Clear Mountain Wisdom: Buddhist Meditation, Buddhist & Vajrayana teacher, Sacramento, Roseville

MEDITATION

"Just go into the center of the room, and put one chair in the center. Take the one seat in the center of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come." —AJAHN CHAH (1918-1992)

There are many approaches to meditation and trying to figure them out can be quite confusing. Some approaches use the breath, others a sound such as a mantra, some are done with eyes closed, others with the eyes open. Some approaches are primarily spiritual, others emphasize stress reduction. Now there are many CD’s available that claim to train meditative states. It can be hard to make sense of it all.

The approach we use, which is grounded in the Buddhist contemplative tradition, emphasizes developing active attention. If you tune in to your inner experience, you will quickly realize that there is a constant stream of thinking going on in your mind. If you tune in a little farther, you may also realize that you are constantly reacting to this stream of thinking. This constant stream of thought is not neutral in its effects. From the Buddhist point of view, it is in fact a significant source of suffering in human experience.

You will also find that you cannot stop this stream of thinking by an act of will. This requires training and this is an important aspect of what meditation is all about. In the beginning, we assume an upright posture, either sitting on the floor or in a chair, and bring our awareness to the breath. Every time the mind strays into thinking, we return awareness to the experience of the breath. At first, for most, it is only possible to place awareness on the experience of breathing for a few breaths. This improves with practice. The ability to stay with the experience of breathing develops active attention. As this also cuts chronic stress responses, a greater sense of well being develops.

While this is the basis of meditation practice, it does not end there – there are several other aspects to this practice. Once there is some stability in staying with the experience of breathing, the meditator turns attention on various other aspects of experience. We closely examine how we react to the world and discover that many, if not most of our reactions, are based on our conditioning that comes from family, culture, education, etc. We may fear we are somehow not enough and try to arrange life to prove this isn’t so. Or we may be habitually afraid or anxious about any number of things. The patterns that result from this conditioning are also a significant source of suffering. The middle stages of meditation are about directing attention toward undoing this patterning. We start to feel more free to deal more directly with what is actually happening. As the real sources of suffering become directly apparent, the mediator also starts to develop genuine compassion for others.

Further on, as attention develops and habitual patterning is reduced, we direct attention to look directly at the mind. This is known as the insight level of practice. This eventually leads to a direct insight into the nature of consciousness itself. The meditator directly sees that at the deeper levels of the mind, there is simply a clear, open, spacious awareness – timeless and without boundary. This level of practice has to do with developing the ability to simply rest in this awareness.

The practice of meditation is on the one hand very simple, resting with the breath, and on the other hand not so simple, working directly with what it means to be human. Essentially, meditation is a sophisticated set of tools for working with the mind which is fundamental in determining the quality of life. This tradition of practice was first developed in India and then was refined in Tibet for over a thousand years. At Clear Mountain Wisdom, our purpose is to make these practices accessible to all who are interested.

We also utilize some very sophisticated biofeedback instruments to help people get started in developing a meditation practice. If you have found it difficult to sustain a meditation practice, this approach can be particularly useful. This is described more fully in the section “Biofeedback-Assisted Meditation.”