The Goal of Meditation Practice
Shinzen Young's work has been a blessing and a curse.
I first learned about him at a local meditation practice group around 2002 right after attending my first silent retreat.
One of the meditators was describing Shinzen's unusual approach of interacting with people while they meditated — asking them questions about what they were noticing, giving suggestions, and offering them tools that fit whatever they were experiencing.
I was intrigued.
I found his guided meditation exercises for running. It was a cassette tape I could listen to using my bright yellow 'Sports' Walkman. I had to buy an MP3 player from Audible to listen to his book The Science of Enlightenment.
When I downloaded it, I thought there had been a technical problem because it said it was sixteen hours long. There's no way it could be that long and it really was, there's no way I'd make it to the end.
Fast forward a few years and I'd listened all the way through so many times I lost count.
I still listen to some of the guided exercises — on the Audible app now — when I want a refresher.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Even great musicians still play scales, but we don’t call scales the purpose of music.
Even very experienced meditators still do formal sitting practices, but formal sitting practice is not the goal of meditation.
The concert and the performance are the goals of music. And in the same way, how one lives one’s life is the goal of meditation practice.
The ultimate thing that meditation can do for the individual is show them how their happiness does not need to be dependent on conditions.
When does a person have their happiness not dependent on a condition? Whenever they are having a complete experience.
Whenever you have a complete experience of something, the entire universe is present in that experience.
Your individual identity is merged with—on one hand, the entire universe, and on the other hand, with the source of the universe.
Any ordinary experience like washing the dishes, when it is experienced completely, becomes absolutely extraordinary. The state that is beyond conditions is just whatever is happening, but experienced completely. The ultimate stage in the sequence of meditation deepenings comes when one starts to have, during the day, moments of complete experience.
Inside a complete experience, time, space, self, and world — all of creation and the source of creation — are all contained.”
Shinzen led my second silent retreat. I've lost track of how many retreats I've been on with him — in California, Missouri, Colorado, and Ontario — the longest one lasting three weeks.
His approach has been a blessing because it fundamentally changed how I experience my life on a moment-by-moment basis. Not immediately, but deeply, thoroughly, and somehow undramatically.
The more I pay attention to ordinary perceptions, the richer they become — whether they're comfortable or not. It's a long game that seems to be without end.
His approach was unlike any other I'd heard about before or have run into since. I continue to be surprised that it's not considered to be the gold standard in mindfulness practice by the meditation Zeitgeist.
I guess it's because of the learning curve. Learning it felt a lot like learning touch typing. You can type an entire novel with just your index fingers using the hunt-and-peck method. Doing drills to get your fingers intimately familiar with the QWERTY keyboard is annoying — until the day comes when you can fly through a paragraph without looking at your fingers.
At that point, the content no longer matters. It's all about honing your technique. Want to type faster? Slow down. Want to make fewer mistakes? Put in more practice time.
This is the curse of his work. He sets such a high bar. It ruined me for getting excited about the more popular approaches which seem so vague and abstract. The curse is discovering how specific and tangible mindful awareness practice can be even though many who practice it are unable to articulate precisely how this can be so.
It taught me that I can practice sitting, standing, walking, lying down, lifting weights, waiting in line, listening to a concert, or watching a movie.
I can practice with my eyes open or closed.
I can notice pleasant sensations or unpleasant sensations.
I can practice when I'm sharp and energized or foggy and tired.
I can practice not to escape the challenges of being alive but to inhabit my life more fully.
I’m deeply grateful to the nerdy mensch and real-life Jedi master who taught me how to use the exercise equipment that continues to shape me as a spouse, parent, grandparent, friend, and teacher.
What an unlikely human being.
How lucky are those of us who have gotten to sit in silence with him for hours, days, nights, and weeks over the years?
May we continue to honor his work by passing it on to the best of our ability.
