I’ve taken some time off from this blog, mostly due to teaching a two-week retreat in New Mexico earlier this month, but am now back to a regular commitment to keep it going on a weekly basis for the next month. There is quite a bit I would like to say about the kinds of narratives that seem to drive people’s meditation practices, as well as skillful ways to explore internal monologues and dialogues in meditation. In the meantime, I am posting some comments I have recently received on my book, “Unlearning Meditation.”

The first person, who wishes to remain anonymous, writes:

The tone was gentle and accessible and felt respectful of the diversity of practices and traditions, with criticism carefully framed and qualified so as not be polemical, with the result that the book has an open, expansive flavor. I was really impressed at your careful language avoiding arguments about “reality” or the “real” nature of phenomena, although I would have preferred a phrase such as “your mind as it operates” to “your mind as it is.” Also, I gained a better understanding of how one’s pre-existing practices might naturally arise in a receptive context.  It’s funny that my own early practices don’t really show up in a recognizable form much in my sits: as you know, I’m pretty quick to recognize when they do and then everything shifts. The excerpts from journals allowed me to empathize with other meditators.

Your discussion of impasses prompted me to ponder them. I realized that I tend not to label my practice as “stuck” or “at an impasse” because I have grown to see the progress of practice as naturally jerky and unpredictably flowing in an organically regulated manner (a “mysterious” ecology) that doesn’t require me to take an adversarial relationship to it, especially since multiple themes or threads seem to move through practice and typically all don’t hold up at once. I’m not sure the chapters on impasses really brought out these nuances—I’d have to reread them to decide.  I’m astonished that your book is one of the few that directly and richly addresses this subject—so many meditation manuals give rote, perhaps even harsh, formulae to deal with this stuff and don't encourage investigation of process. Similarly to impasses, I found reading what you said about hindrances a helpful opportunity to look at them in my experience: I realized that I tend not to label things hindrances, as they seem a natural occurrence. I hope your discussions of impasses and hindrances helps others reflect on their experience in practice, too.

I also hope the book prompts readers to look at how many views are implicitly embedded in ways of practice. I'm really curious regarding this because I occasionally hear an “of course” or “so what” response from folks when discussing the pervasiveness and perniciousness of unexamined views. The other chapters I most hope people take to heart are the ones on samadhi and assessing meditative states: there is a lot of fresh material here for my inquisitive, thoughtful friends.

I actually found the discussion of meditative processes more helpful than it has been in retreats.  There often is other more compelling stuff going on in retreat and considering the different processes doesn't get much traction for me, especially since you tend to give dhamma talks on them far along in the retreat enough that I'm getting disconnected from language and logic.  The descriptions seemed fuller and more elaborated, so reading these chapters now (especially the not-taking-up chapter) gave me a chance to look at them in context.  I liked the discussion of the interconnections between the processes and how they relate to transformative conceptualization and to traditional practices.

Mike Finch’s comments:

I found it well written and very innovative. I was aware of your whole tenor from knowing you before, particularly your meditative processes model, which you were working out in that period when I was attending your retreats in California and Spokane WA, but it was inspiring to read your polished version. And I don’t just mean only polished, there is much that I found new as well—for  instance, your discussion of the transitions between the processes was new to me.

There were many sentences and phrases you used which I found struck just the right note. You come across as a seasoned meditator yourself, which of course I already knew, and yet willing to think outside the box, as they say, and present something that other seasoned meditators (and newbies as well, naturally) will find groundbreaking and original.

For myself personally, though, I am interested in a slightly different area than what your book covers. Your book covers meditation—in great depth, and your starting point (logically that is, not the start of the sequence of the book) is your definition that meditation is whatever happens whenever you have the intent to meditate, and you go from there.

My interest these days is more the context of meditation. I mean by that why I meditate, or intend to, and what I want to gain from it—how  it locates in my life, if you will. There are no slick answers to those questions (or rather, there are many slick answers, but none that satisfy) but for myself I find that the inquiry is essential, even though I have no ready one-liners to summarize my inquiry. (But I do try and answer my own questions in some of my papers on my website: http://mikefinch.com.)

