Relaxation Is What You Are

One Human Journey is pleased to offer a 20-minute guided audio meditation with Dennis Hunter, founder of One Human Journey and author of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are.

• Practice deep relaxation and mindfulness of the present moment
• Learn to notice subtle ways you resist your own experience and move away from the present moment
• Feel more refreshed, awake, and synchronized between mind and body

To prepare for this meditation, find a quiet, comfortable place to lie on your back and close your eyes. Headphones or computer speakers are best for optimal sound quality.

Bonus for cat lovers: 
Agneshka the cat briefly interrupts the meditation to make a special, apparently urgent feline announcement around the 9:36 mark, then settles down again after a few seconds.

This guided meditation can be streamed here at One Human Journey. You can also play it at Spotify and SoundCloud, or download it from Google Play, Amazon, iTunes, and other digital stores.

Return to Silence

How can I speak to You, when You are not separate from me?
I want to pray to You, but prayer would be distance,
someone smaller praying to someone bigger,
requesting admission into the vast open arms of the Other.
My mistake was to believe I was somewhere else.
It has felt like that until now.
I know the pain of feeling small and separate from You.
The torment of little "me" and all my tiresome stories,
constricting like a boa around the neck of my own fictional self.
"Let this curse be lifted." That would be my prayer,
but I don't know how to pray to You, or if prayer is even possible.
For just now, when I grow very still, very silent, then prayer
seems beside the point. In this stillness, this silence,
You are already here, and the one who would pray to You
is nothing other than You. Prayers are only words, after all,
and in Your presence words fly away. They dissolve
and lose meaning. Where words were, there is only This.
But even "This" is a word, a mistake, a label
with which "I" try to contain "You," the Limitless.
And so the only form of prayer that seems authentic
is to remain silent, to rest in stillness, not asking for anything.
For only then can my prayer be answered.
Only through silence is the one true Word ever spoken.
Only then can I see that "You" and "I" were never two, never apart.
The small, tragic story of "me" is a dream, and I am a dream figure.
You are the One dreaming. Let me awaken within the dream.
The little, separate "me" is a figment, just the boa of mind's habits
constricting around a non-existent center within empty space.
May the snake let go and relax into freedom and peace at last.
Never let me forget that these dream eyes are Your eyes.
This dream body is Your body. These dream feet are Your feet.
But now I am praying to You again, recreating the illusion of distance,
where there is none. You are here, now. It is This. Only This.
Let me return to silence, and hear what You are already saying.

Meditation 101

As people begin preparing their resolutions for the New Year, many will have "learning to meditate" near the top of their lists. In my observation, the best way to learn to meditate is through face-to-face instruction from someone experienced in the practice, who can answer questions and help you work with obstacles that may arise. If you can do it that way, I recommend it. But that's not always possible; and, in any case, it's also helpful to read written instructions.

The following basic instructions in meditation practice were first published on this blog five years ago. I'm reposting them now because — whether we are brand new to meditation or have been practicing for years — we can never hear them too many times. And each time we hear them, we may hear something new.

The first time I heard meditation instruction, it was presented in terms of three simple building blocks — a mnemonic device that I’ve always found it helpful to recall. The three basic building blocks of sitting meditation are: Body, Breath, and Mind.

Even within Buddhism, there are many types of meditation that utilize different techniques designed to accomplish different things (not to speak of all the meditations found in other spiritual traditions). The type of meditation described here is called shamatha, translated as Tranquility or Calm Abiding or Peaceful Abiding. As those labels suggest, its main purpose is to calm the mind, and to help us train in the ability to “abide” or stay present with what is happening right here, right now.

Training in this kind of Tranquility meditation is the first step in really getting to know our own minds, and creates a foundation for everything we do on the spiritual path.

"The method that the Buddha discovered is meditation. He discovered that struggling to find answers did not work. It was only when there were gaps in his struggle that insights came to him. He began to realize that there was a sane, awake quality within him that manifested itself only in the absence of struggle. So the practice of meditation involves letting be."

-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

A: Body

The first part of the practice involves how we work with our body during meditation. Taking the right posture is essential, because the state of the body reflects and affects the state of the mind: the mind-body continuum. A slouching posture leads to a slouching, dull state of mind — and vice versa. A proper, upright posture embodies the qualities of strength, dignity, and bravery, and sets the stage for engaging with your mind in the practice of meditation.

