I’ve been feeling like I’d slipped backward these last months, which were a “perfect storm” of illness, limitation, and loss. Confused mind, great unwillingness to meditate for the first time. I’ve been practicing for 12 years, but there are no Zen teachers here in Columbus, Ohio.
“Healing Lazarus” was a little like having a teacher here. It helped me through the grief that rose after the death of my beloved cat last month. I came to realize that my grief, and frequent breaking into tears, was also about the gradual loss of my health. I was watching my kidney functions fall and treatments not work. I have to accept that nothing, including transplant (if I get one) will restore me to the health I once had. This is similar to where you left us at the end of the book – not cured. Not over it. Not fixable. Gosh, I see so many women in the generation above me insist they have it all under control, that they are not old. I needed another voice that faced the realities of the “illnesses” of aging.
In “Lazarus” you expose all that happened to your body and mind, and are so willing to be vulnerable. That was also meaningful to me. The best support I’ve had during these months has come when I broke down and revealed what I was going through on my blog. Neighbors and friends who read it have come forward for me as if they were all Indra’s net, but underneath me, a resilient safety net. That’s a little piece of dharma I have learned through this, how much every thoughtful action means when you are sick and scared.
Jeanne
It’s a great day to celebrate all our teachers, including our children (who might be celebrating us today!).
Aitken Roshi wrote that the point of Zen practice is not purity, but clarity. This is an interesting echo of your point about calm and real.
Inherent in “purity” – it seems to me – is the idea that we lack something. But clarity simply means that we can see how we actually are – to be real!
Is this similar to what Achaan Chah says about using the calm to examine the nature of the mind and body? Then he goes on to explain the two levels of examination. One is similar to discursive thought, the other one is the silent, inner concentrated listening. This is the voice I’m trying to listen to. Would this be similar to being real?
Happy Father’s Day to all! I dreamed of my dad last night. And I woke up thinking of my late husband.
Lewis, I’m not sure I quite understand what you meant by:
In the third level, the distraction of the third [is that a typo for "first?] level seems to come back, but with even more force. The disturbances of the third level are actually more real, and more difficult to face because they are so deeply true.”
When I consider how my (37-year-old) son was when he was suffering from clinical depression last year, I can’t say that somehow the disturbances that come in old age are more acute than those of the young. Thirty-seven is already old enough to remember past hurts and feel them all over again, more deeply, reinforced and revived in present ones. But the 37-month-old child also has memories of loneliness, fear of abandonment, hunger, and pain. Somehow, at any age, we must step out of this cycle if we are to avoid suffering again and again. This is where calm must come in: we can find the point of calm, for example, in our original true nature, and practice continually returning to it and abiding in it, as in meditation. Speaking for myself, this discovery of how to find that reliable point of calm, only comes at an older age because I did not know Buddhist teachings until I was older. Before that, I used a variety of calming techniques, always temporary of course, and always leading to new cravings, starting with the thumb and going on to more adult tricks and devices: avoiding what was unpleasant and seeking out pleasurable sensations.
I also came to Buddhist practice late. I had read here and there, had some general knowledge but I only came to the deeper practice, and my teacher, when I was 61. Prior to that my idea of meditation was listening to guided meditation tapes, I was quite unable to simply sit with myself. I found calm through the expedient path of alcohol until I was 44. When I got sober, I turned to reading novels, television, and work. I still enjoy reading but prefer non-fiction, I rarely watch TV. Work is still present but I no longer obsess over it, I am learning to be a “human-being,” not a “human-doing.” Meditation is a great help because sitting teaches me to be, just be where I am with whatever is happening. Love & Peace – Ajna
Lew,
This is a wonderful interview in The New York Times relative to many of the things we have been discussing.
The New Old Age – Caring and Coping
June 22, 2009, 11:06 am
6 Reasons to Grow Old
By Paula Span
“There’s a shady side and a sunny side,” said Joshua O. Haberman, rabbi emeritus of Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C. He was talking about old age.
To his own surprise, he recently turned 90, an event the congregation he has helped lead for 40 years celebrated with a dinner, music, prayers and thoughtful observations from the honoree (PDF).
Not every 90-year-old enjoys the good health and vigor of the rabbi, who still teaches and writes and agreed to fit in a phone interview after his half-hour of daily morning calisthenics. (“I jump around, but I’m not a fanatic.”) But it’s good to remember, with more than 1.5 million Americans having passed this once rare milestone, that extreme longevity has its compensations. Rabbi Haberman cites six.
Tranquility tops his list. “You have achieved in old age what you have wanted to, if you are fortunate,” he said. The important battles have been waged, the decisions made. “You no longer have to do the pushing, the striving, the struggle.”
Next, the cooling of passion. “You don’t rush to quick action,” Rabbi Haberman explained. “You’re more likely to stop and think.” These days he’s hardly indifferent to the world’s problems, he added, but he’s less inclined to think he can solve them, or that they’re soluble at all.
