Our secret practice (ironic meditation)

Do you meditate? If so, why? And what do you consider to be a good meditation?

If not, have you considered it? If yes, what’s motivating that consideration? What do you think you’ll get out of it?

Take a moment to actually answer these questions for yourself.

Now with your answer in mind, let me ask you this – to what extent is your answer about trying to bring about a certain kind of experience, like calm for example? And if you sat down to meditate and got something very different to that – emotional turbulence of some kind – to what extent would you try to push away or drown out that turbulence?

Last week at my meditation group, one of our members told us of a struggle he’d been having in his meditation. An issue at work had been irritating him and he found that this angst was intruding on his meditation practice. He’d try to calm the mind, focus on the breath, or sound, or the body, but time and time again, this irritation would barge in to his mental movie cinema and take over the show.

Our friend’s frustration was that he wanted his meditation to be calm, to find some serenity. But what he got was quite the opposite – tension, agitation, irritation.

In one of my favourite books Ending the Pursuit of Happiness, author and Buddhist teacher Barry Magid talks about our secret practice. A key part of practicing the Buddha’s wisdom is allowing our experience to be what it is; to accept that whatever’s here is here, investigate it if it’s helpful from an attitude of genuinely wanting to know it, and to let it change and morph and move on when it’s ready, as it does.

Ultimately, if we’ve truly accomplished the acceptance of our reality, we in fact get to the point where we stop hungering for the pleasant and trying to dodge the unpleasant. We give up our habitual chasing the nice and fleeing from the not-nice. We allow whatever’s here to be here, we know it, learn from it if possible, and let it go on its way.

Sometimes – maybe even often – meditation brings some peacefulness to our body-minds. Without vigilant mindfulness however, we can easily slip back into our old habits of yearning for the pleasant, and meditation itself can be co-opted into this agenda. This is where meditation becomes part of our secret practice, that is, we meditation to feel good rather than meditating to be with whatever’s here.

This is ironic meditation. The very practice that can unhook us from our reactivity, is reactively used to avoid that opportunity. Avoiding it tends to make it worse, as the aversion in our body-minds is allowed to stew.

It’s often the case with personal growth that the only way around emotional difficulty is through it. You’ve got to feel it to heal it as they say.

The solution, if we find ourselves engaging in our secret practice, this ironic meditation, is not to berate ourselves or give up. It’s simply to notice what’s happening and bring two attitudes to that noticing - curiosity and compassion.

With curiosity, a simple question to ask yourself (in a curious tone, not a judging tone) is: what is this? Or what’s going on here? …and then leave some quiet space. The mind will proffer up some possible answers. Keep asking these questions and allowing space for answers, until it runs out of ideas. There might be several things going on, and perhaps several feelings present. You’ll know when you’ve nailed it as there’ll be a sense of resolution in the body – a drop in tension.

The reason we also need to bring compassion to the party is that sometimes we can get a bit judgey towards ourselves as we discover the unskilful patterns we’ve been allowing to run. This can be especially true if we’ve been on a growth path for some time, and especially if it’s a pattern we’ve seen before – seriously?! THIS again?!

In these moments we need to remember that we are human beings. There is likely some fundamental human need or some element of flourishing we’re trying to protect. And it’s also the case that we don’t always ask for our thoughts, most of them just arise unbidden as our minds try to do their age-old job of protecting us. We need to give ourselves a break.

Wandering off our growth path like this doesn’t matter, it’s no big deal. It’s part of the gig of being human.

It’s what we do next that matters. The moment we decide to bring curiosity and compassion to our experience, we’re back on the path.

A serene meditation is not the definition of a good meditation. It’s pleasant, for sure, and it can help us see clearly our own experience. So it CAN be a good meditation.

But so can a turbulent meditation. If we think of meditating as noticing or being aware, then holding our seat through angst or upset or irritation (like a rider staying in the saddle on a bucking horse) is also a good meditation. Practicing awareness through emotional turbulence is really strong practice!

So, can you see how desperately chasing serenity when turbulence is actually what’s here, is an ironic use of meditation practice? It’s essentially saying no, I don’t want this experience, I want a different one! It’s aversion to the unpleasant.

It’s also rather futile as our friend in the meditation group was finding. The only way around the turbulence is through it – to allow it, get curious about it, and bring compassion to what we find. Turn and face it rather than fleeing from it.

Of course, if the mud puddle of our mind is so stirred up and cloudy that we can’t notice anything at all, then skilful practice might actually be going for a run or swim or bike ride, or having a good cry, or a sleep before we come back and try again.

What comes up for you when you think of a good meditation? Would it be helpful to adjust your definition at all?