Questions about Meditation

An academic philosopher inquires:

 

As usual, I want to ask you about something (something you're free to blog about).

 

Since December 2015, I've practised mindfulness meditation, with low intensity. Just 20 minutes or so each or every other day, paying calm (if possible) attention to things as they were happening in my mind or in my body. It's been great, mainly as an antidote against anxiety.

 

These days I have asked myself, could I gain something more, or something deeper, from my practice? If so, how? By practising more intensively, even painfully? Or by praying during, or after, my practise? The first path is carved with admirable precision in some Buddhist, step-by-step manuals . . . . But it might eventually lead me into a land of -- what seems like -- mental disorder and metaphysical madness (sensory overload, intensive fear or disgust, the impression of no self and of the nullity of classical logic).  On the other hand, no comparably detailed manuals for following the latter path seem to be available . . . .

 

So I wonder, what would be your suggestion to someone who considers meditating more seriously and in line with really good sources yet who wants to turn neither insane nor Buddhist?

 

First of all, I am glad to hear that you have taken up this practice.  Philosophers especially need it since we tend to be afflicted with 'hypertrophy of the critical faculty' to give it a name.  We are very good at disciplined thinking, but it is important to develop skill at disciplined nonthinking as well. Disciplined nonthinking is one way to characterize meditation.  One attempts to achieve an alert state of mental quiet in which all discursive operations come to a halt.

 

It is very difficult, however, and 20 minutes every other day is not enough.  You need to work up to 40-60 minute sessions every day.  Early morning is best, the same time each morning.  Same place, a corner of your study, say.  Posture?  Seated cross-legged on cushions, with the knees lower than the buttocks. Kneeling has spiritual value, but not for long periods of prayer or meditation.  Breath?  Slow, even, deep, from the belly.

 

There needn't be any physical pain; indeed, there shouldn't be.  If the full lotus is painful, there is the half-lotus, and the Burmese posture.  Depending on the state of my legs and joints, I adjust my body as needed for comfort and stability.  A lttle hatha yoga is a useful preliminary.  Or just plain stretching, holding each stretch for 20-30 seconds.

 

A certain mild ascesis, though, is sine qua non for successful meditation/contemplation.  You have to live a regular life, follow the moral precepts, abstain from spiritual and physical intoxicants, and so on.  A little reading the night before of Evagrios Pontikos, say, is indicated; filling your head with mass media dreck & drivel contraindicated.  

 

Meditation is an inner listening.  The receptivity involved, however, opens one to demonic influence.  So there is a certain danger in going deep.  It is therefore a good idea for a Christian meditator to begin his session with the Sign of the Cross, a confession of weakness in which one admits that one is no match for demonic agents, and a supplication for protection from their influence.  I recommend you buy a copy of the spiritual classic, Unseen Warfare by Lorenzo Scupoli. (Available from Amazon.com) Anyone who attempts to make spiritual progress ought to expect demonic opposition. (Cf. St. Paul, Epistle to the Ephesians, 6:12: ^"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.")

 

Since you are interested in the Buddhist approach to these matters, you may find useful my post, The Christian 'Anatta Doctrine' of Lorenzo Scupoli.

 

Could deep meditation drive one mad?  I would say no if you avoid psychedelic drugs and lead an otherwise balanced life.  You could meditate two hours per day with no ill effects.  

 

But if you go deep, you will have unusual experiences some of which will be disturbing.   There are the makyo phenomena described by Zen Buddhists. (Whether these phenomena should be described as the Zennists describe them is of course a further question.)  For example, extremely powerful and distracting sexual images.  I once 'heard' the inner locution, "I want to tear you apart."  Inner locutions have a phenomenological quality which suggests, though of course it does not prove, that these locutions are not excogitated by the subject in question but come from without.  Demonic interference?

 

But on another occasion I felt myself to be the object of a very powerful unearthly love.  An unforgettable experience.  A Christian will be inclined to say that what I experienced was the love of Christ, whereas a skeptic will dismiss the experience as a 'brain fart.'  The phenomenology, however, cannot be gainsaid.

 

Will deep meditation and the experiences that result drive you to accepting Buddhist teaching according to which all is impermanent (anicca), unsatisfactory (dukkha), and devoid of self-nature (anatta)?  I don't think so.  Many Buddhists claim that these doctrine are verified in meditation.  I would argue, however, that they bring their doctrines to their experiences and then illictly take the experiences as supporting the doctrines.  

 

For example, if you fail to find the self in deep meditation does it follow that there is no self?  Hardly.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Now that was quick and dirty, but I have expatiated on this at length elsewhere.

 

Does the path of meditation lead to the relativization of classical logic, or perhaps to its utter overthrow?  This is a tough question about which I will say something in a subsequent post that examines Plantinga's critique of John Hick in the former's Warranted Christian Belief.

 

Finally, I want to recommend the two-volumed The Three Ages of the Interior Life  (not the one-volumed edition) by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.  (Available from Amazon.com) This is the summit of hard-core Catholic mystical theology.  This is the real thing by the hardest of the hard-core paleo-Thomists.  You must read it.  No Francine namby-pamby-ism here.

 

Related articles

Some Philosophical Positions Valuable Only as Foils: Extreme Nominalism and Eliminative Materialism

Gratitude: A Thanksgiving Homily

Old Age and Study as Pleasure and Prophylactic

Why a Philosopher Should Meditate and Why it is Difficult for a Philospher to Meditate

Meditation is Hard

Buber Contra Buddhism

Jack Kerouac: A Buddhist Wanderer Comes Home

Michael Walzer on Religion

Comments

[VV]

Bill,

This is fascinating, and useful.

