Having Trouble Meditating? Great-You Are Doing It Right!

For the seated practice,

I just first of all invite you to check your posture,

Find a way that you can sit that's both comfortable or relaxed.

You might check the alignment of your spine,

Your head balanced on top of the spine,

The feet on the floor,

Your hands at your sides or in your lap.

And if you feel comfortable doing so,

You can gently close your eyes or just cast your gaze down to a neutral spot.

Begin by just bringing some gentle relaxation into the body,

Starting by smoothing out the brow,

Releasing the jaw,

Letting the shoulders drop,

Checking for any tension down through your shoulders down to your abdomen.

And if you sense any tension there,

Taking a few slow deep breaths and just receiving those breaths into an open relaxed belly.

Feeling the body in the chair,

The points of contact between the body and the chair,

Relaxing down your legs to your feet and feeling the points of contact between the feet and the floor.

A sense of groundedness between the feet connected to the floor and just fully arriving into this moment as being simply alive,

Awake,

Looking for the quality right now of this moment for you as the spinning world just pauses for a moment and you're here without complication in this feeling of stillness or openness where there's there's nothing to do,

Just have a sense of how how different that is,

How there's a natural stillness which is there right behind experience and feeling into the quality of your heart right now and if it's helpful you can even put your hand on your heart and and just ask the question,

What do you feel right now?

Is your heart troubled or is it open?

Is it yearning or is it quiet?

Is it afraid?

Is it energized?

And it's not so important which it is,

Just check to see what you feel,

Whatever is there right now.

And during the busyness of the day it can be hard to allow yourself to feel what's in the heart.

Just take a moment to feel into the heart,

What's there right now?

And sensing into the heart you can ask yourself,

What's my intention for this meditation tonight?

What do I seek?

Is it simply to rest in this quiet or a moment of peace,

Comfort,

Or is it an opening to love or awakening to the vastness of presence?

So what is your desire for this time?

Maybe something quite simple or something bigger,

Whatever it is,

Just allow it to resonate inside of you.

You can see if you can find a word for it,

Whether it's peace,

Presence,

Kindness.

And just let that word soak in like a light that shines and illuminates more and more for you.

And maybe as you rest with that word you could feel it getting brighter,

Stronger,

And starting to fill the body.

Feel into the sensations,

It may be a warmth or a softness,

Some energy.

Just allow the sensations to be as big as they like,

This beautiful intention of yours,

Filling you with that radiance.

And you might feel it just naturally moves beyond you and starts to fill space around you.

So this is you,

This is the purity and goodness of who you are.

You can just pause and rest here.

And with this deep intention and with this goodness that is right here,

You can also pause to recognize the part inside you that is unsure or uncertain.

And in getting close to or feeling intimately this deep desire for peace or calm or liberation,

You can also recognize the unsure or the doubting part.

And rather than being worried about this uncertain part,

You can just pause to get to know it better,

Welcome it to this space.

And feeling where you can locate this uncertain place or this fearful place and first by offering thanks for its help,

For its desire to protect you.

And pause to ask if you can just step back for just a moment.

And ask what it says to you about this path of liberation,

About this process of unfolding.

You can just let this uncertain part,

Just let it be itself.

And just express in its own words what it's feeling.

And this opinion about the process is separate from you,

But you're blended in a way that can feel very close.

So ask this uncertain part if it will loosen and soften back and give you some space so you can know it better.

And how do you feel towards this uncertain part now that you see it's just a part?

And ask it what it wants to tell you or what positive intention it might have.

It could be trying to protect you from being hurt.

And you can feel some compassion or understanding for this part.

Can you thank this uncertain part for all its hard work?

And start to feel some connection some spaciousness as you connect,

Recognize it.

And you might ask this uncertain or doubting or fearful part what would happen if it didn't do its job in this harsh way and just feel compassion towards it.

To see whether you can feel this unconditional love towards this part.

That somehow you're the same and yet you're separate.

