3 Pillars of a Meditation Practise
In Jon Kabat Zinn’s book MBSR ( Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), I came across the Seven Attitudinal Foundations of Meditation. These made a lot of sense to me. At that time, I was just flirting with Meditation and trying to understand it. From that time onwards, I started embracing these attitudinal foundations into my practice. Now, I am able to meditate daily for up to 30 minutes easily and sometimes going to 45 to 50 minutes also. From these seven foundations, three slightly modified versions really stand out and have helped me in understanding the meditation practise and the play of mind which goes with it. These 3 Pillars of Meditation Practise are:
A) Non-Judgement: When starting meditation, we are most frustrated, and I was also frustrated. Sometimes you would get a good session and at other times you would feel that the session was a disaster. During one of these times, the practice of Non-Judgement really hit me. The Mind just is. By Judging my session or by judging my mind — I am making things worse. Hence, just accept whatever has transpired. Good-Bad, these are just labels given by the judging mind. The mind was on the breadth — So be it. The mind was not on the breadth — So be it. Simple and Non-judging.
With this Non-Judging attitude, I could build my ability to sit for meditation. The episodes where the mind was wandering just became episodes for simple non-judgemental observation and learning. This Pillar helped me to stop quitting meditation.
B) Non-Attachment: About a few months ago, I decided to increase my meditation sitting from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. But this was difficult. For although I was Non-judgemental, the thoughts would keep on appearing on their own. At the same time, while reflecting on my meditation, I was wondering what exactly Non-Attachment is.
It was a moment of insight when suddenly one day, I observed that my mind was on the TV serial which I had watched the previous day. At that time, I reflected why would the TV serial play on my mind. With this reflection, I suddenly realised what attachment is.
Attachment is nothing but memory formation and strengthening of the memory formation. Whenever our senses are observing, some part of this observation is getting attached to our minds through memories. The thoughts are nothing but the residual of this memory which is being formed. This residual initially comes as a simple thought trying to reinforce the memory from the short term to the long term. If we refuse to participate in this — slowly this residue will disappear for we never allowed it any energy to move from short term to long term.
On the other hand, if we participate in this thought — then this memory residue will start morphing and taking a life of its own in our minds. Slowly over time, it will become a part of our identity and our habits. These are our attachments. These are the layers which have slowly crept all over our minds and cover us. Simple thoughts reinforced again and again.
Non-attachment during meditation is then a simple refusal to have an interest in these thoughts.
Left to its own devices, the TV serial will try to become a part of my mind. But when I just simply observe and refuse any interest in the thoughts of the TV serial, that residue will disappear on its own. It will lose the power to influence my emotions as I become non-attached to it.
With this understanding and realisation of non-attachment, the benefit was that the period which thought could take over my mind reduced quite a lot. Secondly, the thought would not cause an emotional imbalance which is the core of meditation. Thirdly, by knowing how the layers of attachment have formed in my mind I could reflect on starting to delayer the same. This is the long term objective of finding my true and untainted self. And finally, I can now prevent new layers of attachment from being formed on their own.
This benefit alone is the true understanding of what a Monk really is. One who by being non-attached refuses to surrender his energy to his surroundings.
C) Timeless Patience: After the insight on Non-Attachment, long peaceful meditative experiences became more common for me. But at other times the meditative experience still appeared to be very rushed. At one of the sessions, during this slight frustrating rushed period, a thought suddenly came to me that there actually is No Time only Energy Flow. Now, this is something which is a deep philosophy. I have an engineering background and Time is woven into physics as a physical reality. Recently I had read a book by Quantum Physicists Carlo Rovelli where he had described Time as an illusion. Maybe the sense impression of that book had stuck with me.
But when this thought about No Time came to me, that very moment my mind stood still. Time ceased. Then, I could sort of look into my mind, at all the layers of attachment which had accumulated there. The first impression was that these layers of attachment are like the unknown filth filling a pure place. In the next moment, all that filth was cleaned out leaving a shiny empty and pure space behind. For that moment, my mind was what has been described by the sages — totally clear of all attachments, including the attachment to Time. I then realised the power of Timeless Patience as the third pillar of the Meditative Practise.
Behind the curtain of time is the flow of your energy. And to reach that flow, the pillar of Timeless Patience, an attitude of total surrender to the task at hand, the task of delayering and decluttering our mind has to be adopted.
This is the strength of the third pillar of Meditation Practise.
I hope that you also integrate these three pillars into your meditation practise and reap the real benefits of Meditation.
Originally published at https://kindlethemaster.com on November 17, 2020.
