My friend Robert Hover was one of the first westerners authorized to teach Buddhist meditation. This was about 45 years ago.
As part of Robert’s training with his teacher, U Ba Khin, he developed a particular way of attending to painful or unpleasant sensations that not only led to the discomfort disappearing but also resulted in some amazing physical and emotional healing (find out more at www.imhealing.com … but realize that Robert was an engineer; his writing is extremely accurate but sometimes tricky to understand).
Over time, more Westerners became meditation teachers. And as they encountered Robert teaching this incredible technique, they would criticize him, saying, “Meditation is about accepting things as they are, not trying to fix or change or improve them. It’s not about getting rid of the pain; it’s about accepting the pain as it is!”
Now, I know this sounds like a good argument, but there are a couple of serious problems with it.
First, nobody ever asked the critics this question: “Why would you want to accept the pain as it is?”
If they were rigorously honest, they would answer something like, “So I would be okay with it.” “So it wouldn’t bother me.” Or, if they were really honest, “So that it can change.”
In other words, the only reason you would want to “be with it” is if you want something — you or it — TO CHANGE!
(BTW, I find the same thing with Life Coaches who say their goal is to see their client as completely perfect… so that the client will then change.)
In fact, if you ask 99.9% of all meditators, “Why did you start meditating?” you’ll hear the story of what they wanted to change and why they wanted it to change. Whether it’s as mundane as “I wanted to learn to relax,” or as strong as, “I was suffering and I needed a way out,” or as arrogant as, “I want to become Awakened,” the bottom line is: What got them on the cushion, and what usually keeps them on, is the desire for something to be different.
I’ve noticed that for most meditators it gets harder and harder to notice this desire because it gets buried under the “I’m just accepting things as they are” story.
The second problem with criticizing Robert’s technique is similar to when fundamentalists picket a movie they haven’t seen (where’s the fun in that mental-ism?). Most of the critics never did Robert’s technique.
With Robert’s technique, you simply start with what’s true — “I have a pain I want to get rid of.” Simple. Accepting that you want to change things is a profound kind of acceptance!
In fact, Robert explains, pain itself increases the amount of energy you have to available to you, an amount of energy you can’t get if you’re not aware of some pain. And the desire to get rid of the pain is like the lens that focuses that energy.
As you use this focused, hightened energy to attend to your pain (rather than trying to ignore it, numb it, or “be with it until it leaves”) something strange happens. Almost out of nowhere, you leap way beyond “accepting the pain” or “being with it.” The very ideas of trying to change anything, or of “pain,” or “accepting” don’t even have room to arise as you focus your attention on the subtle sensations of your body/mind.
Interestingly, Robert believes that meditation is actually a tool developed to imitate this natural process of Pain > Energy > Focused Attention > Healing.
I spent a good 20 years telling myself that I was merely “being with” or “observing” my sensations or my breath (whichever meditation practice I was doing), while the meta-goal was to get rid of the unpleasantness in my life. Didn’t work so good.
Then I stopped. I just couldn’t make myself believe that I needed to be different or “better.”
The next time I did a meditation course (14 hours/day for 10 days), someone said, “It looked like this was an easy course for you.” I replied, “When you’re not trying to accomplish anything, how hard is it to just sit on your butt?”
Eventually, as I could feel that my entire motivation to meditate was based on thinking it would improve me — and noticing how crappy that idea made me feel — I quit. From 2 hours/day to nothing. Cold turkey. Except instead of having withdrawal pains, I felt great! And why wouldn’t I? I stopped spending 2 hours a day subtly reminding myself that there was something wrong with me!
Four years later, it popped into my head to meditate.
“Oh, this won’t be very good,” I thought, remembering how it took some time and practice to really get that meditation ball rolling. “Well, whatever.” I sat on my cushion, closed my eyes, and had one of the “deepest” sessions I’d ever experienced.
When I wasn’t trying to improve myself by “accepting things as they were” that inner world was VERY interesting 😉
(and, what happened next is what became the Instant Advanced Meditation Course)
[tags]meditation, vipassana, U Ba Khin, Buddhism[/tags]
Comments
15 responses to “Accepting Things As They Aren’t”
What you’re describing sounds like what I learned about dealing with fear. The best way to deal with fear, in my experience, is to acknowledge it, walk into it, and make friends with it. It sounds very much like it’s the same approach of dealing with pain that you describe. “I’m afraid” (made as a statement of fact without judgement). “I want to fix that.” “Okay, let’s focus on the fear and really let it wash through me.” (which I take to be equivalent to the meditation technique you describe). So Fear > Energy > Focused attention > No Fear. And usually an interesting place on the other side.
