Balanced effort in meditation
Contentment and relaxing?
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| Upton's teacher Ven. Revata |
"But, but," I argued, "if I were 'content,' why would I k*ck a*ss? I'm here to out-sit everyone and get still there faster."
She shook her head. She might have laughed if it weren't so pathetic and common among us Yankees. She's British, so I thought maybe she didn't understand the American will to muscle and speed through everything. Oh, she understood it and dealt with it with many students. I thought she must not believe how much I wanted to succeed. I tried telling her.
"All the more reason for you to slow down, relax, take it easy, enjoy it."
"'Enjoy' watching the breath?!"
"That's right, it should be enjoyable."
"I don't remember anyone ever saying that. I'm here to be an ascetic, to skip meals, get into hard yoga poses and hold them, to sit until my bum is numb or aching, until I can't sit anymore."
"Then take some time off."
We were talking at cross purposes, because everything I said to win her approval was causing her to look sad. "There's piti (joy, bliss, keen enthusiasm), you know?"
No, I didn't know. "Not for me there isn't. This is all about suffering and overcoming suffering."
She smiled and shook her head. She's quite intuitive but doesn't tell you that at first. "Maybe that's the problem. Take this retreat to treat yourself extra nice, remembering that your goal is CONTENTMENT. And when you're content, I think you'll see that this is much easier [effortless] than you've been making it or trying to make it."
Oh, she was so right. We Americans, we just won't listen. A lazy student should probably be told to shape up. But a rigid student, an over-eager one has to be calmed down, way down. Persistence is much, much more valuable (profitable) than valiant effort. More than 99% of people who read about how the wandering ascetic Siddhartha became the Buddha will misunderstand what he did to succeed.
Ask yourself, American. What did he do that finally did the trick? It's right in the story, the allegory of his life. Prince is born rich in a kingdom, living in three seasonal-capital palaces, shielded from all hardships by loving (doting, overly concerned and sheltering) father who wants and needs his son to grow up and take over the family business -- ruling this Kapilvastu.
The prince is raised very delicately, receiving all the pleasures one could want, sees the signs at 29, realizes there is suffering in the world (aging, sickness, death, not getting what we want when we want it, getting what we don't want, and never being able to find satisfaction or fulfillment in anything) for everyone including him. He, too, will grow old, get sick, and pass away. This so shocks him that he renounces the throne, leaves the lap of luxury just on the night of having been told the beautiful spouse he married years earlier just had their first child, whom he is sure to love and be held in bondage (rahula) by on account of his love. This whole family bonds thing is going to ruin his quest for truth, enlightenment, and liberation. He will not, as king, be able to save his people from their real problem in life -- suffering (dukkha, disappointment, ill, all that not-getting-what-we-want coupled with getting-what-we-don't want). So he takes the decision to let go and leave it all behind. He sets off for the East. (He was not in India when this happened, and no one else was either as there was no "India" yet, and he almost certainly wasn't in Nepal either, but try telling anyone that. He was in Gandhara, what today is the northwestern frontier of the future Empire of India under Ashoka). He finds a yoga teacher, trains, learns meditation as this teacher believes it to work, reaches the pinnacle, and asks, "Is that all there is?"
The teacher, so impressed with his progress, offers him co-teaching status, but Siddhartha is a seeker and not interested in that. He needs to find why we suffer, and nothing this teacher (Yogi Alara Kalama) has taught him has led him to that. So he takes off again. He meets another reputable yogi (Yogi Uddaka Ramaputta), who takes him under his wing, teaches him, and he reaches the pinnacle, and asks, "Is that all there is?" He gets the same offer, feels the same dissatisfaction, and leaves. This time he sets off on his own to practice what all great wandering ascetics have practiced: penances and austerities (tapas) to subjugate the "evil" body and liberate the "pure" mind/heart/consciousness/spirit stuck in the prison of the flesh. Five others see how hard he's been working and think to themselves, "If anyone's going to make it, it's this guy." So they follow him deep into the woods -- forest groves and lonely wildernesses to fast, meditate, and practice according to their own intuition or as they have learned to do.
The less he succeeds, the more Siddhartha doubles down. He's been fasting and that hasn't worked, so he fasts even more. He's been mortifying the body and that hasn't worked, so he punishes and mortifies it even more. The others are impressed, until he goes too far, falls on his face, exhausted, and near dies. He gathers himself, goes off alone, finds a better tree. And it is there that two women (Sujata and her servant) feed him. He takes food directly from their hands, and the other guys are disgusted and turn away. "He's given up." They restore him to health, he bathes in the river, and eventually he realizes this whole roughing it and blaming the body just isn't the way. He sets off again, finds a better tree, and starts to reflect, "If this hasn't worked, what have I been doing wrong and what would be more spiritually profitable and bring me to my goal of awakening and finding a solution to the problem of suffering?" It isn't his suffering he's worried about. He's lived so well that he hasn't experienced much suffering. It is the suffering of all his relations and subjects back in his kingdom that he's worried about, so he has to succeed.
