How Letting Go Can Improve Your Meditation

Meditation it seems is full of paradoxes. You really want to get somewhere. Improve your meditation. Get some peace. Have a better way of looking at things. Escape from the restlessness and general unsatisfactory nature of life. But it seems to be that the more you struggle and strive the further away the goal. A well-known Zen parable describes how counter productive this can be:

A student went to his teacher and said earnestly, “I am determined to become enlightened”. How long will it take me .” The teacher’s reply was casual, “Ten years.” Impatiently, the student answered, “But I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?” The teacher thought for a moment, “20 years.”

Non striving, letting go of expectations is one of the key attitudes in meditation and mindfulness. Probably especially relevant to modern goal driven western societies. In his book mindfulness in plain English The Venerable Henepola Gunaratana says:

“Don’t expect anything. Just sit back and see what happens. Treat the whole thing as an experiment. Take an active interest in the test itself. But don’t get distracted by your expectations about results. For that matter, don’t be anxious for any result whatsoever. Let the meditation move along at its own speed and in its own direction.

Don’t strain: Don’t force anything or make grand exaggerated efforts. Meditation is not aggressive. There is no violent striving. Just let your effort be relaxed and steady.

Don’t rush: There is no hurry, so take you time. Settle yourself on a cushion and sit as though you have a whole day. Anything really valuable takes time to develop. Patience, patience, patience”.

This fits in with one of the other key attitudes in mindfulness meditation, acceptance. Accepting this moment now, being content to be in this moment not thinking or wishing your somewhere else. Mindfulness helps to achieve this by encouraging you to become more fully aware of the sensations sights and sounds in every moment of your daily life.

So for example when sitting in the office working on the computer, you can allow some part of your mind to be aware of the sensation of your feet resting on the floor, your legs or back resting against chair, the breath passing the nostrils, or the rise and fall of your chest and stomach. This helps to to keep you in the present and prevent you being distracted by worries about the past or future.

The Taoist philosophy of non doing doing incorporates this attitude of non striving, acceptance of the present moment, absorption and awareness of the details of the present, into a whole way of life. An often quoted 3rd century Chinese poem sums it up extremely well:

Prince Wen Hui’s cook
Was cutting up an ox.
Out went hand,
Down went the shoulder,
He planted a foot,
He pressed with a knee,
The ox fell apart
With a whisper,
The bright cleaver murmured
Like a gentle wind.
Rhythm! Tuning!
Like a sacred dance,
like ” the Mulberry Grove”
Like ancient harmonies

“Good work!” The Prince exclaimed.
“Your method is faultless!”
“Method!” Said the cook
Laying aside his cleaver,
“what I follow is Tao
Beyond all methods!

When I first began
To cut up oxen
I would see before me
The whole ox
All in one mass.
After three years
I no longer saw this mass.
I saw the distinctions.

But now I see nothing
with the eye. My whole being
Apprehends.
My senses are idle. The spirit
Free to work without plan
Follows its own instinct
Guided by natural line,
By the secret opening, the hidden place,
My cleaver finds its own way.
I cut through no joint, chop no bone.

There are spaces in the joints;
The blade is thin and keen:
When this thinness
Finds that space
There is all the room you need!
It goes like a breeze!
Hence I have this cleaver 19 years
As if newly sharpened!
True, there are sometimes
Tough joints.
I feel them coming and slow down,
I watch closely,
Hold back, barely move the blade.
And whump! the part falls way.
Landing like a clod of earth.

Then I withdrew the blade,
I stand still
And let the joy of the work
Sink in
I clean the blade
And put it away.”

Prince Wen Hui said,
“This is it! My cook has shown me
How I ought to live
My own life!”

Chuang Tzu
 

Photo at top of page by natu

meditation, mindfulness, letting go, Taoist

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