Delusion and the Useful Futility of Defining Meditation

“Our lives are lived in two realms – the physical and the narrative.” – Will Storr, The Unpersuadables

Misled by Nature

It’s easy to feel high and mighty about our place in the animal kingdom. Despite the physical prowess and surprising ingenuity of our animal cousins, we can’t help but regard them with some degree of pity. Sure, it’s impressive that leafcutter ants farm fungi (and have done so for millions of years), that some birds can fly over 10,000km without stopping, and that male emperor penguins incubate eggs for two months in frigid darkness, but isn’t it also a bit … meaningless?

Where we have imagination, rich culture, and a drive for progress, other animals don’t have much.[1] Heck, not even the smartest among them know that sex makes babies. Although we might be awed by the grandeur of an African elephant, or envious of our dog’s lack of self-consciousness, few people would trade places with them. The human condition just offers too much potential.

Our minds open doors of which animals could never dream, which seems to prove a flattering point: amongst all life on Earth, Homo sapiens are uniquely wise. And, given our capacity for abstract thought, how could it be otherwise? Isn’t the wisdom of our species almost inevitable, thanks to our particular evolutionary trajectory? Giraffes have long necks, so they can eat leaves. Fish have gills, so they can breathe underwater. Humans have concepts and language, so we can conjure wisdom. QED.

But this congratulatory self-assessment conflates two different things: thoughts and wisdom. While it’s true that thoughts can, given great care and attention, lead to wisdom, more often they mire us in ignorance. There is no limit to how far thinking can stray from reality, meaning that we can be deluded in ways animals never could. This ignorance is not always obvious (could one call it ignorance if it were?) but it is a near-constant companion—even for the most pristinely educated among us.

Our Obscured Reality

Think of ignorance, and you likely think of the worst that politics, religion, the media, and the internet has to offer. Think of stupidity, and you probably picture the brainless masses who wouldn’t know a real fact if it landed in their laps. But to view ignorance solely as something other is itself a form of ignorance. To fully appreciate its influence, we must acknowledge the extent to which it pervades our own lives—which goes far beyond mere mistakes about facts.

Have you imagined the past or future recently? While doing so, did you notice how this all but severed your connection to your surroundings? How you believed so wholeheartedly in this mental fiction that it temporarily blotted out the ground truth of felt experience, supplanting it with a dreamworld of anxiety and longing? Or perhaps you’ve looked in a mirror lately, scrutinizing your reflection with an intensity which, were a chimpanzee to do likewise, would obviously be pathological.

Nearly every waking moment our thoughts obscure the nature of reality, entangling us in untrue narratives as felt experience passes us by. Tragically, most people go through life prisoners to this delusion, their wellbeing held hostage to whatever thought comes next. Even more tragic, perhaps, is that few people understand how, with practice, this prison can be escaped.

Not What You Thought

Meditation cuts through this confusion. It offers a way of connecting with bare experience, unmediated by narrative, from a perspective which is not battered about by waves of thought. This can lead to an indescribable sense of freedom.[2]

Contrary to common belief, meditation does not teach you how to manufacture mental stillness (even if it often leads to mental stillness). To meditate properly, you do not need to stop thinking—but you must stop engaging with thinking. You must make contact with experiential reality, even as thoughts try to convince you that, actually, they contain the truth that really matters. In other words, you must break the spell of thought.

As you grow skilled at this, you learn that felt reality—and your place in it—is not what you thought it was. Which, in a sense, is obvious: while you were busy thinking, reality was relegated to the sidelines. From this new vantage point you can clearly discern your own suffering, and you can start disarming it in ways you never could, were you to remain captivated by thought.

But meditation does not come naturally. As with any practice, there is a learning curve—which typically involves a lot of thought.

Learning to See

First, there are the instructions: you can’t learn to meditate without having it explained. Then, there are thoughts about the instructions: what makes sense, what doesn’t, and does this technique seem like the right fit? Lastly, there are thoughts about the practice: is it working, and is this actually a good use of your time?

We meditate to escape the gravity of our preconceptions, so it’s not surprising that, in the early stages (and sometimes the later ones too), our conceptions guide our relation to practice. An advanced meditator might see that any thought about practice—good or bad—is ephemeral and impersonal, and warrants no action. But for beginners, such thoughts exert considerable influence.

