Meditation to Transform Your Life: Or is it the Other Way Around?
In the modern Mindfulness Movement, mindfulness is being promoted as a way to transform any and every aspect of your life. A google image search of “Mindfulness books” is a quick way to see this:
Mindfulness for: moms, relationships, work, kids, and even better sex!
And regardless of what is being promoted, if you are interested in practicing or at least learning about mindfulness or meditation then it is probably because you want to improve or transform your life in some way. Big or small. Maybe you just want to be less stressed, less anxious, more focused. Or perhaps you want to connect with yourself in a deeper way.
The solution that is being offered to our fast-paced, stressed out, modern lifestyle is: Practice mindfulness, do 20-minutes of meditation everyday and your life will get better in just about every way.
The point is this:
People are coming to mindfulness and meditation practices as a way to transform their life
The argument I will make is that this model of meditation is superficial and for most people will not be sufficient.
First of all, I want to make it clear that I do not think meditation is limited in its transformative potential. I personally believe meditation to be one of the most powerful and accessible methods for deep transformation on a fundamental level — if it is practiced in the right context. However, this model of meditation that is being promoted and most of us are practicing with, IS LIMITED.
Why is this model of meditation superficial and not sufficient for most people?
In short, because meditation is difficult to practice in our fast-paced, distracted, stressed-out, modern lifestyles.
We don’t know how to relax, we don’t know what it means to sit quietly and to be alone with ourself. We don’t know how to slow down, we don’t know how to still the chaotic mind.
You might recognize that this is true for yourself and think “Well meditation is suppose to help with this so I should start practicing meditation.”
The problem is that when we sit down for meditation we are bringing in all the junk, all the chaos in our minds into the meditation session. It is inevitable. You might practice for 20 min and even if you do feel more relaxed and calm afterwards you go right back to your busy chaotic lifestyle. You are essentially just taking out the garbage and filling your mind with more garbage during the day. I am not saying this is trivial; if we didn’t take out the garbage our minds could get pretty nasty and unhealthy. But it is superficial. You might feel better because your mind is not so cluttered, but eventually you are filling it up with junk again. There is no transformation taking place.
This is an ideal scenario. Another possibility is that you just can’t meditate. You try to relax but you can’t. You try to be still and quiet but you can’t. You try to pay attention to the breath but you can’t. Does this mean meditation is not “for you”? Does this mean you are not capable? No, not at all. You just might have more junk to clear out, or there is something blocking you from taking out the garbage.
Meditation to take out the garbage that piles up in the mind is beneficial and encouraged. But meditation can be so much more than just the garbage man or garbage woman. And for most people, this garbage in -> garbage out model of mediation is not going to be enough. It is also constant work and requires too much effort, it is a chore. Eventually, many people will give up on meditation. To the contrary, meditation should become easier and more enjoyable the longer one has been practicing. That is why this model of meditation is not sufficient for most people.
What do we need to do differently?
First of all, let's recognize the transformative potentioal of meditation. Meditation can radically transform the mind and our life more generally. We can learn to live with presence, inner peace, genuine happiness, love, and compassion through the practice of meditation. We can become the most successful AND happy version of ourself.
But this requires more than just meditation. What is required are preliminary practices (I am borrowing this term from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition but I am not referring to the same set of practices. The preliminary practices in Tibetan Buddhism are meant to prepare one for the Buddhist path. Here I am using the term more as simply to prepare one for meditation).
Preliminary practices help to prepare the body and mind for meditation. While meditation can help take out the garbage of the mind, preliminary practices can prevent the garbage from piling up in the first place. That way when you engage in meditation you will be starting with a clean mind. This allows meditation to go much deeper. From here you will find it requires much less effort to settle your body and mind in relaxation, to still the discursive mind, and for the clarity of awareness to expose the nature of thoughts and emotions. You will go beyond the surface level of just taking out the garbage.
Well, what are the preliminary practices?
There are endless forms of preliminary practices and I only want to highlight one in particular.
What we need is gratitude
This might sound cheesy to you, but hear me out. No joke, I believe this might be the most powerful preliminary practice you can do for meditation and this alone has the potential to transform your life (even without meditation).
We might ask, what is the source of all this garbage that tends to pile up in the mind? Though not the only source, a big player is what is referred to as the “fault-finding mind”.
The fault-finding mind is the mind that cannot settle down because it is disgruntled, upset, or just unsatisfied with current circumstances. This is the mind that is always complaining about this or that, it is the source of most negative thinking (just more garbage). Always finding fault in oneself, in others, or in life generally it can never be happy. It exaggerates our problems as though they they are life and death, it is the source of anxiety. Even when we are trying to enjoy life the fault-finding mind will find something to be guilty about. The fault-finding mind is the enemy of contentment and joy.
