How Buddhist Meditation Works

The idea of “meditation” as it is practiced in various South and East Asian religions made its way to the Americas in the early-to-mid 20th century. Since then, ideas about meditation have proliferated. Entire industries now exist for teaching meditation. There are many ideas of what it is, how to do it, what it involves, and even why to do it. I'm not going to pretend to know everything about it here, nor tell anyone what “true” meditation is. What I will do is share my own understanding of meditation within the context of Buddhist practice. When I run across random people out in the world or online, I find that many have ideas about meditation that do not match up with the ideas we have in Buddhism.

First: Meditation is not about stopping thought. This is probably the most common misconception about meditation. The fact is, you can't intentionally stop yourself from thinking for more than a few minutes at most. Trying to do so will exhaust you, not calm you. Thinking is what minds do. One of the first things anyone learns in meditation is that thoughts are going to appear whether you want them to or not. You don't have control over that. The best you can do is give them some direction. It is the case that, after some months or years of practice, you will be able to get settled enough that the thoughts wind down of their own accord, but trying to make that happen will leave you frustrated. It's one of the main reasons I hear people say why they tried meditation but stopped it, or why they think they can't meditate. They think it's about stopping thought, and the fact that they can't do that makes them think they can't meditate. But almost no one starts a meditation practice without a lot of mental chatter; in fact, that's the whole point.

Before embarking on meditation, the potential meditator should ask themselves why they want to do it at all. Most people have heard about the health benefits, such as lowered blood pressure or improved mood. They think of it as simply a way to relax and promote calm. It is a way to promote calm, or can be, but if someone is interested in that exclusively, mindfulness meditation or zazen might not be the best choice. I would recommend something like progressive relaxation, or simply doing some guided visualizations. In fact, if you're doing it right, a lot of times Buddhist meditative techniques can make you more stressed for a period, because things come up that you weren't aware were there that will require persistence and possibly therapy to work through. That said, in the long run, you will become more peaceful than you would have with only progressive relaxation or some other stress-relieving activity.

The way Buddhist meditation can bring about calm, besides simply slowing oneself down, and stopping for a moment to breathe and be present, is by creating some distance between oneself and one's thoughts and emotions. The way mindfulness works as a therapeutic tool is training oneself not to react impulsively to thoughts and emotions. Instead, to observe them, and not take ownership of them. To not take the thoughts as my thoughts that I have to do something about. With such distance, one is no longer overwhelmed, and finds an eye of calm in the hurricane of hurt.

Maybe one of the most important things meditation can do for you is to simply give you some time to be with yourself when you aren't trying to do anything else. In this modern world we live in a barrage of information, of other people's thoughts. Even when alone, we may not actually be alone if we engage in social media. The two things most of us desperately need today are more sleep and more time to ourselves without anyone else's thoughts or words. Meditation is a beautiful gift to yourself for this. You set aside half an hour or so to just sit and be with yourself and see what's there. You see what happens when you don't try to do anything in particular.

What ends up happening is you start learning how your mind works. You start seeing that it has reactions to certain stimuli that bring up certain thoughts and feelings and desires. You start seeing that your mind is attracted to those situations, even if they are harmful in the long term. In the “Longer Discourse on Mindfulness Meditation,” the mind is said to make a home in or camp out in certain perceptions, thoughts, or feelings, and in doing so, it becomes attached. Following that, it will defend against any attempt to sever that attachment, perhaps throwing up fear, anxiety, or anger. And through getting to know your mind, you see how this is far from an ideal way to be.

A lot of people are attracted to meditation because they are interested in the bliss that can come from deep meditative states. These are people who will either realize that such is not the purpose and progress to a better understanding of what meditation is for, or who will leave the practice when they discover that's not what meditation is about. My teacher likes to say that people come to Buddhism for the wrong reasons, but stick with it for the right reasons. This bliss can be helpful, for sure. The joy that comes from a settled and unified mind establishes a foundation of well-being that is stable footing for the hard work of confronting suffering and releasing the craving that causes suffering. It is a stable vantage point, and once there, you might be able to turn and look at what hurts from a place of safety.

The real point of this practice is understanding. Calm and bliss are means to an end, and that end is the end of suffering. Meditation helps you understand your emotional afflictions, and your perceptions that give rise to them. It can point you to what you need to work through to be free. And that is what Dhamma is about: the unconditional happiness that comes from true freedom.