Meditation isn’t one thing. It is many things, because there are many ways to meditate, and it’s impossible to say that any is the best. Or worst. It just depends on what someone feels works for them.
Which is no different than eating ice cream. There’s no best flavor. Some people prefer vanilla. Others prefer chocolate. Still others prefer a different flavor. Each to their own.
For many years, decades really, I practiced a form of meditation based on a mantra and the goal of withdrawing one’s attention from the outside world and focusing it “within.” I put that word in quotation marks as a reflection of the fact that the outside world also is within — because everything about the world is known only through the consciousness that manifests within our brain.
Regardless, for many years I dutifully repeated my mantra in closed-eyes meditation. I believed that this was the highest and best way to meditate. Now I see things much differently.
I’ve written quite a few posts about how mindfulness has become my meditation. And I’ve tried to describe what works best for me with mindfulness. This is another attempt, stimulated by some of the meditation content on Sam Harris’s Waking Up app.
Recently I started to listen again to the introduction to meditation by Harris on his app. You know, the beginner’s mind thing, since I’ve meditated virtually every day since 1970. That’s 56 freaking years! As I said in an email to a friend a few days ago:
Life is difficult. Life is painful. Life also is easy and joyous. I go through so many ups and downs, as I’m sure you do also. I used to believe that there was some trick, some method, some form of meditation or mental control, that would enable me to flow through life pleasantly and effortlessly. Hasn’t happened. I doubt it ever will. Now the best I hope for is simply doing the best I can in any given situation.
I like how Harris says that mindfulness isn’t so much about concentrating the mind on something specific, like the breath, but on being open to whatever is present within awareness. Sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, emotions, whatever. This means that mindfulness meditation can be practiced anywhere, at any time, by anybody.
You can be sitting cross-legged on a cushion in a quiet dark room. You can be walking by a noisy construction project in the middle of a busy city. You can be watching television, or reading a book, or talking with someone.
Open awareness. That’s what I feel is the foundation of mindfulness.
Way back when, in the early years of this blog, which I started in 2004, I recall a comment from “Tucson” that has stuck with me, even though all I remember is the general tenor of it. I believe he said that we should meditate as if we’re walking at night in a wilderness where dangers abound: wild animals, poisonous snakes, steep cliffs.
Unless we’re aware of everything happening around us — every sound, sight, sensation — we won’t be able to deal with whatever situation that arises. I like to adjust Tucson’s walk on the wild side with a positive possibility: that in addition to dangers lurking in the darkness, there are delights also.
We don’t want to miss those either. Which could happen if we’re narrowly focused on a thought within our mind, or the boulders just ahead. Awareness that is as open as possible to the particulars of our present situation — that’s the key to recognizing both dangers and delights.
For an overview of what Harris says about meditation on his Waking Up app, check out my 2022 post, “Sam Harris and I make up. All is good between us now.”
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Hi Brian,
Nice post.
Just sharing my personal experience with Sant Mat meditation technique here.
As I seem to practice the techniques of Simran and Bhajan, I have noticed an increase in my experiences of “open awareness” or awareness of the present moment in daily life situations (outside of practicing the technique), directly as a consequence of my “experimentation” with Surat Shabd Yoga.
These moments do come about spontaneously while I go about my day or at any given situation.
Yes, although they do occur while I’m not conciously practicing the techniques of Simran and Bhajan.
I feel the experiences of such moments have occurred as a direct effect of the formal practices of Simran and Bhajan, that I continue to experiment with. In fact, they often occur while I’m involved in Sewa. No thought, just the simple act of chopping wood and all of that.
My feeling is, the simple act of being receptive and open during Bhajan, helps to facilitate and enhance these moments during daily life situations. The fact of being open, alert and attentive. There is pure receptivity. Total listening 🎧
I thought meditation was to get us used to dying so when it actually happened for real we’d have a sense . But now under the new unimproved TM rssb is just saying it’s a great way to relax. Maybe it is for an uptight businessman but for an artist your attitude is probably better . I guess when you’re surrounded by enemies on all sides you don’t want to think about death anymore you just want to relax. What ever Gurinder Singh Dhillon has, I don’t want. He can keep it. How’s that for mindful awareness. Life goes on within you and without you.
