Meditation enables us to experience the stillness and awareness of our inner life. But because our culture supports and encourages an overactive mental life linked to a hectic lifestyle, it is difficult to sustain inner calm in our day-to-day experience. However, as we have already seen there is growing scientific evidence that mental training can calm and stabilize the mind during practice as well as in the post-meditative time. With ongoing practice we can feel assured that mental stability will slowly spread from our meditation session into our daily life.
So our task is to both continue growing our life with contemplative practices, and then stabilizing the gains we have made so that we may further influence and transform our health and well being. In addition to daily practice the way we enhance and stabilize inner stillness is by examining our life and choosing to cultivate those attitudes and actions that support our efforts and abandon those that get in the way. In doing this we create the context, or let’s say the healthy soil, that will sustain and encourage full development during and after our meditation practice.
Letting Go of What Doesn’t Work
We begin by abandoning the attitudes and actions that obstruct the way to a larger health and life.
Mistaken Views
The major obstacle to a larger health and well-being is the limited perspective of modern medicine. We’ve taken as faith the view that an exclusively outer medicine can resolve all of our health concerns and that it alone can provide us with the best opportunity for full health and well-being. This is a false and mistaken view. Our aim is not to abandon or reject medical science but rather to realistically value and support its contributions while acknowledging the inherent limitations of a solely biological approach to health and healing.
When you realize the limitations of an exclusively biological approach you will at the same time recognize that a comprehensive and far-reaching health and wellness requires that we also develop the inner dimensions of health and healing. A fully integrated outer and inner approach to healing is the only approach that optimizes our potential for health, healing, and human flourishing. The mistaken view that an exclusively biological approach can bring us full health must be abandoned to grow a larger life and health.
The Mistaken Refuge
We have spent many years taking an unquestioned refuge in modern medicine as a cure-all for the problems of the human condition. But that is not all that we’ve relied upon. We’ve also relied upon the ordinary ephemeral pleasures of outer life to provide the happiness and well-being we long for. Again we have been wrongly taught to turn outside for healing our aloneness, dissatisfaction, suffering, confusion, anxiety, fear, and distress. Authentic and enduring health, happiness, and wholeness can only be found through inner development.
We’ve wasted a great deal of time chasing external pleasures in the form of romance, success, fame, name, acknowledgment, and materialism only to discover that they become addictions rather than solutions, temporary remedies for a previous moment of suffering rather than authentic and sustained joy, happiness, and peace. As Joseph Campbell said … we spend our lives moving up the ladder of life only to realize when we get to the top and look over the wall that we placed our ladder against the wrong wall. We discover we were searching in the wrong place. We must also abandon this second false, the belief that happiness and wholeness can be found in external pleasures.
We don’t have much time in life to attain what we long for. Subtract our childhood years, the elder years which may not allow for the sound mind and body we need, and the time we must work to meet our basic needs and then our rest time and there is very little time left in one lifetime. So if we fill this time chasing mistaken views and their related outer activities we will have nothing left for the real thing.
Harmful Attitudes, Speech, and Action
Finally, we must abandon all attitudes and actions that cause suffering to ourselves or others. It’s not merely a matter of ethics. If we clutter our mind with afflictive and disturbing thoughts and their associated actions - anger, attachment, jealousy, hatred, pride, resentment, judgment, impatience, and so on - we leave little possibility that practice alone will still such an overactive and afflictive mental life.
Just consider anger. One moment of anger can consume our mind and energy for a day, two, or even more. We are so taken over by this feeling that there is little more that we can do with such a disturbed mind. Once we are swayed by such strong or chronic emotions it is very hard to settle our mind and retrieve any level of inner stillness. So we must be careful to avoid and abandon these destructive emotions if we are grow our life and health.
How do we abandon the attitudes and actions that cause suffering? We do so with a great deal of mindfulness. If we really want a larger life - a sustained health, happiness, and wholeness - we must ask ourselves again and again if what we are about to say or do will result in suffering, directly or indirectly, to ourselves or others. If it does we must at first restrain ourselves even if this means keeping still and walking away. As we develop higher levels of consciousness and purify our mental life by cultivating the basic goodness that is our natural essence our speech and actions will naturally be filled with purity and loving-kindness. But in the beginning we must simply become aware and stop speech and actions that are detrimental to our forward movement in life.
In summary, the three things we must abandon to move towards a higher healing field are: (1) the false belief that an outer and material medicine alone can eliminate all sources of distress and disease and lead to holistic health, (2) the false belief that other people or outer objects can bring us an authentic and sustained well-being, happiness, and joy, and (3) all speech and actions that cause suffering to ourselves or others. We don’t need to accomplish all of this on the first day. It is a gradual process that begins when you are ready. Don’t be discouraged by fallbacks to old behavior. That’s how it is. Conditioning and habits are strong. But over the long term, your intention, supported by the right teachers and teachings, are far stronger.
