Dear W.,

You asked about how to turbocharge your meditation practice. Well, you didn’t use the verb “turbocharge,” but that’s the gist of it.

My answer falls into four parts:

1. Motivation
2. The ethical
3. The metaphysical
4. The technical

Motivation

All of us need to find–deep, deep within–our reason for doing something and, indeed, for continuing to do something. 

At some point, most secular meditators will discover that they’re just going through the motions. I’ve heard about this, in particular, with those who received a mantra through TM. Forget about secular meditation: the mind cannot, ultimately, be controlled nor can the body.

When we spoke, I argued that going through the motions is not meditation. It is, in fact, the very opposite: throughout the day, there is usually wandering mind (rajas), and when there is not wandering mind, the tamas (ignorance or darkness) predominate.

One must break this pattern just as one must break in a horse. Through determination. How exactly?

Ask:

• What do I really want from life? What are willing to die for, to die to?
• Indeed, what is it that keeps bringing me here? Just routine? Feeling a bit of momentary peace? Or much, much more?

You need to find your motivation, and then you must grab it by the horns. 

The Ethical

One reason, apart from others, is that you’ve already run roughshod over other people. (We all have.) You’ve been critical of them. You’ve acted callously. You’ve held grudges and spoken out of pettiness, sometimes out of anger. You’ve been cruel in ways small and large. “Fine,” you might say. 

Not fine. Because–trust me–your wife is already slowly accruing resentments toward you. They’ll take about 10 years before they start to become downright outbursts of anger. Before then, nitpicking and carping will appear. And your son, the one who’s not yet born, will slowly accrue hurts, many of which he’ll blame on you someday.

Unless–that is–you take meditation very seriously and start to dissolve the sense of being a separate self. For it’s out of the latter that suffering continues–for you and for your family.

Thus, once more, the second reason: stop harming others and, in due course, be able to help them. (You can’t really help someone so long as you take yourself to be a separate self.)

The Metaphysical

“Who am I?” is a question that cannot be answered by the finite mind. What’s more, at some point, it becomes very experientially clear that you’re not the physical body, that you’re not the senses, and that you’re not the mind.

Then who or what are you? That’s the question!

Only the experiential answer to that question can truly be liberating. Liberating in what sense? It liberates you from suffering and from continuing to harm others. It liberates you from–you.

The Technical

When you sit down to meditate:

• Have the strong resolve to investigate your question. All other thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions are thus beside the point.
  • I called this “zest.”
• Get into a proper posture: firm base, tall spine, soft arms and hands.
  • Occasionally check on your posture. Drowsiness is likely a sign that you’re not sitting firmly and in balance. Don’t be satisfied with pitching forward, falling backward, leaning left, or careening right. Sit straight!
• See any discomfort that arises–be it mental or physical.
  • In fact, regard any discomfort as though it were a single star that’s temporarily appearing within the vast firmament of the night sky. You are that night sky. This star is no more and no less salient than any other objective experience. Treat all objective experiences as gentle, flickering stars; give none more or less weight than any others. Place the emphasis, meanwhile, on being the night sky, i.e., open awareness.

With immense encouragement,

Andrew