Steven,
You are positively a smart guy and even better a writer. But – of course the “but†would come after the sweet introduction – you are not really getting into the point of the meditation of “insightâ€, probably the kind your friend Robert learnt from U Ba Kin.
The whole point of this kind of meditation is to get rid of the misery by “observing reality in a special way.” This means to observe reality in the right way, the correct way, to observe it as it is—not just as it appears to be, not just as it seems to be, not colored by any belief or philosophy, not colored by any imagination—but to observe it by working in a scientific way.
So, when you hear people saying to accept pain as it is, doesn’t mean to accept the pain the way we always saw it – with aversion and ignorance – but with the comprehension of its ultimate characteristic: the impermanence. That’s what your good buddy Robert seems to do when by the way you described his approach. If I got it right, he focus his attention on the the spot that hurts and, with concentration and observation, starts to feel the subtle sensations that are behind any solid sensation (that could be good or bad, like pain). And this observation, this experience, works as transforming the pain into something pleasant.
The fact is that the observer is just seeing the pain – for the first time – as it really is: a bunch of vibrations that arise and go away. Of course it results in some amazing physical and emotional healing. But could do much more, could bring permanent and true happiness.
The problem is, as so very smart as you are, you couldn’t help yourself stop making mind games with the words and its multiple meanings. “Why should I want to accept the pain as it is?â€. And the conflict you made up worked as an obstacle to your improvement in the technique.
When a serious meditator practices to see things as they are, he’s not trying to have wonderful sensorial experiences, he’s just working for his own happiness. And obviously he’s wants something to change, he wants to get rid of the misery.
I’ve already gave you my compliments about your skills in the writing, but I must extend then to your marketing abilities as well. You’re article is a great way to sell the priceless Instant Advanced Meditation Course, or, as you seem to prefer, I AM. By the way, who really ARE YOU?
Regards with metta
Hey, A…
Who am I? Not a clue how to answer that. Can you ask a question I could possibly answer in a useful way?
And, fwiw, I began this blog LONG before and totally separate from the I AM Course. I’m not writing this for marketing reasons, but so that I can get these thoughts on “paper” and out of my head. It just so happens that I only have one real interest, and it shows up in the form of this blog and as Instant Advanced Meditation Course. (Did anyone else have a WonderTwins flashback there? “Form of a blog!” “Form of a meditation course!”)
That said, I agree with you… ish 😉
Yes, Vipassana is about observing in any sensation one of the “signs of existence”, namely annica, anatta and/or dukkha (the impermanent changing quality, the lack of independent existence, and/or… well, we could have a whole conversation on how “suffering” isn’t a good translation of “dukkha”).
However, there’s a difference between experiencing the sensation and noticing that it also has one of those qualities, vs. experiencing the quality directly. In other words a color-blind person can train herself to “see” the missing color by subtly adding a concept to the actual experience (e.g. “Ah, someone told me that these socks that I see as gray are actually red… so I know it’s red”). But one can’t for example, see the sky and NOT see blue.
Similarly, it’s a subtle distinction between experiencing “a painful sensation that’s arising and passing away” versus experiencing the arising and passing away of what we might call a “sensation”. According to the Vissudhimagga, the former is merely a concentration practice, while the latter is actual Insight.
So, to say one is “being with the pain” is clearly inaccurate. And to say it with the air of spiritual superiority or achievement is, well, not an indication of attainment, let’s say.
(In fact, being with the pain is impossible, since what we’re “being with” took place in the past and the experience we have occurs after the time it takes for sensations to make it through our nervous system… and “acceptance” is merely the story we tell ourself AFTER we didn’t react with our familiar aversion… but anyway…)
Now, in doing Robert’s technique, you don’t notice the impermanence, and you don’t try to feel subtle sensations “behind” any solid sensation. Quite the opposite. You deliberately try to ALTER the thing that’s bothering you by working on that VERY SOLID seeming thing!
It just so happens, though, that what’s required to do that action, paradoxically, leads to a presence, awareness and non-aversion, that many meditators only *hope* to attain by bare attention or insight… and that reliably affects the “presenting complaint.”
I’m not sure what “mind game” you see me making, but it seems that “trying to get rid of misery,” or working to create “permanent and true happiness” — what motivates most meditators — is as flawed as believing that one experiences a THING called “pain.”
When seen clearly (which doesn’t require meditation), “misery” and “happiness” and “pain” and “pleasure” are merely interpretations, a story, added to something devoid of substantial, independent, solid existence.
