How to Have a Good Meditation Retreat: In Theory and Practice

“If you practice for a result, then it becomes a hindrance.” – Dipa Ma (common advice to students)

“What is important is not the experiences we have but how we get transformed by them.” – Sayadaw U Jagara (recounted by Joseph Goldstein in Reflections on Nibbana)

Thwarted Desires

In Buddhism, there’s a saying that the path is “good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end.” Upon starting a meditation practice, many of us notice surprising benefits. Encouraged by these benefits, we may then seek to take the practice further, setting aside days, weeks, or months to retreat from the world, dedicate ourselves to meditation, and reap the fruits of deep stillness.

Unfortunately these fruits are often not forthcoming, and our enthusiasm for practice (which was so strong at home!) can quickly crumble when faced with a future where lunch, showers, and sleep are the most exciting things on offer. We might have started a meditation retreat desiring great peace, only to later realize that what we truly desire is unlimited streaming and a cold beer, meditation be damned. 

Nothing magic happens simply by virtue of going on retreat. We bring all of our fears, delusions, and self-judgments with us, and it is with these that we must practice—sometimes for a long time. Spiritual maturation requires great patience, which does not come easily to human minds, especially those steeped in consumerist cultures. When we meditate at home, we tend not to notice that we’re impatiently self-soothing with thoughts of what comes next: perhaps Netflix, a good book, or checking our phone. When we meditate on retreat, impatience hurts, as our desires—for meditative experiences, sensory pleasures, or even the end of the retreat—are perpetually thwarted by the reality of bare circumstance.

That said, retreats can lead to profound fruits, if we understand what we’re doing. But few people are lucky enough to develop this understanding without first enduring some pain. Typically, we must watch ourselves get repeatedly burned by our unskillful habits before we’re able to set aside our demands and let experience be, just as it is.

On my first long retreat, I spent two weeks in a state of struggle, doggedly urging a peaceful mind into existence. This made me rather miserable (and I consoled myself with the incongruent thought that if Senator John McCain could withstand five and a half years of torture in North Vietnam, I could withstand two months of meditating at a Burmese monastery). Eventually, it became apparent that my striving was counterproductive and, aided by proper instruction, I managed to adopt a more skillful attitude. By seeing my struggles clearly, I was able to begin the process of letting them go.  

While some trial and error is inevitable, we can waste less time by first learning, conceptually, why we are practising. By not appreciating the purpose of practice, many people prolong their meditative struggles. This can be especially true of beginner meditators, who might be overeager to circumvent thought altogether. But most forms of conscious learning—from music to sports to academics—involve a mixture of theory and practice, and meditation is no different. Far from being a hindrance, intellectual understanding actually lays the ground for a deeper, experiential understanding to take root.

Purpose Informs Attitude

We might begin meditating for several reasons. Perhaps we want better health, reduced anxiety, wonderful experiences, or even irreversible enlightenment (all legitimate desires). As we continue to meditate and thoughts come to hold less sway, these reasons, however valid, intrude less into practice. As our practice matures we might realize (if only intermittently) that any reason is beside the point. This is because meditation is about seeing experience unobstructed by concepts, and reasons exist at the conceptual level.[1]

However mature our practice, thoughts about it will inevitably arise, influencing how we meditate. Some of these thoughts relate to specific techniques (the how thoughts), and determine whether we practise, say, vipassana, TM, or lovingkindness. Others frame the purpose we bring to practice (the why thoughts), informing our attitude beyond the confines of any given technique. Attitude is the most important ingredient in any meditation practice, so it’s important to treat these why thoughts with care.

To appreciate the importance of attitude, imagine two different meditators. The first takes the practice extremely seriously, and believes that one-pointed concentration on the breath will eventually lead to full enlightenment. They also believe that, through meditation, they can gain control of their mind, so as to shut out anything which does not lead onwards to Nibbana, the highest peace.[2] Whenever they notice thoughts, sounds, distractions, or discomfort, they cringe at their meditative failings before latching back on to the breath. The second person has little time for formal practice, but believes that it’s possible to meditate with anything, as long as it’s met with patience and curiosity. When washing dishes, working out, or riding the bus, this person pays attention as if experiencing these things for the first time.

Who is more enlightened?

If we lack curiosity, humility, and patience, we can’t meditate—even when seated firmly on our zafu. Meditation requires us to acknowledge that bare experience, unencumbered by preconceived notions, has something to teach us (even if we’re not sure what, exactly, that is). Without this openness, wisdom remains obscured, hidden behind our fixed beliefs and rigid concepts.

