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Theory of Meditation, Introduction
A Course in Meditation,
2007
by Theodore K. Phelps ©
2007
-from Chapter 6 "The Nature of Meditation" pp. 175-181
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Web readers please note: this text is offered for your information,
not as a replacement for a course of instruction. The text is directly
excerpted from the book, and certain references do not make sense out
of context.
[The following text is the opening five pages of the 125-page
series of essays (five "Talks") putting meditation in perspective and
explaining many aspects of the principle of naturalness with respect
to meditation and its short-, intermediate- and long-term effects.]
What is
Meditation?
In
this series of talks on "Meditation in Perspective," I seek to put
into context a class of meditations I informally call the Naturals. Of
course, Natural Meditation is one of these. Whenever we seek to
understand a new idea, we need to have more than the description of
what it is. We also need a description of what it is not, what its
surroundings are, and what its context and environment are. And that
is what I will attempt to provide in these talks. This will be like a
guided tour in a museum of meditation, spending most of the time with
the Naturals. I expect the ideas will be useful both to students of
meditation practice and students and teachers of meditation theory.
Naturally, the tour must begin with the question,
"What is meditation?" even though we all have some idea about what it
is. I do not intend to alter anyone’s deeply held convictions about
this. Ultimately, meditation is experience, and experience is
personal. But we need some definitions to walk the tour.
Meditation is one of my favorite words. It
catches my eye as surely as does my own name. But at a formal level,
the word covers a broad range of activities. It’s a category term like
sports. It includes essays, poems, short inspirational talks,
sermons, and even casual behavior, such as walks in the woods. It can
just mean thinking. So, if meditation means all that,
does it really mean much of anything? Not really, as a visit to the
dictionary will confirm. Dictionary definitions are brisk and somewhat
circular references to parallel words, such as contemplation,
reflection, and concentration. Admirably, some
definitions attempt to go further and describe the actions that
comprise meditative sittings. But commonly, these descriptions are
one-sided. Here are some real examples taken from current entries in
reference media: "A devotional exercise," "emptying the mind of
thoughts," "continuous contemplation," "sustained concentration,"
"powerfully concentrated state," "focusing attention on a particular
object."
Help! Which is it, an empty mind or a
powerfully loaded one? Maybe we should just dodge the issue, as
some dictionaries do, and be content with, "Meditation: the act of
meditating."
Yet, the word catches my eye and imagination
because it really does point to something—something I care a lot
about. When I see the word used in phrases like learning to
meditate, meditation groups, traditions of meditation,
Zen meditation, Meditation for Dummies (the
book), I have a pretty good idea of what is meant. And I suspect you
do, too. We picture people sitting on mats, chairs, benches, or
cushions, with eyes closed or lowered, the body held in a prescribed
posture, and most importantly, inside the mind of the meditator,
something special going on—maybe something inspiring, cleansing, or
healing, and possibly sacred. Can we make a sufficiently broad
definition for these meditations, the formal sitting meditations that
have long anchored the great religious and spiritual meditative
traditions? It is not easy. Here is my attempt: (I number the five
definitions presented in this talk).
[1] Meditation: the act of engaging an agenda of
mental and bodily actions or postures, usually minimal and
repetitive in form, designed to influence the direction of
attention, usually inward, or the content of thought and perception,
in order to refine subtle functions of body and mind or to express
or participate in a subtle reality.
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| Phew! That’s a mouthful—and a mindful.
Clearly, teachers wouldn’t use this definition to teach people how to
meditate. It is an academic definition attempting to include a wide
range of methods while excluding programs that most of us would not
consider meditation. It defines a big tent.
The definition says that meditation is an act
that follows an agenda, or set of rules. It has a designed
structure and a job to do. It influences the direction of
attention, most often shifting it inward, away from its usual outward
orientation. That shift might come with observation of thought and
feelings, or the appreciation of the inner space that contains and
supports thought. And it might also influence the content of
attention, sometimes doing so by reducing the volume and intensity of
thought and sometimes through the introduction of special thoughts.
Meditation’s purposes match the purposes of the
traditions that created the methods and carried them to us across
generations and often across oceans. These purposes are spread wide,
but I think the definition does them justice. It sets out some common
ground. The definition includes the primary purpose of meditation,
which is improvement. It is not improvement at any layer;
otherwise, it would include weight training. It improves subtle
functions of the mind and body such as observing the mind and
expanding consciousness. We must let the word mind be a
"variable" standing for a wide range of phenomena at the core of
experience, including perception, thought, feeling, heart, soul, and
spirit. The definition recognizes that meditation sometimes is a
non-targeted agenda for direct seeing, approaching, or expressing of
one’s existence or one’s creature relationship to the Creator or other
aspect of the divine.
Recipes of Meditation
Below is a short list of what many people do, or
aspire to, in formal sittings of meditation. The items on this list
are not methods, as such, but a class of meditative actions. Let’s
just think of them as ingredients in a meditative recipe. Methods
often have more than one of these ingredients, with one of them being
the primary ingredient. The recipes using these ingredients are not
always called meditation. They can sometimes be called prayer,
contemplation, or any of a rich variety of terms from the meditative
traditions of the East. If you have experience in meditation, see if
the ingredients of your sittings are shown here. If you don’t
recognize something, the fault is mine.
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•being: just sitting to express existence
•being present: being present with something or someone
•chanting: audibly speaking or singing phrases or names
•concentration: training awareness on a thought or image
•contemplation: following a train of thought or sustaining a flow
•insight: considering the meaning of life, thoughts, or experience
•listening: following sounds, music, words; hearing inner suggestions
•mindfulness: noticing or following thoughts, situations, events, sensations
•praying: offering thoughts to, or receiving from, a higher being
•problem solving: penetrating a riddle or problem
•quieting: withdrawing the senses from the environment or resting the mind
•repetition: recalling a thought, word, phrase, name, observation
•sounding: generating (silently or audibly) syllables or tones
•training the heart: repeating a thought or feeling to make it habitual
•transcending: opening to or absorption in pure consciousness or the divinity
•visualization: creating, following, or steeping in an image
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As I will explain in the next talk (Chapter 7),
what people do in meditation is deeply rooted in their immediate,
moment-by-moment intention, not the verbal definitions, agendas, or
recipes we use to talk about meditation outside of meditation. This
sometimes involves motivations and habits that are not obvious or
chosen, especially in the beginning.
Before leaving the meaning of meditation, I must
note that for some teachers, meditation refers not to an act,
as in my definition, but to a condition of awareness. They might call
the act "sitting" and the condition of awareness "meditation." But,
that is not how I use the word. When I refer to meditation, I refer to
the sitting.
What it’s all about
Here is another tasty list. It names some of the
attributes associated with meditative development. These words evoke
the purposes that have supported meditation and kept it living across
culture and through time.
• balanced living
• compassionate heart and action
• concentration
• effective thinking
•fearlessness
•happiness
• health
• inner power
• integrity
• intuitive understanding
• peace of mind
• selflessness
• spiritual formation
• wisdom
Let’s pause to appreciate the richness of these concepts. If you
like, pick one and let it settle in the mind for a few moments. Let it
steep like a fragrant dried herb in a teapot. Then pour a cup and sip
it as we walk through the next part of this museum.
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