The Key to Understanding Meditation

How I was eventually able to make meditation and work for me

You may remember in the last email I announced I’d be returning to YouTube and also be offering my Comparative Meditation course again.

Well the YouTube livestream was a bit of a mess. I was having issues with my camera (the image was choppy) and that really threw me off. Otherwise it went ok but I decided to make the video unlisted and try again next week. Tune in Tuesday April 15th at 2pm ET.

I’ve also delayed the start of my Comparative Meditation Course. We will now start Tuesday April 29th. All sessions are recorded so you can do at your own pace. More info here.

Here’s a testimonial from the last run:

“I’m grateful for the wide range of experience and the wide range of traditions. I feel like I’m swimming in a much richer ocean now when it comes to my meditation practice and that’s really fun.”

-Al, participant from that last cohort of Comparative Meditation

The Value of Comparative Meditation

I’d always been a terrible meditator. I have ADHD and for many years I couldn’t get meditation to work for me.

But I was oh so tickled by the philosophical dimension. I was deeply drawn to eastern philosophy, partly by growing up around Tibetan Buddhism and partly from encountering the work of Krishnamurti in my teens. I came to believe what many traditions teach: that the only way to know ultimate truth was through meditation.

Try as I might, I didn’t get anywhere with my meditation practice. But ADHD can have its advantages, and in this case it was hyperfocus and obsessive thinking.

I thought, if I could really understand meditation, then eventually I could figure out how to make meditation work for me. And I eventually did.

This course is a presentation on what I wish I knew then. A birdseye overview of the practices and perspectives I’ve found most helpful (and interesting).

Each section explores a category of practice and its corresponding philosophy, helping you to not just understand what these practices are but also how they work.

While there are traditional ways to approach the path of meditation, what we’ve seen in modern times is that the traditional ordering of practices isn’t a hard rule.

I’ve long said that the best type of meditation is the one you will do. What I mean by this is that meditation is most effective when one finds it interesting and engaging. So much of meditation is about attention, and it’s far more difficult to pay attention to things that don’t interest us than those that do.

Similarly, we will be more likely to stick with meditation if we notice a positive impact. This is why I have focused on what I feel are the most transformative practices, where results can often be seen and felt immediately.

My intention here is to give you an overview of many of the most interesting and transformative meditation practices available in hopes that more people will find the practices that they find engaging and helpful.

A Quick Course Overview

Shamatha

We begin with Shamatha, which is a style of meditation and the first we often encounter, as it's about learning to relax and calm the mind, which is foundational to all meditation. Shamatha is often translated as calm abiding, or peaceful abiding. It is its own style of practice, yet it is also foundational to all meditation (all meditation contains this element of relaxed focus or calm abiding).

Traditionally one would learn Shamatha first to calm and focus the mind, and then shift to either Vipassana or Tantric practice (depending on the tradition). While Shamatha practice has many benefits, it does not have the same power to purify our mind-body and develop the necessary sensory clarity that Vipassana and Tantric practices offer.

While Shamatha is a very powerful practice, it has traditionally never been an end to itself. It is always viewed as an important step or element along a much greater path.

Vipassana

Vipassana roughly translates to seeing clearly, and is often called Insight Meditation or Mindfulness Meditation. This is the core technique that the Buddha taught for liberation.

Its core principle lies in the transformative power of awareness. It is through the careful observation of our experience that we see and ultimately dissolve unhelpful patterns, greatly reducing our suffering and leading to a sense of inner freedom, a fullness and richness of ordinary experience, and a sense of unconditional wellbeing.

Vipassana is amazing because it can be practiced without any cultural baggage. The practice can be simple and is customizable. It’s really about learning to pay attention in a way that we see things more clearly and suffer less as a result. This is the backbone of my personal practice and what I generally teach.

Tantra

Tantra refers to a large spiritual movement with its roots in India during the 6th century, but really establishing itself around the 8th century, roughly a thousand years after the invention of Vipassana.

The idea of Tantra is that anything and everything could be an avenue towards transformation and liberation. It was radically inclusive, creative, and utilized all the senses and countless techniques to invoke and cultivate transformative energies.

While many spiritual traditions had become renunciative, doing away with distraction so one can focus exclusively and practice and awakening, Tantra was all embracing; using everything from art and music to sex and love as avenues of transformation.

There’s a modern movement, often called Neo-Tantra, which is very different from the original Tantra but maintains some of the values and principles. We will explore the similarities and differences, and also explore how we can creatively tailor Tantra inspired practices to suit our specific goals and needs.

While Tantra and Vipassana are very different, they also share some principles in common.

Non-Dual

Non-Dual practices are at the pinnacle of meditation techniques. This is what it’s all about. While Shamatha stabilizes the mind, Vipassana and Trantra purify the mind, Non-Dual practices attempt to realize ultimate truth directly.

This is accomplished through a number of techniques which include a theoretical overview of Non-Duality, something we find in many classic texts and traditions, from the writings of Dogen in Soto Zen to Longchenpa’s great works in the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

There are also many amazing more contemporary teachers that have popularized the Non-Dual approach, like the Self-Inquiry of Ramana Maharshi or the teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

And in the last few years there’s been an explosion of Non-Duality on YouTube, with more established teachers like Adyashanti and Rupert Spira embracing the platform while it’s also giving rise to a new generation of brilliant teachers like Angelo Dillulo and Suzanne Chang.

Non-Dual practices are an investigation of the nature of the self and reality. Sometimes the method is Self-Inquiry, sometimes there’s a “pointing out” instruction, sometimes it’s a contemplation like a Zen Koan, sometimes it’s an investigation of subtle phenomena, and sometimes it’s a very refined method of expanding one’s awareness to expand beyond it’s normal limitations (like the traditional practices of Dzogchen or more contemporary practices like the somatically-oriented approach of Judith Blackstone).

While there’s many ways to approach Non-Dual practice, they are all methods that attempt to directly perceive the true undivided nature of reality (hence the term “Non-Dual”).

click the image to learn more about the course

My Comparative Meditation Course explores hand picked practices from across these traditions. It’s an experiential journey where we dip our toes into a few dozen practices to help illustrate the entire landscape of meditative practice and realization.

This course has a suggested price tag but is offered at whatever price works for you, and I’d love to have you join us. Check it out and feel free to send any questions my way.