• Sit up straight, allowing the spine to lengthen naturally — as if an invisible string attached to the crown of your head were lightly pulling you upward. If you're in a chair, you might try sitting forward rather than leaning against the back of the chair; your feet should be flat on the floor. If you're on a cushion, cross your legs comfortably in front of you.
• Let your arms drop to your sides, then gently lift only your forearms — keeping your upper arms parallel to the torso — and bring your palms to rest lightly on your knees or your thighs. The placement of the hands should not be so far forward that it causes your shoulders to slouch, and not so far back that it pinches the shoulder blades. Find the right spot to allow your back and shoulders and neck to rest upright, without straining.
• Keeping the eyes open, direct your gaze down at a point three to six feet in front of you, not looking at anything in particular but allowing the gaze to rest in one spot rather than roaming or following distractions. Allow your eyelids to relax, and soften the gaze so that you're "looking without staring." If you've practiced other meditation techniques that involved closing the eyes, it may seem awkward at first to practice with eyes open, but give it a try and see what happens. Keeping the eyes open is a step towards integrating the practice of mindfulness into everyday life, rather than making mindfulness something separate from your life that can only be practiced under restricted conditions.
• Relax the stomach muscles, the torso, the throat, the jaw. Bring the tip of the tongue to rest lightly on the spot where your upper teeth meet the roof of your mouth, allowing the lips to part slightly if it feels comfortable.

B: Breath

The second part of the practice involves where we place our minds during meditation. We could choose almost any object — an image, a sound, a particular word or series of words — but most people find that the simplest and most convenient object to use in shamatha meditation is the breath. It's free, you carry it with you everywhere you go, and it's already happening — it requires no particular effort. In one sense, sitting and resting our attention on the breath is the simplest thing we could possibly do; yet the cumulative effects and implications of this practice are profound. Breathing is an expression of the present moment; each breath is slightly different from every other breath, and it is only happening right now. Tuning in to the breath is tuning in to the present moment.

• Breathe naturally, however you find yourself breathing in this moment: fast, slow, shallow, deep, whatever. Don't make any particular effort to breathe in a certain way, or to control the process. Just be with whatever kind of breath you have right now. If you can, breathe through the nose.
• Bring your attention to rest lightly on the full cycle of breathing, both in and out. Allow yourself to identify with the soothing quality of the breath.
• Notice where you feel the physical sensations of breathing most acutely. Maybe it's in the rising and falling of the abdomen, or in the slight warm and cool tickling sensation at the ends of your nostrils as the breath goes out and comes in. Wherever it is for you, rest your attention on that physical sensation.
• If you can, place a slight emphasis of attention on the out-breath. Feel yourself going out with your breath and dissolving into space, letting go of conceptual mind. Allow the in-breath to happen naturally, and again go out with the out-breath and dissolve.
• Notice the quality of the moment after one breath has gone out, before the next breath has started to come in. What is your mind like in that moment?

C: Mind

The third part of the practice involves how we work with our minds. Having attempted to sit and rest our attention on the breath for a few moments, we have probably discovered — perhaps to our dismay — that our mind is restless and prone to wander away. We find ourselves thinking about lunch, reliving an argument with our ex-boyfriend, reveling in a sexual fantasy, fretting over our job, stewing in old feelings of shame or resentment, worrying about our loved ones, or desperately seeking entertainment by looking for shapes and patterns in the carpet in front of us: the possibilities are literally endless. Our minds seem to hop from one distraction to another with total disregard for our noble intention to stay with the breath. Welcome to your "monkey-mind." Through regular shamatha practice, we can begin to train the monkey to stay in one place for longer periods of time, and we can even learn to regard its antics with humor and compassion.

Usually, when we have a thought or a feeling, we run with it: our minds seem to control us, rather than us controlling our minds. By practicing shamatha, we train in the ability to recognize our thoughts without being driven by them. But the goal of shamatha is not to "get rid of" thoughts — this is a common misconception. The goal is to see ourselves clearly, and with compassion, by touching in with whatever we're experiencing, and then coming back to the present moment and the object of meditation. Precision and gentleness are the keys.

