Stillness/Conditions
February 2021, Bangkok
One of the persistent problems in my own meditation is remaining still for the entire duration of a session. This is a matter of degree, a sort of sliding scale of ability, an intensity of achievement, so scrutiny on your own success in this realm really works as a motivation to get deeper into the practice. Once you feel accomplished in almost anything, it’s a symptom of resignation, an abandonment of development. I take it as a good sign when there’s always work to be done on something in meditation, as it means I’m at the very least thinking about things in the right way.
It always surprises me that even some of my closest friends—people who have known me for years and what I’m all about, know what I spend a lot of time doing—still have this lazy, probably implanted, stereotype that meditation is some relaxing stress free pursuit, as if being still is literally just doing nothing. Staying completely physically still takes effort, which should be obvious with just the smallest amount of consideration. Almost everyone has nervous ticks or some sort of unconscious movements that go through their body when they’re either in the midst of conversation or just relaxing, zoning out, watching or reading stuff. The only time when one would actually be still and not physically move in a situation like this is if that person was already physically exhausted. This is because like most things through the Buddhist perspective extremes exist on a spectrum, and the goal is to go the middle way between both extremes. In this case, the extreme of intense exercise on the one side must balance out, through time, with exhausted rest in order to get back to an equilibrium. Getting to this equilibrium in meditating takes the middle road between relaxation and strict intensity/self-torture with regards to physical form and mental compliance.
For a lot of people, myself included sometimes, keeping the back straight during a session is difficult. For some reason, though, for me it’s less difficult than when I’m sitting in a chair and fighting the temptation to slunk back into some lazy bad postured position. This may be because of the hours put into focusing on this area and making sure that when my mind and body knows that this is a meditation session, the question of relaxing just simply isn’t an option. No matter how irritated the physical sensation, or how many internal thought complaints bombard me, there simply isn’t going to be any compromise. If there ever is a compromise then the mind knows it has the ability to convince you, and will continue to do so, citing historical evidence, to relax a bit. Although me and my back are currently on good terms, other areas of the body begin to flare up and cause problems in its stead. This is really why it baffles me just how much people’s conceptions of what meditation is could be so off. It’s way more akin to balancing multiple spinning plates than chilling out and clearing your head.
My own personal struggle at the moment is investigating a strange link between my leg muscle flexing and staying tight whenever my mind starts latching onto and getting distracted by thoughts. In a way, it’s beneficial because now I have two things I could be looking out for whenever my attention wanders away from the intended area of focus. At the same time, it is something that has to be resolved, as it’s an unconscious tick that happens without my awareness. Part of the balance of stillness requires a strict control of the body during a session. I usually let some fidgeting and moving around happen in the first couple of minutes of a session just to make sure I’m not going to get a dead leg or something. After a certain point, I decide that I’m not going to let anything move as much as I can help it. Inevitably, some impulse sneaks past as a result of me getting too wrapped up in thoughts. These ‘failures’ just need to be remembered and turned into motivation for doing a better job next time. It’s all a learning experience that will eventually reap rewards with the right kind of effort and motivation. Once some success starts to accumulate in this area, the benefits get applied to outside interactions. You’ll notice yourself clearly being more composed, calm, in control. I can attest to this personally, because I’ve gone from a nervous wreck perpetually on the verge of a panic attack or nervous breakdown to being for the most part levelheaded and at ease while talking to others. Meditation may not be the only factor in this development, but it’s a huge part.
Really, the main point in developing this skill is to get more accustomed than before in this balanced position between relaxation and effort. You need to have good form, and you need to feel at ease in that good form so that the focus you’re maintaining feels pleasant and not too strained. At the same time, you need to be able to handle any strain when it comes, and also be able to not get too wrapped up and comfortable in the pleasantness. Sway back and forth between the extremes until you’ve managed to find the right spot via your focus on the breath. It’s only in this way that the intense, penetrative focus required for deeper meditative states can cultivate. The stillness practice is a disciplinary regimen for the body and mind that gets them to basically stop messing with each other and causing unnecessary waves. How this interplay between the two works (if there even is any distinction) really depends on your own observation and interpretation of internal phenomena. For this reason, I don’t want to get too far into the weeds with my own personal interpretation of my own view on this. Everyone has to find out what works for them, but the result should be that your body remains still to the best of your ability. If you’re able to go from worrying about if you’re going to mindlessly scratch your head to noticing your little toe budging a little, that’s tremendous improvement. The cultivation of this skill, like many practices in Buddhism, is at first an end you’re working toward. Eventually though, once developed to a good degree, it becomes a means to developing a better skill, or, in other words, it becomes a condition upon which you fabricate some new beneficial ability. At the same time, this development isn’t ever completely abandoned just because it went from being an end to a means. If neglected too long it will no longer be a proper condition from which the other skills dependent on it can maintain themselves.
Building this grand network of skills takes a lot of effort early on, but as with anything, with enough dedicated practice, the hard parts begin to get easier. What is considered to be difficult moves to another area of development. The difficulty remains, but that quality doesn’t linger on one specific part of the practice. The ‘results’ in this practice only happen with the proper conditions. The reason why misery plagues people is because the conditions for it to manifest are there. If you get rid of these conditions, the manifestations dependent on them can’t occur. This applies to both what we consider positive qualities and negative qualities. If your normal mode of operation is on the lazy side of the spectrum, then you will certainly have the qualities that go along with that. Same thing applies for the other extreme of being too active. And, of course, the same thing applies to the middle way between both extremes, which, as the Buddha claims, and as I can partially confirm through my own practice at these beginning stages of the path, the middle is the most fruitful area for cultivation.