Why Meditate?

Although reasons should not reign supreme in practice, there are many good reasons to meditate which, at base, all point towards the same goal: equanimity. We meditate to be more even-keeled, regardless of circumstance. And to build equanimity, we need only do one simple thing: to see, clearly, what is actually happening in any given moment.

This overarching purpose—noticing what is happening—might seem feeble. How could something so basic lead to peace (and possibly enlightenment)? In the early years of my practice, I was convinced that more was required: stronger effort, grander experiences, or sustained stretches of thought-free calm. Because I desired something more, I could not see the present moment clearly. And without seeing it clearly, I could not learn what it has to teach about equanimity.[3]

By seeing, repeatedly and nonjudgmentally, what is actually happening in any given moment, a tremendous sense of freedom can open up. The first time I truly saw this freedom (I’d had fleeting glimpses for years), the beauty of it brought me to tears. But—and this is important—I did not will it into existence. Quite the opposite: it followed a period of intensive practice in which I’d resolved to let experience unfold, however it presented itself. I’d been making no effort to notice anything in particular. In fact, I wasn’t even trying to be mindful (although I was limiting distractions). Whatever arose, including thoughts, I simply let be, not worrying whether I was practising properly.

During this time, I used a simple image to inform my attitude. I pictured myself sitting at a window, watching a foggy field with a single tree. Often, the fog obscured my view. But sometimes, the fog lifted and the tree came clearly into sight. The fog’s movement was outside of my control; my only job was to watch the field, letting the tree reveal itself when conditions allowed. Just as I couldn’t will the tree into view, so I could not make experience conform to my wishes. All I could do was patiently watch, come what may.

The fog of my mind came in many forms—distraction, desire, delusion, and self-judgment—but however thick it got, it always cleared of its own accord. By allowing the fog to be there, while knowing that it would pass, I ceased clinging to narratives about how experience should be. And when narrative ebbs, equanimity can flow.

Dispelling Meaning

Our inner narrative gives rise to life’s meaning. But when we impute too much meaning to experience, we create problems. For instance, when we feel bored, we think we need stimulation. When we feel self-critical, we wish we could renovate our personalities. And when we feel anxious, we imagine how this will impair future interactions or opportunities. Through narrative, we layer interpretations onto experience, causing needless suffering.

If, instead, we could remain with the felt texture of boredom, self-criticism, or anxiety, we would see that they don’t mean anything aside from the fact of their occurring. Met with bare awareness, they need not lead to any sense of obligation, and it’s wholly possible to be free in their midst, letting them arise, change, and pass away—as all experiences always do.

Meaning screams at the untrained mind, filling it with distorted truths and obligations which can never all be met. But nothing has intrinsic meaning, for meaning is something we conceptually impose on experience—and it continually shapeshifts. Sometimes, when looking in the mirror I’m pleased by what I see. Other times, I miss the hairline of my early twenties. Which meaning is true? Watch life closely, and you’ll see the fickle nature of meaning at every turn.[4]

We live as though experience were incessantly talking, conveying meaning ad nauseum through sights, sounds, thoughts, and sensations. This is our default mode, and it’s often a stressful nightmare—leading many to depression, anxiety, and addiction. Fortunately, a durable alternative exists.

As we train in meditation we learn to dispel meaning, disarming the goal functions driving us away from the peace of the present. The relief this brings must be tasted to be understood, but a simple analogy gets the idea across.

Our default mode is like being in an elevator, crammed with people talking about us: our dreams, doubts, fears, and self-judgments. In this setting, our quality of mind wholly depends on what we hear next; a few short words are enough to send us from elation to anguish. But as we meditate, we learn to stop comprehending the language. On the ground floor, we might have been possessed by what people were saying. By the hundredth, it’s as if everyone is speaking a foreign tongue. No longer able to derive meaning from the words, they become mere sounds. From here, we can simply rest with their changing intonations, not taking anything personally.

This is why simply noticing what is happening is so powerful. By meeting experience cleanly—before we compound it with narrative—we defuse the meaning that holds us in bondage. Peer beneath concepts, and experience reveals its true nature: it is (and always has been) an edgeless, centreless expanse of ceaselessly changing sights, sounds, tastes, smells, sensations, and mental constructs. Seen this way, it is obvious that any attempt to push or pull experience is destined to fail, for such attempts are just more aspects of the everchanging show. In this realm, meaning could not possibly mean anything.

Far from leading to nihilism, this realization—that meaning is fabricated—actually points to a profound and robust peace.