Enjoyed your photos from ‘Mindfulness Has Become My Meditation ’ (June 11 2018) and the thoughts expressed in ‘Mindfulness Made Simple …’ (Nov 17 2022).
I would say that mindfulness is easy – although it is rendered difficult, if not impossible, due to our ‘quite natural’ habit of carrying around a headful of thoughts, and projecting conceptual overlays that keep us dwelling on thoughts that conjure up past and future scenarios – effectively obscuring the present moment.
Meditation seems to have evolved the image of one sitting in some posture and watching thoughts and feelings as they arise; fair enough (and helpful for mental health issues), though it seems to me that meditation is quite a natural happening that accompanies us every moment in every situation.
In fact, it can be said that meditation (just being naturally aware) is occurring every moment of every day and as I mentioned, always being overlaid by thought – and perhaps, just noticing the ever-arising thoughts is meditation.
I like the term ‘being awake’ instead of living life as a dream – a dream being comprised of past experiences, of thoughts – and waking up is seeing what is just a stream of thoughts and concepts posing as reality.
The assumed origins of meditation practice stem from the Sanskrit word dhyana, which is Chan in China and Zen in Japan. But I guess that in one way or another, various cultures have practiced some form of formal meditation.
I have a strong preference for the Chan/Zen approach (devoid of cultural beliefs), which is said to be direct experiential insight into the nature of existence; which, of course, is insight into ourselves in understanding who/what we are as biological organisms.
Ronald wonders if meditation is to get us used to dying so when it actually happened for real, we’d have a sense. No doubt he’s joking, but as death is the final part following birth and living, one could say that in living with awareness of the actual moment, pains and pleasures, joys and sorrows are all experienced as being part of life, part of being human primates. I would say that where meditation is undertaken in the hope of avoiding the naturalness of being a living organism, or in the desire to achieve some projected utopia, then such would be attempting to negate the actualities of life.
No I wasn’t joking. Rssb taught that and here’s an example . I’m not promoting anything except knowledge. This is what I’m talking about.
https://rssb.org/audio-die.html
This is Anon.
I can confirm the same thing. RSSB teaches this idea.
Ronald,
That is the ideal I suppose. We must put our effort into knowing the death experience ultimately or at least coming close to it.
As some dude in the bible has said, “I die daily” (it wasn’t Christ, as someone once corrected me. It might have been Paul (?))
Apparently, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has also said something similar, “I die 8 times a day”, but this is what I’ve heard.
This talk of death reminds me of the Zen story where a Zen master was asked what happens after death? I may be a Zen master he replied, but I’m not a dead one.
Zen sensibly emphasises direct experience of the living moment, rather than speculation about abstract future states.
Yes, personally, I am speculating about these states when I write about putting in the effort of experiencing death.
That said, many traditions say these are realistic and achievable states. Take for example, Tibetan Buddhism and their practices of achieving and going through the Bardo states.
And even ejection of consciousness through the crown of the head!
How cool is that…
True zen is to accept things as they are. Not as they appear to be.
Observation is a form of attention, and attention is a form of concentration.
These are not different things. They are degrees of things.
Yes dying while living is a real thing, withdrawing consciousness from the senses, from the body is a real thing. It is only unique in degree, because it encompasses the lesser degrees of observation.
The soul is just an observer.
“Followers of the Way, don’t acknowledge this illusory companion, your body-sooner or later it will return to impermanence. What is it you ask in this world that you think will bring emancipation? You hunt for a mouthful to eat and while away time patching your robe. You should search for a good teacher! Don’t just drift along pursuing comfort. Value every second. Each successive moment-thought passes very quickly away. The grosser part of you is at the mercy of earth, water, fire, and wind; the subtle part of you is at the mercy of birth, death, being, decay, and death. Followers of the Way, you must right now apprehend the state in which the four elements are formless, so that you may avoid being buffeted around by circumstances. ”
The Record of Linji (866 CE Linji Lu (founder of the Rinzai school of Zen)
What is that state where we must reach now to see the formless?
Many different practices, although different from one another, have technical in common that they aim to create a mental rotation …external as the whirling dervish.
One can compare it with an whirlpool in water.
Once it is created it has the power to suck something in to the bottom.
That … that is what happens if these forms of meditation are working …they such the energy in and up …that can be felt as a bodily sensation. Something that can be unpleasant and even painful if the energy has to pass through the joints and in particular the throat.
