Meditation (Part 2)

This is the second part of a three-part series on my experiences at a meditation retreat. In the first part, I discuss what got me interested; and in the final, I discuss a few ideas that help keep the motivation going.

Sit erect — but don’t be stiff. Pay attention to your body — but don’t be severe. Let your mind wander — but bring it gently back.

Those who have practiced meditation know the mental tight-rope it can be. Over the seven days at the meditation retreat, I had three loose priorities in mind: posture, breath, and pain management. Unlike the Goenka Vipassana method (which people have described to me as a meditation ‘boot-camp’), we would be pursuing a friendlier variant of Vipassana, or ‘insight’, meditation in Sarnath. In this approach, four postures (sitting, standing, walking and lying down) are fine; and so are open eyes. Silence, discourse, and a regular schedule would guide us.

Here is what the schedule looked like:

• Wake up and Yoga at 5.30 AM
• First meditation session (sitting/lying down) for 45 minutes at 6.45 AM
• Breakfast and ‘Karma yoga’ — daily tasks like cleaning, washing up etc.
• More meditation sessions of 45 minutes duration through the day (all postures)
• Discourse/instructions thrice a day

Even Buddha had back pain

The most familiar posture is to sit. Some prefer sitting in the Vajrāsanā (with knees folded, and soles under the hips). Those with faulty knees sit on chairs. I prefer the Padmāsanā (sitting cross-legged) with some pillows under my hips. With lots of breaks, and the option to stand or walk, we had several hours of sitting meditation. I would last about 30 minutes in each 45-minute session. In the first couple of days, even less.

Physically, the hardest thing to do was to overcome pain or numbness. My feet would go to sleep, and my knees would ache. My erect back would start to hurt, and I would slouch. Yoga in the mornings helped. The teacher noted that this was common and something we would have to manage. I would open my eyes if the pain was too distracting. I would adjust my posture. I can report that it is possible to navigate this pain threshold without hurting oneself. We must judge when it is right to push ahead, and when not.

By the fourth day, I managed to sit for 45 minutes. My back would ache though, and I have had to think about my posture. Which is all good; the idea is to be more aware of the body, to distance our mind from micro-eruptions of sensation. And as the teacher noted, no one — not even the Buddha* — is exempt from these pains.

What is meditation?

It took me two days to slow down while practising to meditate-walk. Walking a swift, measured pace was so ingrained that I didn’t know how to slow down. Keeping to a small area also wore me down quickly. Finally, I had to pace myself looking at other, more practiced monks at the retreat. I like to walk and run, and so I really liked the idea of slow, deliberate, meditative steps. For runners, it is the equivalent of a point in your run (insert your personal kilometre mark here) where all you can think of is the next step, and nothing more. I found it hard to not think of the next thing, task, or idea. To live in the present, in this instance, was to just think about your feet, the gravel underneath, the cold morning and not think about the future. I was surprised that I had to learn to do that.

Reining in the ‘monkey-mind’ was the hardest, and I suspect seven days were a little too short to form and sustain a mental habit. One of the first things the teacher discusses is exploring our mental habits. What do we think of when we are bored? Or sad? All of us have recurrent ‘themes’, our crutches of distraction, and we can identify them. Writing a journal helps. Just before the session began, I would relax and try to empty my mind. To do that, I would write ideas out into my journal as they popped up. The monkey wins some sessions, and you win some. I learnt to not worry about losses and to try and build on my wins.

In the seven days, I did not hazard the ‘lying down’ meditation method — I did not trust myself to stay awake.

Mental effort

A sustained practice is not about breath control and pain management alone. These techniques should prep us for the next step: understanding the many sources of our distraction and mental disquiet. Market forces, technology and social conventions exert pressures on our mental well-being that are subtle and taxing, draining away our mental energy. Understanding them or generating strategies to tackle them are in the realm of psychological effort. They consume our mental energy and time, without delivering productive value. What should we build into our practice to tackle these questions? That would then bring us to some central themes of Buddhist practice: attachment, desire or suffering.

To be continued…

*“Ananda, speak to the Kapilavatthu Sakyans about the person who follows the practice for one in training. My back aches. I will rest it” said the Buddha. From the Sekha-patipada Sutta: The Practice for One in Training. Accessed on 30 may 2020.