And just give yourself confidence you can navigate this journey of awakening.

Checking to see whether there's anything else this part wants you to know.

Or anything else you would like to let this part know.

Sensing that awakening is here that it's unfolding and letting this part know that you're happy to be on this journey,

This relationship with it.

And when it arises you can greet it.

You can say hello.

Thank it for its concern.

And you can just let your breath deepen.

And just sense an embrace of all these parts.

This beautiful intention within you for this meditation.

The beautiful embrace of all of your parts.

And the kindness that you can extend.

Just allowing your breath to deepen.

Feel the rhythm of the breath just washing over your heart.

And just allowing yourself to rest in the stillness.

And as you're ready in your own time you can come gently back.

Open the eyes.

Invite the whole visual field back in.

You might think that meditation is the easiest thing in the world.

Like we are simply opening ourselves to this experience of our true nature,

This open,

Awake awareness,

This aliveness,

This interconnection between all beings that really is our birthright.

The luminosity of our true self,

Like just meditation being plugging into the source or just plugging in your batteries to recharge them.

And certainly I think probably we've all had these beautiful openings in meditation of the heart and mind.

Getting a sense of greater balance or ease.

Deepening a sense of kindness or compassion or joy.

These are all habits in meditation.

But we also know that these are not the only experiences in meditation.

That there are many times in meditation where you have a strong sense that things are not going well.

That it doesn't seem to be working.

There are roadblocks,

There are obstacles.

There are times where you close your eyes and either your mind is just completely out of control or you feel like jumping up out of your seat and hanging before the door.

And for me,

As I was first learning to meditate and hearing some of these teachings,

It was a huge relief to me to find out that all of these experiences were very much part of this path.

As much as all of those other experiences are,

That all of these troubles or difficulties were not something that was wrong with me,

But actually were part and parcel of what this path truly is.

And that the Buddha,

2,

500 years ago,

Created a list of them which is the same list that we teach and rely on today,

Which is,

I think,

Something really remarkable for me about these teachings.

It always strikes me that if you thought about the Buddha 2,

500 years ago,

Living in the north of India,

His life could not be more different than our life today,

Whether you think about the social context or the language or the culture or the economic or social structures,

What have you.

There's really nothing similar between his life and our life except for the human heart.

Like the human heart.

And that was his terrain,

Right?

That was the terrain that he wanted to look deeply into to ask these questions about its troubles,

Its sufferings,

Its afflictions and what is the path out of those.

He said that,

I teach one thing and one thing only,

Which is suffering and the end of suffering.

And that's it.

And if you're interested in something else,

You can go someplace else,

To another teacher,

But this is me.

This is what you get.

This is what you get from me.

So just to begin with a bow of gratitude to this human,

He was not a deity,

He never said he was a god,

He never said we should believe what he said because of some obedience to some religious creed,

But because it rings true,

It like resonates in our hearts now,

These 2,

500 years later.

Tonight,

I'm going to talk a little bit about these hindrances as we call them.

And to sum up the whole talk,

To give you the punchline up front,

It's first of all,

It's normal.

In some ways it was a huge relief for me to hear that for the first time.

It's normal.

And recognizing and understanding them and skillfully navigating them is actually the path to deepen and not to stabilize the practice.

This is the deepening of the practice.

So,

I'll give you the classic list.

Alright?

So here we go.

And you can tell me whether this resonates for you.

First of all,

Not enough energy.

Sleepiness,

Dullness,

Drowsiness.

Anybody ever experience that in meditation?

Okay,

Good.

Or too much energy.

Restlessness.

Like you cannot sit still.

Right?

Next,

Grasping or craving,

Particularly for sense pleasures.

What you're going to eat when we're done here.

What you're going to do next weekend.

The mind has just this enormous creativity for thinking about anything other than meditation when you're meditating.

And going to the far end of the spectrum,

To the most delicious,

To the most hard craving that you can imagine.