But if bare awareness is so simple, and so liberating, why doesn’t it come naturally?

Evolution and Anattā

Our minds are products of eons of evolution which, by default, served the social, survival and reproductive goals of our forebears above most else. All of our ancestors must have cared, immensely, about navigating the world of Darwinian pleasure and pain. In the African savannah, to ignore these twin forces was to give up on life itself.

As a result, our minds slather experience with Darwinian meaning. We crave food, sex, status, and possessions because these gave our ancestors a bigger share of the gene pool. We fear loss, loneliness, disapproval, and death because these hindered past reproductive success. Bare awareness is unnatural because it pacifies the promise of pleasure and the sting of pain. In so doing, it goes against our Darwinian inheritance, whose lifeblood is frequently craving and fear.[5]

Our fixation on pleasure and our fear of pain are amplified by a strong Darwinian delusion: the feeling that we are autonomous agents, or selves. At some point in our deep evolutionary past, nervous systems “learned” that feeling separate from the universe—despite being untrue—aids survival.[6] Because we feel like agentic selves, we don’t merely pursue pleasure and avoid pain. We also praise or blame an imaginary entity (mine is called “Tristan”) when pleasure is achieved and pain evaded. For instance, after a pleasant, concentrated sit we might think that we are good meditators; and after a painful, distracted one we may think we’re hopeless. But we had no say in the matter—for if we did, we’d have pleasant sits every time!  

Instead of understanding that experience simply happens, in its own place and of its own accord, we imagine that we can make it happen, according to our wishes. This delusion is deep-rooted, and cannot be dispelled by intellectual understanding alone. To reliably see through it, we must meditate.

Meditation reduces self-delusion because, by seeing what is actually happening, it reveals that our minds are not in control. And to feel in control is to feel like a self.[7]

With sufficient awareness we can watch thoughts and impulses arise and pass, neither believing nor acting upon them. Seen enough times, this upends the conviction that we are some sort of thinker or doer—because it’s obvious that we’re not making anything happen.

As we relax our grip on experience, our minds expand and habits loosen. Eventually, impulses cease flowing into actions, thoughts cease flowing into beliefs, and bodily sensations cease flowing into delight or despair. Through intensive practice, we open to a non-Darwinian paradigm of being, where nobody is in control and nothing needs to happen. This paradigm shift is indescribable, but it is characterized by a deep, abiding equanimity—the very heartwood of meditation.

We can catch glimpses of this realm in home practice, but to fully inhabit it we (generally) must go on retreat. However, as mentioned above, it helps to know what we are doing. Merely logging hours on the cushion is not enough.

To that end, I’d like to offer some practical tips which have helped me on long retreats. I invite readers to experiment with these, to see if they help the selfless nature of experience rise to the fore.

Tip #1: Welcome the Hindrances

It can be disheartening when, after a period of calm and concentration, the mind revolts. It might assail us with regret, worry, or self-judgment. When this happens at home, we typically accept it as par for the course. But on retreat, it can cause dismay. We might think that we’ve lost the thread of practice, and could even be tempted to give up, go home, and grab some easy pleasure.

But when meditating, afflictions (called hindrances in Buddhism) are actually blessings. Every time a hindrance arises in practice—whether sleepiness, restlessness, desire, worry, or doubt—we can see it with some clarity, thereby defusing its power. I’ve spent many hours on retreat watching my neurotic, obsessive, judgmental tendencies. And even though they are unpleasant, I’ve learned a lot by viewing them as valuable mentors.

All good teachers emphasize this point: Ram Dass liked saying that everything is “grist for the mill” of awakening; Krishnamurti said, “I’ve no problem because I don’t mind what happens”; and the Australian nun Jitindriyā, in a wonderful meditation on the Waking Up app, says that the heart “find[s] its path to freedom through these things [i.e., afflictive mind states], not against these things or away from these things, but actually through them.”

Plus, no hindrance lasts forever. By clearly seeing their presence, we prime ourselves to appreciate their absence. This helps us better notice the peace of neutral states of mind, which might otherwise seem boring.

Tip #2: Welcome Fear

Retreats can get surprisingly scary, for no apparent reason. For several days on my last retreat I was gripped by ambient fear, which occasionally crested towards panic. A small part of me believed that the fear held meaning: that I should stop meditating, right away, and do something more enjoyable. Fortunately, a larger part of me saw the fear as yet more grist for the mill of awakening.

As we grow more concentrated, we sometimes open to the world of fear. This is a good thing, for a couple of reasons.

