A Lighter Approach

When I began to meditate in earnest at home, my awareness was inconsistent. I over-compensated for this spotty awareness by putting in a lot more personal effort. I wanted to be as mindful as possible but I was just too tired to do any more than that. Even then, there was only so much I could do. After some time, I began to notice a lighter, general, but discontinuous awareness that, done day after day, formed a pattern of long-term practice. The momentum that came out of general awareness created these dots that came together to form a tsunami of awareness that could be seen clearly.

We do not believe gentle awareness will work or trust that it will grow into something so we are not patient with gentle awareness. Personal effort uses our own effort while waiting patiently for momentum to grow uses a natural process, a natural law, and natural energy. Unfortunately, personal effort is short-lived and does not allow us to function in the day-to-day. We then begin to doubt our ability to live our lives with awareness.

The idea of figuratively looking lightly out of the corner of your eye describes a kind of awareness that watches the workings of the mind in its receiving state. The mind becomes aware of all the objects that match this mental frequency. Alternatively, when we turn and pay attention solely on the objects, and make too much effort to see these objects, it will feel like the objects have disappeared because the observer and observed are no longer at the same frequency. We can use an analogy with the optometrist here. When you go to the optometrist, they might have you try out different power lenses to determine what would work for you. When the power is right for you, then you see the letters clearly. When the optometrist tries out a power that is too low or high, the letters on the chart become blurry. It’s the same deal with the mind that is at the right frequency with objects. While you may assume that putting in more personal effort will yield better results, you may still not be able to see clearly.

A light, general awareness allows us to continue functioning, to do the activities we need to do while a light recognition of what is happening works steadily in the background. This very gentle awareness, while not continuous in the beginning, will eventually gain momentum. When it becomes a natural, continuous awareness, it will really feel like you’re aware and you’ll feel like you’re living this awareness in everything that you’re doing. For me, it was at this point that I really understood the true nature of vipassanā meditation and began to believe that it is possible to become enlightened while living life.

Using wisdom

Meditators often forget to use their natural wisdom when they meditate at home because they haven’t practiced using it. Investigate and use your wisdom to check in on whether awareness is present and how much effort is being used instead of blindly putting in more effort. Here are some considerations: Can you see your level of effort? Is there stability of mind? Do you know what that experience is like? Do you know your level of confidence or faith? Is wisdom at work? Meditators can normally recognize when there is awareness. However, fewer meditators can recognize wisdom at work.

Wisdom is one word but it operates in so many ways.

Sometimes we miss the fact that wisdom is there and doing its work because we aren’t familiar with the ways of wisdom. We are not close to wisdom like we are close with close friends. We’re more familiar with effort. I see meditators trying hard to stay awake. When we are sleepy we should instead do a bit of investigation of this sleepiness. Why is there sleepiness now? What has brought it on? What does it feel like? Instead meditators react negatively to sleepiness. They will try different tactics to fix the sleepiness instead of seeing it as it is and learning more about it. I see this playing out in the dhamma hall during sitting sessions. Some meditator starts falling asleep and the expression on his face shows that he is unhappy with himself as he picks himself up. Blindly continuing these actions could just form bad habits.

If sitting meditation makes you sleepy, sometimes being active can be good. If you give the mind work to do, if it is being actively aware, then it will be alert and awake because it is doing something. You can also try sitting with your eyes open.

We need to use wisdom the way we use our intelligence to solve problems, grow our businesses or think through what needs to be done at home and at work. In daily life, we figure out how to do things, consult with the right people and strategize to make a profit. We need to recognize the presence of wisdom and apply similar skills to meditation.

Problem-solving for yourself

I often circulate around the Dhamma Hall of the Shwe Oo Min Meditation Center in the afternoons. There was a nun who sat right up front and I would see that her face would turn pink, over and over again. Later in the interview I asked her why she was blushing repeatedly while she sat. She said that it was because of her body’s tendency to pass a lot of wind and she felt bad for the person sitting behind her, every time! So she went red in the face when her body did it again. I asked, “So what are you doing sitting in the front of the hall? If you are concerned and if this is what your body does, sit at the back of the hall! The door is wide open and you don’t have to sit in front.” This meditator felt that she should have been sitting up front because she was a nun. We cause ourselves trouble with our beliefs. Suppressing such bodily needs can be uncomfortable and eventually make us sick. Instead, we can find alternative solutions.

Set yourself free! Do what you need to do to meditate instead of holding certain ideas in your heads without considering an appropriate solution.

Creating a Dhamma community

Before I began meditating, I was the black sheep of the family. My words carried little to no weight because I was known to lie about things. But about three years into my practice, I spoke less and less, as I watched my speech very carefully. By then, everyone would listen whenever I spoke because what I said was something of value. They listened because they knew that what I said had a lot of thought behind it. Sometimes my family would be unnerved because they knew what I was saying to be the truth.

My family had regular Sunday social get-togethers where we would eat and then talk. The conversations usually revolved around the latest cars, movie stars, and such. I had been meditating for some time by then and found this to be a waste of time. I considered what could be done and slowly an idea formed in my mind. One day I suggested that we all meditate together. All of us had meditation experience because my father used to bring us all to the monastery. So they agreed to meditate. We all sat for 15 minutes initially and then we would eat.

After a while the idea crystallized, and we sat together in meditation every time we met. After eating or during the meal I then suggested a discussion and we would talk about life, whether we were happy or unhappy. I would ask them one by one, “How do you feel about your life? Do you feel satisfied with your life?” The party would turn serious; one brother replied that he was not satisfied with his life and another replied that it was 50:50. Slowly my siblings began to share the details of their lives and feelings, and someone would cry after sharing and get some relief. It was not something they had considered. Everyone was just sort of going through life, time was passing by, and they’d never given any thought to how they were living their own lives.

From one week to the next, the questions would continue: If you’re not happy with your life, how do you make yourself happy? How do you deal with it? We brought the Dhamma into the conversation and it turned into Dhamma discussions.

With wisdom, you will also know how to help others.