The greatest fantasy that you can imagine.

But there's always a catch here,

Which is one is that these are things that are very unlikely to happen in our lifetime.

Or,

They're things that just don't ultimately deliver,

Even if you get them.

And I recall another teacher talking about being on a long meditation retreat.

And in the retreat house they would put up the menu for lunch,

Which is the main meal of the day.

And she saw a few days later that they had pizza on the menu.

And so,

In her meditation practice for the next few days,

She was thinking about pizza,

And just how good that was going to be.

And the day arrived.

Finally the day arrived,

Right?

And they were indeed serving pizza.

And she got her slice and she sat,

It's all silence of course,

She sat down and she ate the pizza and her reaction was,

It's just pizza.

That's it.

How did I get so worked up over this?

It's just pizza.

Or,

Next on the list,

Aversion.

Something you can't let go of,

Right?

Something somebody said or did,

Or a negative feeling you have about yourself,

Something that you did that you feel some regret over.

Especially early in my practice,

During meditation,

I wrote many,

Drafted many emails and letters to people,

Trying to set them straight.

Drafting and redrafting,

You know,

Over and over again.

Or,

Aversion,

It can be physical pain,

I've had some back pain,

And in meditation sometimes all there is,

Is that back pain.

Or the final one,

Which is actually where I'll spend more time,

Is on doubt.

On doubt.

It could be about the meditation,

It could be about yourself,

It could be about life,

Most broadly,

Doubt.

So everyone too probably has a favorite hindrance.

You have one,

The most frequent visitor during meditation.

And you can also have what's called a multiple hindrance attack,

Where they all gang up on you all at once during your meditation.

They get together.

So I'll start,

Before I talk some more about doubt,

I'll just offer some practical suggestions.

These are also kind of classical suggestions about hindrances.

The first one,

Sleepiness or dullness.

Traditionally it's known by these old English terms sloth and torpor,

Which is really a result of some of these texts being translated into English during the Victorian period.

So you get the feeling,

The sloth and torpor.

But it's very evocative.

I think those words somehow are very evocative about what we actually all experience,

That cloudiness of the mind.

So I think for this one there's just a lot of practicality,

At least for me.

First and foremost,

When do you meditate?

You shouldn't leave it to chance.

It's better to plan.

For me,

The morning is better.

For me,

Early,

After I shower and clean up,

Have a little coffee.

That's my prime time.

Not going to exercise,

Having a big breakfast,

And then sitting down to meditate.

That's sleep.

That's what we call sleep.

I'll also say a lot of my meditation practice over the years has been on my metro ride.

I get on at Wheaton Station.

I ride all the way to Farrakhan North.

I have 30 minutes.

I always get a seat.

That is how I've been meditating for 10 years now,

There and back,

30 minutes each way.

I usually don't fall asleep.

That's why I miss my stop.

But most often I do not.

And then also just some other practical suggestions.

First,

If you feel it coming on,

You can just reset your posture.

Just try to get yourself settled again.

You can take a few deep breaths to energize the body.

You can open your eyes briefly,

If you meditate with eyes closed,

Just to bring some more energy into your body.

Or,

And this is particularly true in long retreats,

You can just briefly stand up.

Slowly stand up,

Just for a minute or so,

And then sit down again.

That's a great one.

So craving,

Let's talk about craving.

First,

Most important is the realization of what's going on.

It's like you've slipped out of the meditation.

You are in full-fledged craving.

So you can just stop and note,

I am craving.

And identify what you're craving for.

You can try to return to your anchor,

To the breath,

To the body sensations.

But if the craving is really strong,

Or the fantasy is very strong,

Sometimes you can just go with it.

Be aware of what's happening.

Just go with it.

And let it run its course.

Let it run its course.

And also,

Reconcile yourself to whatever you thought was going to happen in this meditation.

You are going to be craving.

Maybe you thought you were going to have a blissful experience,

You were going to have insight of some kind.

You are going to have craving today.