First, it is a sign that our practice is working. In the influential 5^th century text, the Visuddhimagga, “knowledge of fear” is one of sixteen stages of insight. And many popular Buddhist books focus on fear, including Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Fear, and Pema Chödrön’s The Places that Scare You. Clearly, fear has played a part in the paths of many meditation masters.

When meditating, it’s not all that important what causes fear; what matters is how we greet it. That said, I have a pet theory for why fear can amplify on retreat. As we get more concentrated, neuroplasticity increases. Within a certain range, this would have served our evolutionary ancestors well, as it helped them adapt to changing circumstances. However, beyond a certain point we approach—and sometimes burst through—the very doors of perception. Here, experience can get so malleable that neuroplasticity would have been non-adaptive. After all, we’re learning to see through the illusion of self, which was installed to increase genetic fitness. By fearing meditative sources of wellbeing, our ancestors might have been more likely than their introspective brethren to pass on their genes. (Not to mention the fact that sitting down with eyes closed could have been a health hazard on the savannah.)  

Second, the arising of fear on retreat presents an opportunity to restructure our relationship with one of the prime drivers of life. We tend not to notice the ubiquity of fear—and because we don’t see it, it causes suffering. The first time I opened to the world of fear, I was surprised to see that it was everywhere. I was doubly surprised to find that, when held with mindfulness, it could not hurt me.

Joseph Goldstein has good advice for meeting fear. Fear causes suffering by arousing aversion, so, as he says, “Instead of trying to keep everything out, can [we] let everything in?” By turning towards the things we fear, and opening to them, we learn that bare fear has no sharp edges. From this vantage point Roosevelt’s famous line, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, does not ring true. Rather, the only thing we have to fear is the darkness of ignorance—and meditation gives us a powerful light.

(When working with fear, be compassionate. If your fears stem from unresolved trauma, or cause prolonged periods of emotional agony, you may want to spend less time sitting, and more time walking, lying down, or even doing yoga. Or you may want to forego retreat until you’ve worked with other healing modalities, such as therapy.)  

Tip #3: Be Playful

Compared to normal life retreat has little excitement, which sometimes feels tedious. For this reason it can be a good idea to inject playfulness into practice. I do this in many ways, three of which are explained below.

I love walking meditation but at times I get a bit bored. When this happens, I occasionally imagine a miniature Sayadaw U Paṇḍita sitting on my shoulder, humorously and ruthlessly critiquing my lack of perfect concentration. For readers unfamiliar with U Paṇḍita, he was a revered Burmese teacher, whose strict approach and high expectations have become the stuff of legend. If, while walking, I notice that I wasn’t perfectly mindful of past steps, U Paṇḍita might tell me that I am hopeless (but that if I keep practising, there may be hope for me yet). Or he might express disdain when I can’t recall whether previous steps ended on in- or out-breaths. Whenever the little Sayadaw appears, practice becomes more fun.

I try to use retreat to cultivate a kind, nonjudgmental heart—but other meditators often get in the way. Between their slow walking, frequent sniffling, and sporadic crying, I can get amply annoyed. When I notice myself aggravated by others, I like exaggerating my negativity to reveal its absurdity. Behind a slow walker on the way to lunch, I might think, “How dare you come here, of all places, and force me to walk so slowly? Don’t you know who I am!?” Next to someone rustling in the meditation hall, I may wonder, “You want to get enlightened, but you can’t even handle some pain? Just grit your teeth and bear it!” I do a similar thing for self-critical thoughts. For instance, if my gait awkwardly stiffens when someone walks past me, I might ask myself, “You’ve been meditating for weeks and you’re still succumbing to ingrained Darwinian conditioning? Utterly hopeless.” By heaping sarcasm on my habitual negativity, it dissolves, allowing more mettā to shine through.

I also like playing with self-conception. Last retreat I imagined that, instead of ‘Tristan the person’, I was a biological neural network (think ChatGPT with senses), running cognitive programs installed in my evolutionary past. Most of these programs related to the Eight Vicissitudes (also called the Worldly Winds), inevitable dualities of life that we tend to crave or fear. These eight winds are gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute, and pleasure and pain.[8] We generally think that we must secure the former of each pair, while avoiding the latter. As such, when these winds come to mind they blow us off balance. But by viewing my reactions to them as the outcome of selfless neural processes, I could hold fast in their midst.