• When you become aware that your mind has wandered off into a thought, feeling, or fantasy, gently touch on it and return your attention to the breath. Whatever kind of thought or feeling it was, try to see it without judgment or criticism: in the practice of shamatha, there are no good thoughts or bad thoughts. No thought is to be condemned or praised — that's just more thinking.
• You may find it helpful to mark the moment of transition between thinking and returning to the breath by "labeling" your thoughts. When you recognize you've been thinking, say to yourself mentally: "Thinking." Apply this labeling technique with a light touch -- like touching your thoughts with a feather. Don't try to shoot down your thoughts or squash them, but simply recognize them, let them go, and come back to the breath.
• Above all, be gentle with yourself, and relax.

Let Go and Relax

Buddhist meditation instructions are littered with references to relaxation and reminders to relax. In the Mahamudra tradition of Tibet, it is said that those with the greatest degree of relaxation achieve the most profound meditation, those with middling relaxation achieve middling meditation, and those with lesser relaxation -- well, "forget about it," as Ponlop Rinpoche once joked.

Earlier this week, I quoted Milarepa's classic Mahamudra meditation instruction:

Throughout the day and night, look at your mind.
When you look at your mind, you don't see anything.
When you don't see anything, let go and relax.

At a retreat I once attended, we were compelled to sing those three lines from Milarepa's song over and over and over, countless times, with an irritating nursery-rhyme melody that often drove me crazy. But it did have the intended effect of lodging this instruction permanently in a part of our brains where it is unlikely to be erased even by senile dementia.

Indeed, this instruction to "let go and relax" seems to be one of the most recurrent themes of the teachings I've received from Ponlop Rinpoche and other Tibetan teachers. This line is so often repeated among Ponlop Rinpoche's students, and has become such a hallmark of his teachings (both in groups, and on a more personal, individual level), that I've come to think of it as one of his main instructions to his students in the West. As such, in spite of its apparent simplicity, I think it merits a profound degree of contemplation.

In certain Zen traditions, students receive a koan -- a sort of confusing, quite possibly unanswerable question -- that they will chew on for months or even years before coming to some experience and realization of its meaning. "Let go and relax" has this koan-like quality.

But how exactly does one put this instruction into practice? Is it as easy to do as it sounds? If so, why don't we actually do it all the time? Why should we need to be reminded so often about something so simple? Why are these teachers always trying to drill into our minds the notion of letting go and relaxing?

I'll go out on a limb here and say it's because they see how not-relaxed we actually are most of the time, how much we hold on to things with our minds and simply don't let go. We all have, in varying degrees, an enormous amount of training and habituation in being not-relaxed, in being tense and worried and fearful and bothered and lustful and jealous and ambitious and angry and numbed-out and closed down. We are exceedingly well-trained and talented at being busy and always *doing* something -- strategizing, planning, striving, contriving, and conniving. With such a perpetual flurry of activity and tension as our habitual state of mind, it's no wonder that the instruction to "let go and relax" seems shocking and revolutionary to us. It's also no wonder we find it so difficult to put into practice.

But...once again...how do you actually *do* it? In his book "Wake Up to Your Life," Ken McLeod writes about the confusion that arises for meditation students when they mix up a practice's method with its effects -- they end up thinking they're supposed to be practicing the effects. McLeod observes that books on meditation often include vague, fruitional instructions like "Open your mind," "Be centered," "Let your mind be empty," or "Be one with your body." Frustrated students often "can't figure out what to do," McLeod says, "because these 'instructions' are effects of practice, not methods."

"Tell a tense person to relax, and he will usually become tenser in the effort," says McLeod. "He is tense because he doesn't know how to relax. Tell him to take a deep breath, let it out slowly, then take another breath, and let it out slowly. Then he will relax. The method is breathing slowly and deeply. The result is relaxation."

In addition to deep breathing, tuning into our sensory experience is one way to bring ourselves out of the trance of thinking and into the present moment, so that relaxation even becomes possible. As long as our mind is spinning and we've lost direct contact with our embodied experience in the present, there is little space for relaxation to arise. But the body is incapable of deceit; unlike the mind, the body cannot drift into the past or the future, and it cannot pretend to be anywhere other than where it is right now. By becoming aware of what is happening, right now, in our body and in our senses, we can tune the radio dial of our minds into that present-moment station where it's always "easy listening" -- that is, if we allow it to be, if we refrain from trying to change the dial the instant we hear something that makes us bored or uncomfortable.

One thing is for sure: we're not going to succeed in thinking our way into a state of relaxation. For Zen students, the breakthrough in koan practice seems to come when they reach a point where the whole strenuous, intellectual effort to *think* about the koan's meaning falls apart, and in the wake of that collapse a non-conceptual realization is able to dawn.