That's what's been ordered up for you.

And that has a way of really kind of taking the energy out of it.

So that,

At least for me,

After a minute or two,

Often it just starts to dissipate on its own.

It's like,

It doesn't know what to do.

I got your attention.

I don't know what to do with you now.

Also,

Having that experience can build a lot of confidence in the meditation,

In the sense that you can feel like,

You know what,

I can include this as well.

I can include this as well.

And if you can include anything in the meditation,

That can really energize your practice.

Aversive states of mind.

So,

If you have an itch,

Or you don't really like your posture,

You're feeling too warm,

I say,

First,

If it's at the beginning of meditation,

Just make adjustments.

If you're starting to meditate and you're feeling like something's not quite right,

Make those adjustments.

But then as meditation progresses,

And you change your posture two or three times,

And it's still not there,

Or you still have that itch,

Even though you've scratched a couple times,

Then again,

It's sort of like,

Well,

This is what's been ordered up today,

On the menu today,

Is an itch.

You thought it was going to be awakening.

It's itch instead.

And so,

It's like,

Okay,

So what's itch like?

Okay,

Let's sense into this.

Okay,

That's that irritation.

It's sort of this warmth.

It's like a little dull pain.

See if you can get inside of it.

And again,

Give yourself a confidence that you can include this as well.

Same thing for more serious pain.

I've had some sits where the back pain has been pretty intense.

And again,

It's sort of like,

Okay,

Let's be with the back pain.

What is that like?

How does that feel?

Often when you focus on it,

Really sense what the pain is.

First of all,

You realize that it's localized.

And second,

As you really come in close contact with the sensations,

You start to feel that they're actually changing,

Often diminishing.

And so that becomes this intimate encounter with those sensations.

So,

Doubt.

Finally,

Doubt.

And this is the most insidious,

I would say,

Because it really can have this paralyzing effect on your entire practice if you start to say to yourself that this is making no sense.

I'm not getting anywhere.

I don't know why I'm doing this to begin with.

I feel like I speak as something of an expert here because I've encountered all of these experiences of doubt.

So I'll give you a few flavors of them.

One is,

You're just having trouble settling down.

You sit down to meditate and you're having trouble settling down and this thought crosses your mind about is this really for me?

How did I get into this thing?

What was it that made me think that I could do this?

Because it just doesn't seem to work for me.

Another one is particularly if you've been meditating a while and maybe have heard a bunch of instructions about meditation,

You can sit down and meditate and you're just not sure,

Like,

What am I doing today?

Like,

Of all these things people have told me to do when I'm meditating,

Some people say,

Watch the breath,

Or maybe it's the body,

Or maybe some sounds,

Or maybe it's just open awareness,

Or maybe it's compassion practice.

You can sort of start to stress on that.

This one teacher offered this image of being in a tour group in a foreign land and you don't know the language and you're getting separated from your group and you're not sure which way to go and then you're seeing several groups and you're not sure which is your group and you don't know whether to go straight or left or right,

Back or forwards.

Or it's like if you walk into a grocery store to buy a bag of corn chips and there are twelve kinds of corn chips there and then you remember reading an article about the one that was supposed to be really good but you can't remember the name and then you remember you're supposed to buy the organic but that doesn't really taste that good.

So then your mind is completely confused about what to do.

I heard a talk recently by a very experienced meditator who addressed this question of having lots of instructions out there and not sure what to do and he said that when you sit down to practice it's like a musician and a musician obviously has to learn technique,

Has to learn their instrument has to receive all the instructions,

But when you sit down it's just like you get together with a bunch of friends and he said you all plug in your amps and then you just start to play together.

So I love that image of it's like improvising it's like jamming a little bit when you sit down we sit down together in this group.

So when somebody asks you where you're going on Monday you say I'm going to go jam with my Dharma friends at the Seekers Church.

You can tell them that's where you're going.