This is the process that occurs when people die.
When the process is finished all awareness of a body is gone …etc. etc.
From Gemini
“When Socrates discusses the soul “withdrawing” from bodily sensations and thoughts (in Plato’s dialogue, the Phaedo) he uses the ancient Greek concept of Katheris (purification or gathering the soul into itself). Historically, he was describing the ultimate goal of philosophy: a literal “practice of dying” where the mind detaches from the unreliable physical world to contemplate unchanging truths. [1, 2, 3]
“Mapping Socrates’ philosophical language onto modern neuroscience reveals that his description of “withdrawal” aligns closely with the neurological mechanics of deep meditation.
“Socrates’ Phrasing (from Phaedo) and Modern Neuroscientific Equivalent
“Gathering the soul itself together from all parts of the body” | Deactivation of the Somatosensory Network. The brain stops actively mapping incoming sensory signals (tactile, audio, visual) to maintain an internal representation of the physical shell.
“Avoiding the body as much as possible” Thalamic Gating. The thalamus restricts the flow of environmental “traffic” sent up to the cerebral cortex, effectively starving the cognitive centers of external disruption.
“The soul exists by itself… independent of thought” | Deactivation of the Default Mode Network (DMN). Shutting down the mPFC and PCC hubs, which quietens narrative self-talk, past/future simulation, and personal identity.
“Attaining pure knowledge of the Forms”
“The State of “Criticality.” A hyper-alert, highly complex state of global brain connectivity where processing is flexible and unburdened by everyday mental filtration.
“What Socrates Was Describing Cognitively
” 1. Muting the “Narrative Self”
Socrates argued that the soul gets confused, dizzy, and dragged down when it relies on everyday thoughts and physical desires. In neuroscience, this “dizzy” mind is the overactive Default Mode Network (DMN)—the brain system responsible for ego, anxious daydreaming, and tracking your societal status.
“When long-term meditators enter deep states, this exact system dramatically shuts down. By stating the soul must transcend everyday “thoughts,” Socrates was describing a shift from narrative thinking (ego) to experiential being (raw awareness).
“2. Severing the “Rivets” of Pleasure and Pain
“In the Phaedo, Socrates metaphorically states that every experience of intense bodily pleasure or pain acts like a “rivet” that pins the soul to the body, forcing it to view reality entirely through a physical lens.
“Neuroscientifically, pain and pleasure activate the amygdala and the evaluative pathways of the cortex.
” When advanced meditators encounter a sensation (like intense pain), they don’t block the physical signal; instead, they alter the cognitive evaluation of it in the orbitofrontal cortex.
” They decouple the raw sensation from the emotional reaction.
“Socrates’ version of “detachment” perfectly mirrors this neural ability to experience input without letting it hook the mind’s reactivity.
” 3. Tuning into the “Invisible World”
“Socrates claimed that when the soul withdraws from the body, it enters an invisible, uniform, and divine realm of absolute truth.
” When external stimuli and internal narrative chatter drop away during meditation, the brain experiences a massive surge in high-amplitude Alpha and deep Theta brain waves.
” This radically alters spatial orientation and time perception. Deprived of external reference points, the brain stops feeling separate from the environment, resulting in a profound, unified sensation of interconnectedness—a subjective experience ancient philosophers interpreted as touching the divine or eternal.
Harris is another one who says he smokes weed.
“Open awareness,” lol.
The act of observing is an act of withdrawing.
You withdraw from you and merge with what you observe.
Other thoughts, other stimuli become less intrusive, in time they disappear.
It’s a muscle and you can get good at it.
Deep meditation is a form of observation, with significant changes in the brain that are very healthy.
One cannot meditate on the experience of death . One could meditate on the thought or idea of death but to know death is, well, to be dead – no heartbeat, no blood pumping around the body, no air coming in or out of the lungs and no brain function.
The only way to experience death is to be dead. But then, there is no one there to do the experiencing, no brain/body to register anything. And that’s a good natural thing. Everything that is born will die – it’s the way of life.
But of course, one could speculate and imagine – but that is not death.
Hi Ron E.
It depends on how one defines death.
If it is the severing of consciousness from the body, that does happen in cases of extreme deep meditation.