Just one admonition. I doubt it is enough to avoid psychedelic drugs and lead an otherwise balanced life.

It seems that people doing intensive meditation along Buddhist lines regularly need a competent teacher to overcome (without unnecessary harm) stages of fear, disgust, sensory overload, etc. Cf. www.buddhistgeeks.com/2011/09/bg-232-the-dark-night-project

In addition to that, I dare to say, they also may need yet something else. Say, certain philosophy or religion to prevent the Buddhist belief (all is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and devoid of self-nature) or maybe even the belief that classical logic isn't true.

[VV]

As for the Scupoli post,

It is very interesting but I don't think Scupoli wants to say there what the self is or is not, in the sense of strict identity. He only wants what the self does or does not originate. In fact, what he says in the quoted passages is compatible with the self being identical to, say, the body.

[BV]

V,

I guess I don't get the 'sensory overload' part. Isn't it more like sensory deprivation?

[Whyaxye]

I have been practising meditation for some thirty-odd years now, and think BV's post is an excellent one, full of sound advice. As for this:

Will deep meditation and the experiences that result drive you to accepting Buddhist teaching according to which all is impermanent (anicca), unsatisfactory (dukkha), and devoid of self-nature (anatta)? I don't think so. Many Buddhists claim that these doctrine are verified in meditation. I would argue, however, that they bring their doctrines to their experiences and then illictly take the experiences as supporting the doctrines

It is worth remembering that the path recommended by the Buddha is much more than meditation. It might be that these doctrines (if such they be) are verified in meditation, but such verification would require the other aspects of the path (morality and wisdom) as necessary conditions. Meditation alone is a necessary but not sufficient condition, according to the canon.

Of course, one might practice all three aspects of the path, have experiences, and still take them as illicit verification. This is a potential pitfall that presumably imperils all spiritual searching.

[VV]

Bill,

The link in my first comment clarifies that. Search there for "overload" and "truck". Sensory oversensitivity might be a better word.

[BV]

Thanks for the comment, Whyaxye.

You are right to question whether the Buddhist doctrines, as I referred to them, are really doctrines. After all, the Tathagata is supposed to have no theories.

Long before Wittgenstein had a ladder, the Buddhists had a raft.

And you are right to point out that the other aspects of the path are necessary conditions.

And to be fair, I admit that Christian interpretations of meditation experiences are brought to the experiences and so cannot be taken as conclusively verified by the experiences.

[VV]

Bill,

A tough one on ascesis. Would you say that, in general, all sexual activity is a hindrance? Even something worth dispensing with, in return for progress in meditation or other ways spiritual?

[BV]

V,

Yes, to both questions.

All sexual activity is a hindrance to spiritual development. This is not to say that sexual abstinence is sufficient for such development; nor is to say that that sexual abstinence is necessary for such development: there is such a thing as grace.

I take it that a key difference between Buddhism and Christianity is that the former is a 'self-help' religion, a religion of 'own power' whereas Christianity insists on the need for divine grace and 'other power' in addition to one's own efforts.

Perhaps we can say that the Protestant mistake is to think that God does all the work and that we only need faith.

But why should sexual activity be a hindrance? Because it drags us into the body and enslaves us to bodily pleasures in such a way that things of the spirit appear unreal.

This is why priests and monks take vows of chastity.

Ratzinger fully understood that Platonism is essential to Christianity.

[Vlastimil]

Bill (and Whyaxye),

I want to ask, which meditation techniques do you practice? Or rather, do they include some specifically Buddhist ones? Even vipassana/insight practice?

Some Buddhists told me that doing vipassana seriously always tends one towards Buddhist belifes. I wonder if you agree. Or if you think that vipassana practice as such is not exerting that tendency and that the tendency is rather exerted by the combination of the practice with certain doctrines brought into the practice.

E.g., yesterday I read (in a Buddhist manual by Daniel Ingram) that when practising vipassana -- in a way that increases the speed, precision, consistency and inclusiveness of our experience of all the quick little sensations that make up our sensory experience -- "it just happens to be much more useful to assume that things are only there when you experience them and not there when you don’t. Thus, the gold standard for reality when doing insight practices is the sensations that make up your reality in that instant. ... Knowing this directly leads to freedom."

Will the vipassana practice tend me to believe that "useful" assumption, so useful for becoming to believe the Buddhist doctrines? Also, can I make any serious progress in that practice without making that assumption?

[Elenchus]

>> the former is a 'self-help' religion <<

That’s right. And the former turns out to be a religion according to which there is no self to help, and no self to do the helping!

>> the Protestant mistake is to think that God does all the work and that we only need faith. <<

Dallas Willard noted the distinction between effort and earning. He wrote that (Christian) grace is not opposed to (human) effort. Rather, grace is opposed to (human) earning.

“The path of spiritual growth in the riches of Christ is not a passive one. Grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning. Effort is action. Earning is attitude. You have never seen people more active than those who have been set on fire by the grace of God.”

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=5

[Vlastimil]

Bill,

May I ask again? Do you practise anything like vipassana? If so, have it tempted you to embrace the Buddhist doctrines of anicca, dukkha or anatta?

[BV]

V,

I am working on a separate post as we speak. These are topics that interest me greatly. Thanks for asking about them.