So another one I would say is for me,

Situational doubt so again maybe you've been practicing for a little while and maybe you have some confidence that you kind of get the hang of this,

Right?

You kind of got this thing this meditation thing and then something really hard happens and everything that you've learned and all the techniques they do nothing for you and so you get hit by serious doubt as to like is this practice for real,

You know?

Ram Dass the author of the 70's spiritual classic Be Here Now said that when he would come across somebody who really thought that they were enlightened and had gotten pretty far on the path he would suggest that they go home and spend Thanksgiving with their family.

Because that would probably cure that sense that they had gotten all the way home.

Laurel mentioned,

It also reminds me of a story of my older brother he and I grew up with my mom who had a very explosive personality and he went off to law school and the next time he was going to see our mom he prepared for weeks because he was going to have these cogent arguments to respond to her explosive personality and the things that she used to say to us and so he practiced for weeks and then afterwards I called him to ask him how it went and he said it was completely useless because a few minutes in suddenly he found himself yelling at my mother again and no help whatsoever.

I'll just conclude the story by saying that years later they reconciled and actually we both spent a lot of time caring for her in her last years.

And then finally a big doubt.

Big doubt about everything.

And you know if you're practicing in a group,

I don't know if you've had this experience you can often catch a look at the people meditating around you and you know they have such good posture and they have their eyes closed and they look so serene and you can just imagine all the lights going off inside them and you know the realizations that are going on and so forth and then you look inside your own head and you think to yourself what am I doing here?

There's a phrase that says compare and despair.

Compare and despair to the person next to you.

And for me I spend one or two weeks a year at the Forest Refuge at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts at a beautiful,

Beautiful retreat center out in the woods.

Hundreds of acres of nature preserved there.

And two years ago I started my retreat things were going really well at the beginning.

Lots of great stuff was happening and as the days passed it was getting harder and harder and I wasn't sure like wait a minute what's happening here?

What's going on?

And I finally,

When I finally got to the last day,

I didn't know what was going on.

And I can remember very clearly they give you an envelope on the last day to make a donation to the retreat house and inside the envelope is a brochure and on the front of the brochure is a photograph of all these people in the meditation hall with their eyes closed meditating smiling.

And I remember looking at the brochure and thinking to myself oh wow look at them.

They know how to meditate.

I wish I knew how to meditate because I didn't know anything about meditation.

And I was feeling very sad for myself and then suddenly I realized oh this is doubt.

Oh oh this is doubt.

Oh okay.

This is doubt.

I get it.

Alright.

I've read about this.

This is doubt.

Oh great.

Yeah.

This is a hindrance.

Oh good.

Okay.

And it completely turned the tables on the whole thing.

It's like ah it's doubt.

Well and it's not proof that I lost my way on the path.

It's like oh I'm on the path.

This is doubt.

How about that?

And so that you know there is that initial break that separation where you sort of wake up and say like ah I get it.

Where it's like oh it's aversion.

Ah I get it.

It's aversion.

And that really changes the whole energy of the whole experience.

And then also like that's just a thought.

You know all of that that's just a thought.

What about that?

Huh.

What are thoughts?

Thoughts come and go.

Huh.

Wow.

It has no substance.

Right?

There's a story of a nun who goes to the abbess complaining that doubt was the primary challenge on her Buddhist path.

And she doubted the teachers.

She doubted the teachings.

She doubted the path itself.

And most importantly she doubted her ability to succeed in the Buddhist practice.

Your problem said the abbess is not that you doubt it's that you don't doubt enough.

If you are going to go to the trouble of doubting please continue and do it more thoroughly and doubt the doubt itself.

Doubt the doubt itself.

So there is then with all of these hindrances the recognition,

The sense of okayness.

The Buddha said the mind is naturally radiant but from time to time it is visited by these hindrances.

So I'll leave you this evening with three things that you might try in your own practice.

The first and this is particularly with regard to doubt but is applicable to other hindrances.