Tip #4: Watch Endings

When a sit ends we typically stand up and move to the next thing, not realizing that we’ve just missed a valuable opportunity. If, instead, you watch experience at this transition period, you’ll see that you cannot actually know when you’ll get up until it happens. This is useful to see.

We generally assume that we cause ourselves to stand. But this assumption rests on not seeing experience clearly. What actually happens when we get up? First comes a thought of standing. Next comes an impulse. Then, we stand up. Thought triggers impulse, which triggers action. No self exists within this causal cascade, for even the thought of standing is kicked off by selfless processes (such as fatigue, back pain, or a glance at the clock).

If, at the end of a meditation session, we resolve to watch thoughts and impulses, we’ll find that we get up when we don’t expect it. I have imagined myself standing many times, only to stay seated. I’ve been convinced by countless impulses that I’m done on the cushion—but then I continue sitting. And then, without apparent warning… suddenly I’m getting up. I love seeing this, because it is incontrovertible proof that the conscious mind is not in control.

You can do something similar after eating, walking meditation, or using the toilet. All transition points are occasions to notice how, in a fundamental way, we do not know what happens next. This teaches us, deeply, that expectations are merely predictive thoughts. And by understanding that life can never be precisely predicted, we can rest more easefully in its spontaneous unfolding.

Tip #5: Set up Checkpoints

If we limit mindfulness to formal practice, we can never awaken to the rest of life. Retreats allow us to bring strong awareness into mundane tasks, such as eating, doing laundry, or brushing our teeth. For this reason, it’s helpful to use certain tasks as reminders to be mindful.

I set up a few of these mindfulness “checkpoints” on my latest retreat. When drying my hands, I noticed the sound and feel of the paper towel. When eating, I noticed how masterfully the tongue manipulates food. And when walking past other meditators, I noticed self-consciousness coagulate and dissipate.

The point was not to have perfect mindfulness during these activities. These checkpoints merely served as gentle boosters, encouraging the momentum of practice to infuse more moments of its own accord.

Tip #6: Take Breaks (in Moderation)

Effort in meditation is a tricky balance. We cannot consciously will wisdom to appear, but without bringing a skillful intent to many moments it will not bloom. Meditators often put in too much effort, getting tight as a result. Counterintuitively, taking breaks can teach us a great deal about right effort.

Every day on retreat, I take a tea or coffee break. I don’t worry about the time, and I forgive all lapses in awareness (I also forgive myself for judging my lapses in awareness). During these breaks, I notice something interesting: mindfulness is present (more or less), even when I’m not purposefully fanning its flames.

This highlights the point that mindfulness is less like something we do, and more like something that happens. It does not depend on strong effort so much as it depends on maintaining conditions in which it can flourish. By seeing how mindfulness does not depend entirely on us, we can relax in a way that aids awakening.

Tip #7: See the World of Thought

Thoughts fool us more than we think. Even after years of meditating, we might mistake whole categories of thought for objective truths: about our practice, ourselves, and the world.

It is important to realize that thoughts about meditation are simply thoughts. Many meditators appreciate the ephemeral, insubstantial nature of thoughts about work, finances, or relationships.[9] At the same time, they often concretize views about practice.

On my first few retreats, I obsessively tallied my meditation. When I hit ten hours per day, I felt alright. When I surpassed twelve, I thought that I must be getting the hang of it. And occasionally, when I grit my teeth and did sixteen or more, I figured I was at liberation’s doorstep. But, as Sayadaw U Tejaniya once told a group of us, counting one’s time on the cushion is not meditation. It never matters how many hours you meditated in the past, because the past is only ever a thought in the present. What matters is how you show up now.

That said, you may not be able to help but bring compulsive thoughts to practice. If so, that’s not a problem—but you’d be wise to notice the tendency.

It is also helpful to notice self-reference. When we’re not mindful, it seems like self-referential thoughts point to something inside of our skin (often implicating our face). As mindfulness grows, it becomes increasingly obvious that self-reference points to nothing but further thoughts.

No direct link exists between, say, a thought about how you look and the feeling of your face. The thought does not exist within the feeling, nor the feeling within the thought. These are different aspects of experience, which we conflate in wisdom’s absence. Just as thoughts of the weather don’t hold rain, thoughts of yourself don’t hold your body. This might not seem obvious now, but if you hit your stride on retreat you may wonder how you were ever fooled (and might foolishly believe that you’ll never be fooled again).

