I start off Chapter 1 with this proposition: “Meditation is about a tension between allowing your mind as it is and the meditation instructions you use.” This is a theme that crops up throughout the book. What I am saying is that meditation is about the struggle or cooperation of one’s mind with the meditation instructions. When there is a struggle in one’s meditation sittings, there is more tension between where your mind wants to go and what the instructions would have you do. When there is more cooperation between the two, the tension decreases. But there is usually some degree of tension within one’s meditation sittings when one is doing an instruction-centered practice. When one has developed a trustworthy unstructured meditation practice, where instructions do not have a role, this kind of tension also diminishes—it then becomes mostly apparent during periods when you try to control your experience or re-direct your attention.

I follow up on this theme with an additional proposition: “The tension between the instructions you use and your mind as it is in meditation leads to tightening or loosening around the instructions.” (page 12) In response to tension within one’s meditation sittings, one will either put more effort into doing the instructions or try to drop the instructions. This will lead to tightening or loosening around the instructions. What is changed in this situation is how one is holding the instructions, either tighter or looser, in an attempt to affect your mind as it is. It is still an instruction-oriented direction, because what can be changed is how you are holding the instructions, not your mind as it is. But the common notion is to think that you can change your mind’s behavior in meditation by applying the right instruction correctly. That is, we should be able to settle an active mind through applying the instruction correctly—that an active mind won’t settle down by allowing it to continue as it is. It is this notion that needs to be questioned.

“If you have been following the grand theme of the tension between the meditation instructions you use and your mind as it is, you will see that any instruction that asks you to concentrate on one part of your experience (the breath) and exclude other parts of your experience (thoughts) will set up an internal struggle when the two are in conflict (such as fighting off thoughts to stay with the breath).” (page 13) Meditation teachings have a way of dividing the mind, even when they propound an underlying unity. One could say that I have divided the mind by stating that there is a part of oneself that does the instructions and a part that is one’s thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions. That is because I am addressing an issue inherent in instruction-centered practices, which do divide the mind into parts. When meditation instructions move out of the center of one’s meditation practice, the tension decreases and vanishes for long periods of time, as does the sense that one should be in control of one’s inner experience. There is also less of a sense of a detached, stable observer (or witness), which is a concept that often gets embedded in meditation instructions. (This is a topic I would like to pursue at a later time.)

In reply to what I have said here, someone could say, “The tension between the meditation instructions you use and your mind as it is is a healthy tension when it is used to tame the mind and clear away negative thoughts and emotions.” That is the story created around formal meditation techniques, giving them greater credibility and inviting more faith than they deserve. Here the goal is used to justify the means. But not only that, the kind of force or aggression found in the application of the meditation instructions (often under the guise of “right effort” or “discipline”) cannot possibly create a “healthy” sort of tension. Gentleness in applying a meditation instruction can produce a healthy tension, one that keeps the meditator focused and alert, but also flexible, and thus willing to drop the instruction when it starts to lead to harsher intentions and more aggressive means. That is, when your attention refuses to rest on the breath after trying to gently get it to stay there, instead of forcing it there, you give up on trying to get your attention to stay on the breath and allow your be mind to be as it is (restless, agitated, bored, sleepy, or any other state of mind).

Later on in the book I go into what I call the “conflicted process.” This meditative process occurs whenever there is some kind of conflict within the meditation sitting. At first, while unlearning meditation, there will be the kind of conflict I have been describing above regarding the meditation instructions you have used. However, there are many other conflicts that arise in meditation that get obscured by the ongoing conflict between your mind as it is and the meditation instructions, and these conflicts are generally more pertinent to our lives. It is as though by trying to follow the meditation instructions correctly we lose sight of the serious kinds of inner tension and turmoil that have been with us—the meditation instructions actually distract us from them. But serious inner conflicts don’t vanish for good just because we have shifted our attention away from them by starting to do a formal meditation practice. Nor are these inner conflicts cleared up by deeply tranquil or highly aware meditative experiences. Such experiences can help, as you can see in the section on “Impasses and Calm Spaces,” but they do not adequately address or resolve these conflicts. For example, they will not fully assuage conflicts regarding religious or philosophical beliefs.