(2021-12-31) Chapin Novice Meditators Notes Late December

Sasha Chapin: Novice Meditator's Notes, Late December. Meditation is, right now, one of the most meaningful parts of my life. But I’m not an expert; I’ve probably practiced for somewhere between 500-1200 hours in my life, which is, like, one-twentieth of what people do before they get called Roshi, or start a sex cult, or whatever. So I share these reflections with you in a spirit of curiosity, rather than authority.

If You’re Having Trouble Meditating, Maybe the Problem Is Not Your Meditation Skill

Over the last year, I greatly improved my self-esteem, partly with chemical help. One weird side effect is that I can suddenly meditate. My ability to achieve deep contemplative states increased instantly.

now that I’m in a more forgiving state of mind, it’s much easier to gently allow my attention to return to an object when my mind wanders, which is a much better route to improved focus than chastising your brain for doing the natural things it does.

Many people in our culture suffer from self-hatred or at least a lack of self-compassion. And, while meditation can be a great crucible for destructive thoughts, it can also provide a canvas for those thoughts to operate unopposed.

So, if meditation really frustrates you, perhaps there’s a different bottleneck you should address: your lack of comfort with yourself. (Maybe look into this, or this, or this, or the chemical help mentioned at the top of this section.)

the work of Rob Burbea, which I would highly recommend.

I don’t want to get too into his deal here, because you could just read this post by Tasshin Fogleman for a thorough, heartfelt introduction

Roughly, Rob’s attitude seems to have been that the Buddhist tradition is about liberation, and that liberation should feel good, otherwise, what kind of liberation is it?

It’s not that Rob preaches that every moment of meditation should feel warm and pleasant. Some of the practices in his fantastic book, Seeing That Frees, are disorienting. Some feel like reaching back to the projector that produces consciousness and flicking a bunch of important switches on and off. But, taken as a whole, Burbea reminds you that your practice ought to feel freeing and positive.

Paradoxically, this permission to optimize for pleasure has made me more adventurous as a meditator;

Some Thoughts on Metta

We now live in a meditation-industrial complex, where millions are made off apps promoting mindfulness, often with the stated goal of increasing your performance and focus. It’s a shame that this is the main benefit extolled, when there’s a whole meditative tradition centered around making your heart softer and more generous. The world could use a little more focus, but it could use a lot more compassion.

But loving-kindness is hard for a lot of people. The classical approach involves repeating phrases like “may you be happy” while thinking of people in your life, and this can feel like you’re beating your heart with a rolled-up newspaper and trying to demand it burst with light

Instead of thinking that I’m creating compassion when I meditate, I now consider my goal to be increasing the salience of what’s already there.
When I relax and think about how cool it is that I’m here in an eyeblink of consciousness between two eternities, it’s natural that I feel gratitude.

When I reflect on other human beings, it’s normal to feel compassion, or at least the desire that they’re given the opportunity to make the best of their brief lives

So now the procedure, for me, is something like this: I achieve whatever relative calm is available at the moment, and turn my thoughts towards the direction of gratitude compassion, and then pick up on whatever intensity of feeling naturally occurs, whether it’s a faint spark or two, or something bigger. And then, without judging the intensity of the feeling, or lack thereof, I start trying to apply it to myself, and then others, with the phrases

it’s like I’m listening to some beloved music a little more deeply than usual, which tends, naturally, to increase my appreciation for it.

I do have a minimal routine (habit): every day, I do one medium dose of loving-kindness, and one shorter dose of some other thing. But otherwise, I play around a lot whenever I feel like it. I’ll do random exercises from Seeing that Frees, I’ll frame my perception in fun ways while I’m driving, I’ll try to play with any loving-kindness I feel towards random people in Home Depot, stir my drink in a non-dual fashion, etcetera.

This level of playfulness has brought me a bunch of unexpected sensory insights, and it’s improved my more formal meditation as well. If you’re not fucking around with your consciousness for fun, I would highly recommend it.

Jhanas Are Amazing, Academic Psychology Is Ridiculous

I have achieved jhānas 1-4, thanks pretty much to Rob Burbea and Nick Cammarata. And I no longer believe that positive psychology is a real field. Because, guys, what the fuck.

• positive psychologists, at great expense, spend their time coming up with thrilling insights which are basically identical to what your grandma would tell you
• And as for the jhānas, what do we have instead of systematic study? Some great stuff, some bad stuff. Different traditions argue constantly over what the right method is.

And this is all normal, a beautiful natural part of the dialogic search for truth. But humanity’s ability to achieve endless non-addictive bliss shouldn’t rest on an individual person’s ability to stumble upon the right MP3 of a dharma talk.
If we’re studying anything in human happiness, this should be near the top of the list.

It almost makes you think that academic psychology is a LARP, more focused on polishing existing paradigms than on exploring the full breadth of conscious experience that’s possible. Almost.