Lastly, I recommend experimenting with thoughts about the surrounding world. We generally think that we exist within three-dimensional space, which has a distinctly visual quality. For instance, when I look left it seems like the visual space to my right still exists, and vice versa. But this is wrong. Looking left, my vision of the right entirely disappears, and my mind swaps in a placeholder image which tricks me into thinking that something visual remains.[10] In terms of experience, the seen world disappears when you look away.

To make this vivid, try something simple. While sitting with eyes closed, notice thoughts of your surroundings. Then, open your eyes and see how sights differ. Notice how the layout of the room, the size of objects, and your field of view were inaccurate with eyes closed. By juxtaposing thoughts of your surroundings against actual sights, you can teach the mind to relax its grip on its spatial constructions.[11]

This might seem like just a neat psychological fact, but it has implications for wellbeing. By toning down the felt reality of our surroundings, we take a load off. After all, how many times have you gotten stressed purely by thinking of your surroundings?

Tip #8: Don’t Nap (Right Away)

On retreat, naps are tempting. And sometimes, napping is wise. However, by facing tiredness directly we can transform our relationship to fatigue, while also experiencing useful states of deep calm.

When working with sleepiness, don’t wrestle with fatigue. In wishing tiredness away, it becomes more unpleasant. If instead, you allow sleepiness to be, you can weave awareness into the tired mind (even if you repeatedly doze off). As this awareness strengthens, it sometimes illuminates surreal landscapes of pseudo-sleep, in which concepts and reactivity are reduced while the glow of experience remains.

If this sounds too daunting, fear not. When the urge to sleep strikes, you can still act on it. Just don’t act right away.

When I’m tired on the cushion, I might sit for another half hour, noticing whatever I can. If I keep nodding off, I’ll get up and try walking. And if, after half an hour of walking, I’m still exhausted, I’ll lie down. While lying in bed, I notice how it feels to crave sleep. I also notice how the craving is distinct from the feeling of sleepiness, and how it’s actually the combination of these that feels bad. Sleepiness alone is not a problem.

Sleep is a state of non-clinging. By directing awareness towards it, we gain valuable insight into non-attachment.

Just Notice

The Buddha (allegedly) said, “Apart from letting go of everything, I see no safety for sentient beings.” This statement might sound too strong to some readers, but by watching experience a simple truth becomes obvious: by quelling craving, we quell suffering.

Many meditators, upon realizing this, come to crave the end of craving. They then practice in a manner that, rather than helping to reduce clinging, actually exacerbates it. We can avoid such tendencies by remembering the point of practice: to notice what is happening now. See experience clearly, and practice naturally bears tremendous fruit.

And that’s really all there is to it—whether we’re at the beginning, the middle, or the end.

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[1]“Seeing experience unobstructed by concepts” does not mean that you must stop thinking to be a good meditator. Simply see thoughts clearly, and they no longer obstruct your view of experience. On (and off) retreat, I’ve learned a great deal by watching thoughts.  

[2]For a skillful discussion of Nibbana, see Dan Harris’s recent interview with Joseph Goldstein.

[3]The Burmese master Mahasi Sayadaw warned against such tendencies with a cute analogy. Just as an archer who aims past a target is bound to miss, a meditator who applies too much effort is doomed to tension and frustration.

[4]This is one of many implications of the liberating truth of emptiness. The world has no selves, no essences, and no inherent meaning in sight.

[5]Of course, we also have cultural (and personal) inheritances. But these are stacked on top of our Darwinian inheritance—and they often amplify, rather than subdue, its afflictive character.

[6]I suspect that this feeling might go beyond nervous systems, to plants and maybe even bacteria. Aspects of this idea are fleshed out in the non-fiction book Galileo’s Error.

[7]Technically, nobody has ever felt like a self—since selves don’t actually exist. Because we naturally believe in selves, it’s hard to understand this point. But in a similar way, nobody actually believes in God—rather, they believe in their thoughts of God. No one has ever brought God into existence simply by imagining that He exists. Likewise, nobody ever brought a self into existence just by imagining that their self exists.

[8]I have regularly imagined myself explaining the 8 vicissitudes to friends, in a manner which causes them to praise me. These are deeply conditioned tendencies, which we cannot will out of existence. But we can notice them, repeatedly, without judgment.

[9]This is not to say that none of these things are important. It’s simply to say that they are thoughts, not reality.

[10] Of course, something is still there—but whatever reality is, it’s not visual.

[11]As concentration grows, not just concepts but also perceptions may come loose. The sense of being oriented in 3D space can get subdued, or the feeling of the body can entirely disappear. But to get to this point, the path is the same: simply notice what is happening (which includes noticing any desire for such perceptual shifts).