Suddenly, he spontaneously remembers something that happened to him when he as 7-years-old. He was left in the shade of a tree during the annual Ploughing Festival as his caretakers went off to join the party. Alone for once, he sat cross legged and fell into a very profound meditative absorption (jhana). It was pleasant, absorbing, and so deep that legend has it, as he sat, a miracle occurred. Even though the sun moved through the sky as usual, the shade stayed still protecting him. He may have levitated a bit as well. (And let's say these two things didn't happen, it almost certainly felt that way, that time lost all meaning, he started in the shade and emerged still in the shade feeling that a lot of time must've elapsed, and he felt so light and elated that it was as if here were floating). So powerful was this memory, that Siddhartha wondered if this weren't the way to awakening. A strong intuitive sense came upon him that it indeed was.
And then he takes to wondering why he hasn't allowed himself this pleasant way. After all, he studied and quickly mastered these stages of absorption under his two yogi teachers (in addition to having practiced them a great deal in many past lives). He realizes that this way is full of pleasure (piti, joy), and he's been fearing pleasure. Having had so much of it in the first part of his life, he knows that didn't do him any good for realizing the ultimate truth about life, the universe, and everything. But why be afraid of supersensual pleasure, he reasons, given that it's not wrapped up in the body or tied to lust or anything to do with the world and worldliness? That's true, he realizes, and starts practicing them.
He gets up, goes to the river, places his alms bowl in the river, testing his intuitive sense that he's on the verge of success. If the bowl goes against the stream (opposite the flow of the current) that will be a sign and good omen of impending success. It goes against the stream. Buoyed by this auspicious sign, he goes and finds a better tree, takes a seat under it, and makes a strong determination that he will not get up until he succeeds in his quest even if "his blood runs dry and his body shrivels up." It is success or bust, supreme enlightenment (maha bodhi) or nothing! And with that strong determination, sure enough, he sits, lets go, goes deep, emerges purified by this profound stillness and is able to see things as they really are, taking up the successive stages of mindfulness (satipatthana), considering the question, "Why is there this present suffering?"
- He realizes in successive stages (paticca-samuppada) that on account of this, that came to be, and on account of that, this other thing, and so on through the 12 causal links, tracing back this present suffering to past ignorance that led to karma that led to karmic results that led to so many rebirths that led to this present rebirth, being here now, suffering. And that if it weren't for that unbroken chain of causes-and-conditions this present state would not be arising. That's the answer! Take the lynchpin out of this revolving wheel that leads again and again to suffering!
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| There is an amazing breakthrough waiting |
They are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal. And with that, through the night, he comes to the dawn, and is now the "Awakened One," the Buddha, replete in knowledge and conduct, full of insight and understanding. He remains around that tree that helped him to this realization for seven weeks, sometimes staring at it in admiration and wonders if it would make any sense to try to tell others what he has realized. He decides that it would not because this world, being so enamored of sensual pursuits, has no time for setting that hedonism aside and purifying their hearts/minds to see what Truth he saw and thereby be liberated by that direct knowing-and-seeing because, you know, the Truth sets one free.
Now, we all know that story, more or less. It's an ancient tale, the "Hero's Journey" as Joseph Campbell called it and Hermann Hesse alluded to in Siddhartha (1922). One could go into far more detail, but that's not the point. The question is, how did he do it? What is the KEY turning point in the story that led to his success, American reader?
One need not go back and look through the story. One already knows (or at least imagines that) one knows the answer. Why? It's because of the way we're wired or the way storytellers have been telling it down through the centuries that more than 99% of people will point to the magic line, "He made the strong determination that he wouldn't get up from this seat, even if his blood dried and body shriveled..." But that's completely wrong.
"Well, it can't be completely wrong," people will say, "because it's in the story." But it is completely wrong because he didn't need to say or do that. But he did need to realize and do something else that comes a little earlier in the story. What is it?
He needed to relax, be content, let go, enjoy the ride, stop over-efforting, and remember that the way was through the absorptions (jhanas, another word for which is the "meditations"). Since nearly every American will necessarily try to muscle it, the only people who make quick progress are the ones who don't, the ones who don't know enough to make the mistake of thinking that they know. They practice with beginner's mind, set no goal up for themselves to reach, and allow themselves to just sit rather than scheming and striving, struggling and suffering.
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| Ah, happiness leads to absorption. |
So Upton gave me great advice in promoting contentment. I often forget that in practice as I start to tighten and strain and become exhausted by effort and despair. But there's no telling those Americans to take this up with a light touch, with a playful attitude, with confidence that the historical Buddha well understood what he was talking about and talked about it from direct experience.
We are not our thoughts: Let them pass
- Beth Upton, Sept. 5, 2022; Buddhism Podcast, June 15, 2026; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly
