Sasha Chapin (@sashachapin): "The biggest lie in meditation discourse—which is more of an unspoken assumption than a lie precisely—is that “meditation” is separate from living. Which is to say, you can have a deep spiritual practice, in order to support continuing your life exactly the way you were. Enhance …"
The biggest lie in meditation discourse—which is more of an unspoken assumption than a lie precisely—is that “meditation” is separate from living. Which is to say, you can have a deep spiritual practice, in order to support continuing your life exactly the way you were. Enhance your performance in a self-focused life with secret Buddhist techniques! In fact, spiritual practitioners find themselves in an uncomfortable place. We realize, hopefully quickly, that we don’t live up to our ideals. We are petty, we are judgmental, we are dishonest. And we realize that this causes constant inner friction. If we don’t wish to meet and mend this friction, meditation practice is a grind. It’s awful to engage deeply with your experience if you want to hide from yourself. At this point in my life, sitting in silence is wildly pleasurable for me, unless I want to conceal something from myself. At which point I find myself “too busy.” How odd! Most of what people call the subconscious isn’t this esoteric thing that appears in the entrails of sacred animals. It’s what’s going on right the fuck now, in your direct experience, that you don’t want to look at. By contrast, absorption deepens as you meet this inner tension, acknowledge it, and work to mend it through better behavior. And as you become more sensitive to how much it hurts to live in a fractured, hypocritical way, bit by bit, you start being less of a dickhead. In this way, your reward function gets hooked up to living ethically, not meaning measuring yourself against some unsophisticated binaristic imported standard, but measuring yourself against the inner compass you construct bit by bit. You develop self-love, but it’s the real kind of love, built on a desire for knowing what’s true. Not just a hypomanic defense. This is why, if I’m having more than a momentary discussion with someone who asks me about their meditation technique, I’m likely to bypass the question and ask how their life is going, no matter how experi