If you mean the death of the physical body, yes, that only happens once.
But it may well be, physically, that the experience is similar. Who knows?
The death of the connection of the consciousness to the body and even to all thoughts is a psychological death, a kind of trauma but a trauma of overwhelming love.
Nothing in this world is every the same.psychologically, we have died and are reborn, and the world and ourselves looks entirely different, holds much smaller value. Now we have awakened to a different world.
Physiologically there is evidence this is very real, as provided by gemini above.
And there is other evidence that this is extremely healthy for the brain. The cortex of long term meditators is about ten years younger than non-meditators.
This all makes the distinction of physical death vs psychological death trivial.
We can do nothing about the first, but each of us can make the second journey.
When you contemplate eternity, when a scientific mind contemplates the great arc of history, it places their experience into a larger context. Now their experience is seen and felt as part of a larger whole. That is much more than conceptual when a scientist lives that reality every day.
I don’t say it is practical. It isn’t for a practical, rational mind. It is for an exploring mind, a learning mind, a discovering mind, a romantic mind, not a mind of dogma and routine calculation, but a mind that sees heart in every number.
For Einstein to understand light, even to imagine it, he had to be steeped in it. His life meant nothing. Light was all, for him.
Ail our personal considerations become trivial, and death itself holds zero meaning. We are part of something much much greater, well beyond even the birth and death of this planet and this universe.
Our ability to understand, to merge into that, even our mind to become merged into that thought, is to participate in eternity. To become part of the eternal.
And this integrates our own tiny tiny existence in a way that every moment, birth, life and death, have their place and purpose, as unimportant.
To transcend our own death in this way, psychologically, to participate in eternity psychology, as an observer and a participant, both, is to transcend death, to let those thoughts of me and mine evaporate in an experience of something much larger. To become selfless without thinking about being selfless. To become part of eternity.
If the only journey beyond death you can take is a psychological journey, it is a very powerful one, into pure meaning.
Then death is entirely unimportant. The part before this second is gone. This second is all there is. Where have we placed our whole mind and heart? On us? Wasted time and wasted worry.
Even our very last second will just be another second like this, with the same question. By then we will have zero control over the past, so the past will be meaningless. Just as it is right now.
What we love, the things and friendships that came long before us and will live long past, that will never die, that are timeless and beautiful, that is worth our full attention.
There we transcend death.
When you save a document on your pc, Mac or phone or tablet , it is dated.
All your files have dates.
But if, for some reason, your hard drive were to erase those dates, the files would all still be the same files, timeless.
Forget time. You only live in the now. Every love you experienced in your mind now is eternal.
The date you remember it happened is meaningless. You may not fragment all the details and what you ferment may be imperfect. Forget that. It happens eternally as your mind contemplates it. Hold that experience you experience now, remembering, and then just experience that love again. Let yourself it now, not as a memory.
Dates shmates. You already have the eternal. Take all your loves, your deepest loves at the moment you experienced them, open those files into your active conscious memory and burn your hard drive. Live in that experience. Forget dates and circumstances. Now you live eternally.
Basically, the honest reason one meditates (except for health reasons) is because there is still a process of seeking and seeking means we are not willing or satisfied to be what we are.
So we desire or believe that the particular meditation we have chosen will take us to our hoped for goal. In a nutshell, we are not happy with who we are in this moment and believe that the next moment – or the next moment and so on, will change us to what we think we should be.
Even if it becomes evident that we cannot change what/who we are, we tend to gravitate toward anything that seems to offer confirmation.
We seem to want to deny the realities of being biological creatures with all the normal trials and tribulations which that brings in favour of some hoped for, more acceptable utopia.
But I’ll add, that such escapes may be the only recourse in a world that we have made ugly, frightening and jarring.
Hi Ron E.
No doubt some people seek in meditation what they do not get looking at the world around them.
Others are just enjoying the inner exploration and happy to do the work, just like any other exploration.
How can we judge what is going on with someone else’s experience? Why conjecture without an interest to confirm?
If one is going to meditate for health why not enjoy the sites along the way?
And if it is healthy, as science has proven, if our experience of devotion is ecstatic, then maybe there are healthy reasons to do it!
Maybe it is natural. Deep meditation research demonstrates the unique configuration of the brain in deep meditation. Maybe that capacity is built in.