I wouldn’t want to rest my future, or my butt, on something so elusive. 😉
And, with the inability to try to escape from something “non-existent” (misery) or strive in the slightest for something equally non-existent (happiness), Vipassana becomes effortlessly simple, and other ways of attending to the objects of perception (including the experience of “I”) become similarly transparent.
This sounds a bit like an “est” saying from Werner Erhard I heard years ago.
“If you’re not all right the way you are it takes a lot of effort to get better. So realise you’re all right the way you are, and you’ll get better naturally.”
Once we notice that “better” is just a fictional story about an imagined future, and that to believe in that story requires also believing that whatever is going on now is a “problem,” then the fight to get from here to there begins.
Without the story, the fight falls apart too. And then, often, we find that the contentment we hoped for in that imagined future is experienced in the real present.
“I was never so happy as when I stopped trying to improve myself in order to become happy.”
Finally someone got it!
I think the problem is with the object/state/person/feeling that we think we SHOULD accept.
Accepting the unacceptable is much better and cost effective 🙂
Example: I have problems with accepting my mother. Well maybe not her but her way of thinking, but let’s not get into semantics here. So I sit down and meditate, trying to accept my mother. Accept my mum, accept my mum – my mantra goes.. I put feelings into it too. I try to bring the cosmic alignment into it, concentration, focus, prayer, empty mind (full of my mum though) and at the end of it I feel so frustrated just the visual of my mum’s face is enough to make my blood boil in my blue veins.. And suddenly it comes to me, at this moment my problem is not my mum, the reason I feel so angry is myself – I cannot accept that fact I cannot accept my mum. So I accept that I cannot accept my life-giver and the amazing wave of relief washes over me, now that I can accept! And funny thing too, once I forgive myself for being such a twat (not accepting my mum – don’t you go to hell for that? no court would drop the charges on this one) I feel more acceptance towards – guess who?
Aleks
x
The irony of course, is that we all have the same issue with your mother
😉
(and, I agree completely… start by accepting — or, perhaps, a better action would be “unabashedly acknowledging” — the simple fact, e.g. I’m not accepting, rather than trying to deny the fact in order to attain the faux-holy state)
Ha ha, my mum sure does get around!
In the case of the common and deliberate unacceptance of my mother can we just make it a law and forget about accepting her? That way no one needs to feel guilty. 😛
Unless of course the (un)acceptance can only come through guilt in which case I am supplying my mum’s picture, we can all stand around it and ask incessantly: ‘Why me?’
And, if we ask, “Who is asking ‘Why me?’”, we can start a new spiritual movement!
Yes, that’s exactly what we need here, another spritual movement..
Can I at least choose a colour for our robes? Bored with the white, red is too Osho, and orange is already taken.. damn you Mahayanas! I vote for green – in honour of the hope that we will make at least as much money as Oprah did for ET (and I like him no matter what people say) 🙂
My mum is exctatic BTW.
Sarcasm is just a defense mechanism against your deep-seated issues from your childhood and warding against the shadow you feel is obscuring a profound spiritual awakening which, on some level, you realize is imminent Steven, shame on you 😛
But then sometimes a phalic symbol is just a penis I guess.
(Can I use this word or should I **** it?) I’m from Europe (says she again) – we have hairy armpits and full frontal nudity, I plead ignorance.
No words are off-limits here, that’s for sure!
I’m leaning toward tye-died robes, personally.
Sometimes sarcasm is just a penis, too 😉
Wondering why people are interested in spiritual awakenenings when most of us could use a nap,
Steven
This post is inspiring, fresh and ultra awesome! You have a very progressive looks. Reading this blog is a great pleasure.
Do you have a way of saying what your “one interest” referred to above is?
I ask because I feel the same way and I seem to fail at saying what it is. It isn’t what I used to say it was. (Spirituality)
I also ask because I perceive you as having a multitude of interests. In fact, I’ve envied that about you.
LOL Oops!
I think I’d describe my “one interest” as: “understanding how things work,” or “figuring out the underlying system.”
The real reason that you want to accept things as they are is that it leads to happiness. So if you react to the pain, it will increase. The correct attitude then is to be aware of the pain and refuse to react. It is the non-reaction that is important. You are trying to break your habit of blind reaction. And the best way to break any habit is to not give in to the urge. Thus we break the habit of blind reaction. The best way to make any habit is to keep doing it regularly. Thus we practice non-reaction in order to instill that habit in us. This is the path to happiness. It is in this path that pain is so helpful. Yes, the criticisms to Robert were not well informed.