The first is when you feel the energy of the hindrance once it's recognized die down a little bit you can ask it this question about is it true so again sort of turning the tables on it the same way that it's using reason to kind of really get to you.

Say is it true the fact that you are meditating is proof that you are a good meditator.

The fact that you are meditating now and most of you have been for I think some time is proof that you are a good meditator.

And we also know the research shows that even people who have meditated for a few weeks for a relatively small period of time are actually changing the structure of their brain to strengthen those areas of the brain that focus on emotional regulation and higher order thinking and so forth.

So we know these things to be true and also the consciousness of change in yourself can be very slow in coming.

I mean I know for myself that from one month to another somebody said well have you gotten better in the last month?

I don't know if I've gotten better or worse in the next month but I can say that over the course of years for me it can be very heartening to look back and recognize the changes for myself from years back and I'll say that many years ago I had a very good friend who said that when he thought of me as a friend the first sort of energy that he would think of was anger.

And of course when he said that I got angry at him for saying it but later I recognized it was actually true at that time but if I try today to even conjure that person it's very hard to even find that person back inside me.

So all of those I think are encouragements.

You can ask yourself with doubt,

Okay you want to be,

Let's be really frank about this.

I mean this practice has I can see the change.

I know I have confidence in it for that reason.

So that's number one.

Number two that obstacles do not block the path,

They are the path.

That's a quote I included for the intro today.

They're the means by which we really awaken the Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah who was Jack Kornfield's teacher.

Jack and other Westerners had gone to Thailand to study with Ajahn Chah and there were so many Westerners during that period,

Late 60s early 70s,

That then eventually he sent some of them to the West to start monasteries first in England and so Ajahn Chah went to visit one of the new monasteries in England and asked them how it was going and they had these glowing reports.

It's like,

Oh,

So many students and things are really growing and this and that and he was listening and listening and listening and when they were finished he said,

Well that's too bad.

He says,

You're really not learning much,

I guess.

Because everything is going so well.

That little doubt,

Little awakening.

Great doubt,

Great awakening.

And last,

When you see the doubt appear and you recognize it and some of the energy just goes out of it that you don't need to stop there.

But you can see the doubt as not your enemy or your adversary,

But it's some part of your psychological makeup.

It is a part that is in some ways trying to protect you.

It is trying to make sure you're safe.

It doesn't have the full story.

It's misguided,

But its intention in some ways is genuine.

So with that part,

You don't want to try to eliminate it or reprimand it or deal unkindly with it.

You can recognize it for what it is trying to do and then ask it if you can get a little bit of space.

Like,

Will you give me a little bit of space right now?

And then in that space you can allow life to continue.

So maybe we'll do one more short meditation here and we'll just work with this a little bit before we conclude.

So I invite you just to find again a position,

A posture that works for you for this brief meditation.

And wherever is good,

You can just settle in for a minute.

Just again,

A way that's relaxed for you,

But also enables you to be alert.

And you can just go back inside for a moment.

And you can just bring to mind for yourself some sort of uncertainty or doubt that you encounter in your own life.

It could be with your practice,

Where it's going or it could be some other way in which the path is not clear for you right now.

And you can ask yourself whether you can simply abide with this uncertainty or this doubt.

Abide with the way things are.

And as much as your mind wants an answer or a solution right now or thinks how much better things would be without this obstacle or this uncertainty or this doubt,

See if you can just take a moment to recognize and turn towards it and see it and ask it whether it can give you a little bit of space and feeling that you are separate,

But somehow blended together and thanking this part for trying to help,

To trying to protect you,

Being concerned for you and thanking this part that's trying to work out or protect you in whatever way it is.

And as this part feels that comfort or that kindness that you're extending to it,

Feel the space that opens in that uncertainty.

You're not looking for an answer to some question,

But just feeling the okayness,

Feeling that the uncertainty or doubt can rest and it can loosen its grip.

And just allow the rest of the life to arise around it.

And as you're ready,

You can come gently back.