Meditation: How to do it

Chaos is a friend of mine

-Bob Dylan

Before traveling to Thailand to learn meditation, I had no idea that my friends and family would be interested in ever practicing it. Since that trip however, I've had the pleasure of showing it to loved ones in various cities, including new friends here at Harvard and MIT. We are all motivated to learn meditation by something, perhaps curiosity at first, perhaps because we feel there is something missing from the way in which we experience daily life, perhaps we've come across a significant life event that becomes unmanageable, or perhaps it's due to something else. Whatever your motivation, below are a set of simple instructions (as simple as I could make them) that will show meditation to anyone willing to spare 5 minutes of their day.

I hope you find it useful.

The Grandest Illusion

The great obstacle is always the representation and never the reality

- Etty Hillesum

Preconceptions and misconceptions have engulfed the concept of meditation. Some people believe it's tied to Buddhism and cannot be detached from archaic supernatural beliefs. Others believe it's simply a tool to relax and reduce rampant stress levels in the mind and body. Still others who ponder it a bit more deeply - though still erroneously - argue that it detracts from our very human ability to experience the full spectrum of emotions. One common theme seems to unite the people who believe any or all of these things however - none of them have ever truly meditated. So what is it really about then?

It is about dispelling an illusion - the illusion that our subjective experiences are equivalent to objective reality.  

Say what?

Opening the Mind

Know Thyself

- engraved at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

Many civilizations have regarded self-knowledge as the catalyst and indicator of wisdom. The path to self-knowledge is self-examination, but that is no longer a component of our education system as it once was. This is unfortunate by any account. In our modern westernized world, self-examination seems to have been limited to the areas of interpersonal counseling and few others.

The White Flag Hypothesis (2 of 2)

It is only after we have lost everything,
That we are free to do anything.

Underlying every human experience, mine and yours, there is a hidden but ever-present psychological struggle with existence itself. As we all know but seldom discuss, there is no way to win this struggle – we can’t help that our consciousness will cease to be at some point. Maybe sooner, maybe later. Given the futility and stress inherent to this phenomenon, we’ve become quite adept at hiding this primal dilemma of human life. The better we hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist, the better off we will be. Or so we think.

The White Flag Hypothesis (1 of 2)

If you young fellows were wise, the devil couldn't do anything to you, 

but since you aren't wise, you need us who are old.  

- Martin Luther

As people age and the end of life comes clearly into view, something weird and interesting happens in the brain. Call it a "cognitive shift" or transcendence for now. This "shift" happens not only to old folks; but also to people who are afflicted by a terminal illness, experience the death of a spouse/child/best friend/sibling/parent, suffer an intense life-threatening accident, lose all of their possessions and/or wealth, experiment with psychedelic drugs, etc. (geez, all the cool stuff right?). See my previous post for some real world anecdotes. In essence, these events act like powerful psychological triggers in the brain, often resulting in a wildly transformative shift away from current views of ourselves, of other people, of deeply held values or beliefs, and of our very understanding of existence. Whew!

The View from Outside

If we concern ourselves with meaning, society provides us with little direction.

I've always been curious, perhaps uncommonly so. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I remember wanting to conduct an experiment interviewing older people who were nearing the end of their lives - say, 80 years or older. The setting wouldn't matter (nursing homes, family homes, in a cabin in the forest, etc.) but mental clarity certainly would. The main question I wanted to ask them was, "Having lived a 'full life' and possessing more wisdom than most, what would you say are the best ways to spend one's time?" In other words, "What truly matters?" I always had an underlying feeling that the various life pursuits advocated by family, school, and television were cleverly constructed distractions from what truly matters. The real answer to that question may produce a considerable degree of anxiety, but I figured these old wise folk - with less concern for social constructs - could shed some light on it.

Wheel of Values (research series)

 

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.  - Aristotle

Here's an intriguing psych/sociological finding that's caught my attention recently; the initial question is: what values are embedded in our brains by the society we grow up in? It's difficult and perhaps a little unfair to judge an entire social system negatively off the bat, but if we break the system into the human values it advocates among its inhabitants, we can more fairly and accurately evaluate the subjective "goodness" of the system based on these individual values.

After an in-depth analysis spanning a couple of decades and tens of social scientists, a list of 9 universal human values was compiled. Here they are:

Conformity/Tradition: restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms.

Security:  safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and of self (social order, family security, national security, reciprocation of favors, clean, sense of belonging, healthy).

Power: attainment of social status and prestige, and control or dominance over people and resources (authority, wealth, social power, preserving my public image, social recognition).

Achievement: personal success through demonstrating competence according to social standards (ambitious, successful, capable, influential).

Hedonism: pleasure or sensuous gratification for oneself (pleasure, enjoying life).

Stimulation: excitement, novelty, and challenge in life (a varied life, an exciting life, daring).

Self-Direction: independent thought and action such as choosing, creating, exploring (creativity, freedom, choosing own goals, curious, independent).

Universalism: understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature. This contrasts with the narrower focus of benevolence values.

Benevolence: preservation and enhancement of the welfare of people with whom one is in frequent personal contact (helpful, loyal, forgiving, honest, responsible, true friendship, mature love).

The resulting pie chart was named the circumplex model of values. In this model, the values (represented by slices of the pie) that are closer to each other share similar structures and go hand in hand, meaning that they are pursued together (i.e. Achievement and Power). Theoretically, our pursuits are concentrated in one contiguous area of the chart, and we cannot scatter our pursuits in opposing areas. In fact, the values opposite each other are incompatible and extremely difficult (if not impossible) to pursue simultaneously (i.e. Achievement and Benevolence). Here is the chart:

Circumplex model of values, Schwartz (1992).

So now, what values does our society encourage? It may be of little surprise that free market capitalistic societies promote the values of Achievement, Power, and Security above others. What is surprising, at least to me, is that the pursuit of these values is incompatible with the pursuit of the values Self-Direction, Universalism, and Benevolence. You can't pursue Power while pursuing Universalism. You can't pursue Self-Direction while pursuing Security. You can't do both. You have to choose.

The foundational tenets of our society (i.e. self-interest, competition, financial success, and materialism) have allowed the generation of great wealth and alleviated certain problems facing humanity - undoubtedly so. However, it is important to remember that these aims conflict with and undermine pursuits long thought by psychologists to be essential to individual and collective well-being. These include helping the world be a better place, having committed, intimate relationships, and feeling worthy and autonomous (Kasser et al., 2007).

References:

Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theory and empirical tests in 20 countries. 

In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, (Vol. 25) (pp. 1–65). New York: Academic Press.

Kasser, T., Cohn, S., Kanner, A.D., Ryan, R.M. (2007). Some Costs of American Corporate Capitalism:
A Psychological Exploration of Value and Goal Conflicts. Psychological Inquiry, 18 (1), 1-22.