Cultivating What Works
Inner Calm
So how do we cultivate stillness and inner silence in a busy extroverted world? We start by slowly down and cutting out the unnecessary activities of life as we’ve discussed above. We then create still and serene environments at home and at work. Under the guidance of a skilled and compassionate teacher we begin to practice innerness through meditation and other techniques. We supplement this practice by attending silent teaching retreats. We gain supportive friends and let go of others. There are good and wise people to help you.
Loving-Kindness
Without exception all of the great healing and spiritual traditions tell us that the cultivation of an affectionate embrace toward others is a necessary foundation for the development of our inner life. Why do they speak of this with one voice? First, a focus on others diminishes the focus on self. This alone lessens separation and disconnection, enhancing a warm and tender connection towards others. Further, it sets a tone for our inner work that seeks not only gain for our self but benefit for all.
An affectionate embrace of others is the human act of caring and loving-kindness that is the seed of compassion. Compassion is merely the recognition that others, just as our self, are mistakenly pulled towards the material aspects of health and healing and temporary outer pleasures, and unaware of the enduring gifts of a developed inner life. So if we frame our inner development as not only for ourselves but as also for others these efforts are greatly enhanced. We gain a wide perspective and less egocentric motivation, and our accomplishments bring meaning not only to ourselves but simultaneously serve the higher purpose of creating a better world.
There are two levels of affection and loving-kindness: aspiration and engagement. In the first instance we choose to substitute kindness, gentleness, patience, and affection for less wholesome emotions that keep our minds busy. Thorough the use of various mental training exercises we are re-patterning our mind with a new set of positive mental habits that will diminish our most self-serving tendencies. Cultivating loving-kindness and care as a mental aspiration itself will be of great help in creating value in stabilizing your mind and preparing it for inner work.
We bring these new attitudes into our daily life by practicing develop with small acts of kindness and affection first towards those that are dear to us, then towards strangers, and when we are really skilled towards those we label as enemies. We begin by developing a firm inner aspiration and hope that others will be happy and free of suffering and only when this is stable do we move it out to the world.
Minimizing Needs
Consider what your needs are when you feel a sense of peace, comfort, and an open heart. Or consider what your needs are when you are in communion with nature, in a lover’s embrace, playing joyfully with your children, or when in prayer or mediation? Now consider how your needs escalate when you enter a shopping mall. All of a sudden you have a need for things that previously were not even thought about, less needed. How does this happen? Certainly it is no accident. The entire field of advertising and marketing is designed to create new needs – and they are quite successful. So consider the difference between authentic needs and momentary “wants.” The more we chase after unnecessary and hyped up wants, the more we have to work to pay for them, the less free time for inner development, and the more cluttered our mind. When is enough, enough? Is there an end to our wants? Is there a point at which we can be satisfied?
If we consider those moments in which we feel few if any needs we will discover the secret to a life of few needs. When our mind is still and at peace we are relatively free of needs. When our active mental process with its hopes, fears, desires, and so on is stilled, we have addressed the source of our “wants.” We want in order to bring moments of peace and pleasure to our mind and life. We use outer experiences to sooth our overactive, distracted, and disturbing mental life. Diminishing our wants helps to quiet our mind and cultivate a still environment for practice.
Contentment and Gratitude
It is helpful to cultivate a sense of contentment and gratitude for what is and for what has been given. Too often it takes a major life trauma to gain appreciation and gratitude. Ask someone who is ill and they will tell you what’s important in life and how much they have come to appreciate the simple things that are present each day.
The active mind is never satisfied. It is always searching for something to fill our longing for meaning. Until we stop searching we will be unable to find the ultimate meaning which is right in front of us. That meaning is the truth of being and existence itself: the beauty of the diversity of life’s offerings, the ever-present movements of nature, the stillness of life, interconnection, intimacy, peace and ease. When we experience life with contentment and ease we rapidly progress in inner development.
-----------------------------
In this brief overview we have touched on some of the attitudes and actions we must cultivate or abandon if we are to move forward on the path to a fully developed inner life and its qualities of health, happiness, and wholeness. But a concern with what we should cultivate and what we must abandon should be with us at all times. It’s important to frequently ask the question, “Will this cultivate the optimal conditions for the development of my inner life or will it get in the way? Should I cultivate this attitude or action, or abandon it? Remember, attitudes and actions serve to support or discourage our efforts. So be wise in choosing.
For Further Information and Upcoming Programs
www.elliottdacher.org