I think part of why I find this important, is that I can no longer fit my meditation, and certainly not my life, into any established tradition. The last sentence of your book mentioned ‘inner awakening’ and the ‘Dharma’, but I have turned aside from Buddhism, although I still find much in the Pali Canon which inspires. So my logical sequence would be to start with the question what does ‘inner awakening’ mean (if anything), rather than have it at the very end. This is what I was starting to say when we met recently how philosophy helps with this—at least the practice of rational and critical thinking, and thinking for oneself.

As a result, I have little empathy with much of your supposed audience. I have no meditation teacher, and have not had since I left Maharaji (albeit I listened to what you and others—Tan Geoff, Larry Rosenberg etc—had to say). I have no meditation instructions, except possibly my own, and those are in a constant state of revision anyway. So I felt one of your main themes—the conflict between the mind as it is, and the instructions—to be irrelevant to me. I understand that you are trying to winkle people out of a rigid adherence to their instructions (as I read you) and I was cheering you on when reading you do so, but I feel I parted company from the bulk of your audience several years ago.

Of course, in my own meditation process there are still conflicts, but they are between my mind as it is, and how I would like it to be, or how I think it should be, which you do address. But there is no conflict between my mind as it is and what teachers instruct me, since I have no teachers and am wary of most (actually all, but I am trying to appear reasonable!) of the meditation instructions I am aware of.

One very clear consequence of my inquiry into life and context, is that my own meditation practice follows, or is at least suggested by, that inquiry or context itself. This gives a different view of meditation, and allows me to approach it from a different angle than those people who are trying to realize in their meditation what Ajahn X or Roshi Y or Guru Z told them to.

Another way of saying the same thing, is that for me not only is my meditation a process, but my life is a process too, and each informs the other. The temptation to want to step out of either process to try and reach some state (nirvana, the void, even ‘inner awakening’) is strong. Your book says something like this, but I feel you are writing for people who are looking for states, and need persuading to accept a process. I need no such persuasion.

This is not a criticism in any way of your book, I am merely saying that I felt I was only on the fringe of your audience, and that my interest in meditation is in a different area from what your book covers. But having said that, there is of course a big overlap, and as I started this email by saying, I found it interesting and helpful in several respects—particularly your six meditative processes model. I am grateful to you for writing it, and grateful to you for giving me a copy.

My response to Mike’s comments:

Thank you for delineating the audience of this book. There are so few people who meditate on their own and in their own way, and to write for them would be difficult to do. About as close as I can get is offering some support for breaking away from teachers and traditions, as well as a providing theories on the meditative process that they may find useful.

You write: “My interest these days is more the context of meditation. I mean by that why I meditate, or intend to, and what I want to gain from it—how it locates in my life, if you will.” There are two parts to the context of meditation as you state it: the intentional and the actual. Meditation can be written about and discussed from those two perspectives without including “history.” My approach has been to assume that the context of meditation for many meditators is the history of their learning meditation and how that has created certain intentions and ways of assessing experiences. But if someone has already “worked through” or “unlearned” what they were taught, then history is no longer a dominant factor, and intentionality becomes a greater focus of investigation. I see this often—people looking into how their intentions for their lives enter into their meditation practice rather than meditating with someone else’s aspirations. This is far more authentic and rewarding. The actual experiences of meditation and one’s encounter with one’s mind outside of meditation begin to inform the direction of both meditation and the person’s life. If people only knew that when they are taught a meditation practice that they are taking on someone else’s stories, desires, dislikes, etc. and are moving away from seeing into their own. And, of course, this can be happening with me and my teaching—people have to unlearn what I teach them as well. At least, I hope, they get the message that this approach to meditation leads to the emergence of one’s own way of being with their experiences in meditation and outside of it.