At the first book reading I did in Santa Rosa in July, I introduced “Unlearning Meditation” as a new way of thinking about meditation (and not just another way to meditate). When I was first introduced to meditation as a teenager, the most popular form of meditation was using single-syllable mantras. Meditation was often presented as concentrating on the mantra throughout the meditation sitting. Thus the way people commonly thought about meditation was that it was for a specific kind of concentration.

            When awareness of breathing or visualization were introduced, they were also generally presented as objects of concentration. This definition of meditation as an act of sitting still and concentrating on an object was the predominant idea of what meditation is. When mindfulness meditation arrived on the scene, it was both a new way meditating and a new way of thinking about meditation. It could incorporate the previous idea of meditation as concentrating on a prescribed object (in this case, the breath) into its wider conception of meditation being an exercise in developing mindfulness. But the radical idea of mindfulness meditation was that one could be aware of bodily movements, physical sensations, and mental activity, and could still call what one was doing, “meditation.”

            Mindfulness meditation thus challenged existing views as to what meditation is. Today, however, it has become the standard. It got people to notice more about their meditation experience, to bring meditation more into their lives, and to use meditation as a tool for the eradication of unwanted habits and behaviors. The esoteric and religious elements of meditation practice could be stripped away, and a truly secular and clinically valid form of meditation could develop in the West. Meditation could be practiced by everyone regardless of religious beliefs, cultural values, education and training, or any number of factors that tend to exclude people. You only have to believe in the power of mindfulness.

            Unlearning meditation (Recollective Awareness) is a further development. It is indebted to mindfulness (or Insight) meditation for opening up the field of meditation and changing people’s perception as to what meditation is. But it is also a critique of mindfulness, its limitations and shortfalls, just as mindfulness meditation contained within it a critique of concentration-based practices.

            This new way of thinking about meditation practice can be simply summed up: Whatever occurs when one intends to meditate is meditation. No instructions or techniques are necessary. It is the intention to sit in meditation that makes a meditation sitting. In recollecting that sitting, one becomes aware of what goes on in meditation. From becoming familiar with what goes on in one’s meditation sittings, one learns how to meditate.

Played: 89 | Download | Duration: 00:10:42