Again, most people come to meditation to deal with this fault-finding mind. To learn how to just chill-out a little. But that is a long and difficult process. There is a much faster and immediate way to counteract the fault-finding mind: gratitude.
Gratitude means taking joy and satisfaction in what one already has in life, no matter how small. There are endless things to be grateful for, even if you are poor, disadvantaged, uneducated. If you are reading this, that means you have access to the internet. I believe that at this point, the majority of the world’s population lacks internet access and a much smaller portion has truly free (unregulated) access to the internet. I often times will imagine the situation that so many other people are in throughout the globe. There are people that are born into war-torn regions, born into utter poverty and die of starvation, even people who have the fortune to live in developed countries might not have the opportunity of education. If you have access to internet, a roof over your head, income to support your leisurely activities and hobbies, the opportunity for higher education, then you are in a very very small minority of the world’s population. Or even if you are homeless but live in a developed country you still have so much to be grateful for compared to so many others. The point of gratitude is not to compare or compete with others for how much you have, but this exercise can instantly change your perspective on things. We too often get so small minded and create misery around what is called “first world problems”. Comparing yourself with the majority of the world’s population can really put things into perspective. “Wow I really do have so much to be grateful for!”
There are not just outer circumstances to be grateful for, but also inner circumstances. The fact that you are reading this means you have some motivation to practice mindfulness and meditation and the reason for this motivation is you want to improve yourself in some way. It is a motivation of kindness towards yourself and possibly towards others. This is an altruistic, virtuous motivation. Not everyone has this motivation. Some people just don’t care about self-improvement and being a better person in the world. Some people will intentionally inflict harm on themselves or others. Be grateful that you have such an altruistic motivation towards yourself and others.
The difference between gratitude and meditation is that gratitude works instantly, in the snap of a finger. It is an instant chill pill. Meditation, well that can take time for things to calm down and for you to be able to chill out.
So any time you are feeling anxious or stressed out, practice gratitude.
Gratitude is a state of mind that can be cultivated and learned. Right now, by default you might rely on the fault-finding mind. When things go wrong, you start complaining getting upset, etc. Through the cultivation of gratitude, by default you can start to rely on the grateful mind. Your entire attitude when things go wrong will change. Rather than seeing difficult times as an obstacle, as something to fuss about, you will see difficult times as a challenge to overcome to help you grow and learn.
Gratitude has this power to transform unfortunate circumstances into opportunities of growth.
One concern I have heard about gratitude and getting rid of the fault-finding mind, is that “will I become complacent about my situation and not have the drive to chase my dreams and be successful?”. I believe this question comes up because for our entire life, the motivation for us to do anything, to push ourself to succeed has been based on the fault-finding mind. So without it, we just can’t comprehend what will motivate us to get off our ass and make a difference in the world.
This is where an understanding of impermanence is useful. We need to be grateful for all we have in our life but we also need to realize that all the amazing things and opportunities we have can disappear in an instant. Tragic events happen everyday to so many people, just turn on the news.
So we must not be complacent with the opportunities we have. We have won the lottery, let’s not waste it away. Take as much advantage of your current circumstances as you can. Not out of fear of losing what you have but out of gratitude for the opportunity. Out of the motivation to be the best person you can be. Out of love and compassion for yourself and others. You can be driven by gratitude to succeed, rather than by the fault-finding mind of fear and worry. It is up to you.
Gratitude, by itself, can transform your life. And I am presenting it here simply as a preliminary practice. Obviously, then, preliminary doesn’t mean beginner or trivial. It is just something that needs to come before meditation.
With gratitude comes contentment. Imagine now, practicing meditation on a daily basis and bringing that contentment into every session. Compare that with bringing the fault-finding mind into every meditation session. The difference is that you will be able to go much deeper with the meditation, it will not be a superficial chore of taking out the garbage. It will also become effortless and more enjoyable over time.
And as the contentment from gratitude spills over into your meditation session, now your mindful awareness cultivated during meditation will effortlessly spill over into your daily life in a transformative way.
This brings us to the conclusion of this article:
Transform your life (with gratitude) for meditation. Meditation to transform your life.
This is the model that is sorely needed. Before we teach meditation to people in a fast-paced, distracted, stressed-out, modern lifestyle, we need to teach preliminary practices such as gratitude. Only then, can people tap into the transformative potential of meditation. Know that this is nothing new, this is the way meditation and mindfulness have always been taught, for thousands of years.