Number three: He’s learned “the art of submission.” Americans are activists by nature, but “more happens to us than we cause to happen,” he has found. “You have to accept the unalterable.”
Moreover, the rabbi confessed, he’s increasingly apt to consider the possibility he’s wrong, a gift of old age (fourth on the list) he labeled “liberation from the compulsion to set everyone else straight.” He has loosened up, he told me, since his more dogmatic youth.
Once he fiercely opposed young people living together outside marriage, for instance. He still opposes it but less vehemently, especially since several of his own children cohabited before they wed. “Conditions in the world have changed; women are economically independent,” he explained. “Singlehood for women is different than a century ago.” I could practically hear him shrugging on his end of the phone line.
The fifth benefit of growing old, “one of the most important marks of maturity,” is gratitude. “I’m more conscious of the little favors people do — the driver who stops and lets me cross the street, the newspaper man who brings my paper directly to the door,” Rabbi Haberman said. He feels more aware of humanity’s interconnectedness. “I am a zero by myself.”
Concluding the list: greater involvement with his family, including his wife of nearly 65 years, four children (one rabbi, two spouses of rabbis, one civilian), 15 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Yes, he does think about death, but he doesn’t pretend to understand it and he’s not afraid of it. “I believe in the eternity of existence,” he said. “We remain part of this universe.”
Each night before bed, he recites in Hebrew a passage from Psalm 31: “In God’s hand I entrust my spirit, when asleep and when awake/My body and spirit, God is with me, I shall not fear.”
“And I leave it at that,” the rabbi said.
Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families with Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions,” published this month by Grand Central Publishing.
Maura, to clarify: I meant (or my teacher meant) by the “third stage” the stage of meditation where after initial calm deeper and more universal aspects of suffering can come up. This is not age related.
John, thanks for sharing the wisdom of Rabbi Haberman!
Barry, thanks for your comment about Aitken Roshi. We forget that calm as a mind state is transient and conditioned. Clarity comes through transformation and tends to abide.
Thanks, Lewis for this new post. It took many years of raising children, working full time as a nurse taking care of Alzheimer’s patients (and their families) and just living to begin to realize what “being real” and “in the moment” can even begin to mean! I think that when we are younger, I for one, thought I was very smart, and while I practiced yoga and read many books on meditation and Buddhism – I really knew so very little. Now that I am 57 and actually do sitting practice (and I have quite abit more suffering that I have experienced, both through illness, joblessness, mentally ill family members, etc.) I am beginning to understand how to savor each moment, just as it is. It makes me feel very whole and full of gratitude just to be here (the aches, pains and daily problems to me are just a part of living in this life). Losses of all kinds are to be expected as we age. As one of my former patients said some time ago “It’s awful being so old!” I respond – “but I don’t like the alternative!”
Hi, again,
The NYT is turning out to be “Enlightenment Central” or trying to be. It ran an article on “Mindfulness” in March in which the comments were as interesting as the article, to me.
I copied this comment down from a reader named Jared:
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For me, “mindfulness” never really made any sense until I had the unexpected experience of falling into a vast, silent space in which I had the most amazing sense of clarity and restfulness. It was a profound experience that is hard to describe to other people. Like most things, we probably have to experience it first hand before it really makes sense.
The best way I can explain it is that it’s like coming deeply to rest where all of a sudden I felt like a physical structure had been stripped off my mind and I no longer felt small and limited. Life inherently made sense, and everything seemed tinged with this sparkly beauty and depth. It was a delicious feeling and I kept thinking to myself, over and over, “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe life can be like this. Why don’t we teach this to everyone?”
On one level, mindfulness, to me, is about paying attention to my thoughts and feelings, so I can become more conscious about what is going on with me and not simply just blindly react. This is never a bad thing, but I think it’s easy to miss something deeper about this practice.
On another level, mindfulness helps me fall inward into this subtle energy that underlies everything. It’s like this quiet buzz that is always there, underneath things. But I need to really quiet down before I can connect to this energy. In this place, I fully come to rest. It’s nothing fancy, it’s simply deep, deep rest. Mindfulness (or being aware of this presence in me) helps me get to this place where I feel the most myself, clear, grounded, and simple.
I’ve learned over the years that most people don’t want to find this place for many different and valid reasons. For me, I had to endure a lot of pain and suffering from my own mind before I was finally convinced that I wanted to find another way to live that made more sense. Perhaps that’s true for most of us.
– Jared
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Great, no?
metta from Mississippi
John
Perfect for me as I have been watching my mind go back and forth between now and everything else and wondering does it ever stop. In fact it has seemed more intense. But your words that this is our opening up to real thinking….. ah a light goes on.
Thank you,
Patty
The rebbe has it right! Mazel tov on his 90th, and “bis hundertzwanzig” as well. I’m particularly struck by his willingness to accept that he’s accomplished pretty much all he will accomplish, and that not all problems can be neatly solved. He reminds me of a priest I worked with in the civil rights movement so long ago: “We’re not called to be successful – we’re called to be faithful”. Amen!