For instance, novices often notice that meditating makes them feel relaxed. They then conclude, not illogically, that relaxation must be the point of meditation. As a result, they assess their progress based on how relaxed they get when meditating. In the short run, the promise of relaxation can encourage them to practise. Over the long run, however, this view is limiting.

Meditation can liberate you in the midst of any experience, even if you’re agitated or anxious. But if you think it only works when you’re relaxed, you will likely use it to try escaping from feelings of nervousness, thereby missing opportunities to incorporate anxiety into your practice (which can transform your life in ways mere relaxation never could).

Another common trap is the thought that pleasant, psychedelic mental states are the goal of meditation. Shortly after I began meditating I noticed that if I opened my eyes and focused just right, pleasant hallucinations repeatedly rolled across my field of view, eclipsing the world behind them. I took this as a sure sign of my meditative talent and, embarrassingly, I told many people—both friends and strangers—about it. I scoured books to learn what these hallucinations meant, and for about a year I felt better whenever they appeared. But psychedelic experiences, no matter how pleasant, are not the point of meditation either. By obsessing over them we reinforce the grasping tendency of mind which meditation, properly practised, can defuse.

Seeing that Frees

The point of meditation is not a conceptual truth: it can only be realized by meditating. And until you experience its liberating potential for yourself, your working definition of meditation is bound to be mistaken. But, because thoughts inform practice, some definitions are better than others.

To that end, I’d like to present some definitions of meditation which readers might find useful. Each is framed in terms of seeing, because this conveys the intimacy and effortlessness of the practice. Meditation is not a doing which, given enough strain, eventually takes you some far-off goal. It is a seeing, clearly, right now, what is actually happening. Meditation is, in Rob Burbea’s lovely words, a seeing that frees.[3]

These definitions don’t need to be memorized or interpreted, as they are not ends in themselves. In fact, to understand them is to leave them behind, because they point to a freedom which cannot be defined. Take them lightly or, if they don’t seem helpful, not at all.

Meditation is…

Seeing that nothing in experience is remotely personal.

Seeing that you do not own experience, so why fret over it like a prized possession?

Seeing that you are not who you think you are (and neither is anyone else).

Seeing that self-image is an unreliable feedback mechanism.

Seeing that self-judgment is as absurd as judging a river for flowing or a tree for growing.

Seeing that thoughts, sensations, and emotions happen, but not to you.

Seeing that you cannot do anything, because experience is always already here.[4]

Seeing that you are synonymous with everything yet identifiable with nothing.[5]

Seeing that experience has no edges, mind has no centre, and you cannot be found in any reference frame (spatial, temporal, psychological, or metaphorical).

Seeing that tension in your face and body does not mean that you are separate from the world.

Seeing that past and future only exist in thought.

Seeing that all thoughts come with space to breathe.

Seeing that beliefs are different from truth.

Seeing that beliefs are just fleeting passersby.

Seeing that captivating thoughts are often mundane.

Seeing that awareness lights fire to narrative.

Seeing that freedom does not depend on anything being otherwise.

Seeing that being experience is to cease being bound by it.

Seeing that experience is free from any and all imperatives.

Seeing that experience has no meaning (and from here you are free to make meaning that matters).

Seeing that when nothing needs to change, everything changes.

Seeing that experience has no scaffolding with which to confine you.

Seeing that experience is both simpler and more expansive than you can conceive.

Seeing that the fact of experiencing—regardless of content—is where freedom lies.

Seeing that reality is not bound by any attempt to define it.

---

[1]Humans are animals—a fact which I never quite believed when I was younger. But because writing “non-human animals” is clunky, I’ll simply write “animals.”

[2]There is a reason that educated, nonreligious westerners occasionally give up everything to pursue meditation practice for months or years on end. Even the best vacation pales in comparison to the freedom on offer here.

[3]Here is a link to his book; his Dharma talks are also superb. It is a shame that he died so young, but a gift that he left behind such wise instruction. That said, I think he often presents too many teachings in quick succession—leading listeners or readers to jump from practice to practice, never fully settling into one.

[4]Kudos to my good friend Mike for recently reminding me of this framing of practice.

[5]Contrary to what some meditation teachers (and perhaps some of my older essays) say, you are not even awareness. Self-definition, of any form, does not make sense (despite being a necessary social fiction).