I've been attracted to Buddhism for a long time. More than ten years ago, I began attending a buddhist centre. They taught me how to meditate, so I took their courses on dharma and progressed to their 'advanced' meditation group. I also sat regularly at home, every morning and evening, paddling in the lower stretches of dhyana and trying to cultivate compassion.
But soon it turned nasty. I'd made progress, yet now the meditation was getting harder. All I discovered inside were uncomfortable feelings that stopped me concentrating: anger, depression, resentment, self-loathing. When I asked for advice, the teachers told me not to be attached to my thoughts; just note their presence and let them pass.
This didn't help me. I started to wonder if the teachers knew squat. Many were ex-Catholics, who had probably taken up Buddhism as a guilt-free alternative. Most seemed to be putting on an act of being 'spiritual'. Yet they must feel like I do, I reasoned. They must be suppressing their feelings. There was a lot of talk at the Centre about 'negative emotions'. How can anyone believe you shouldn't have certain feelings?
I realised I didn't fit in. These people were religious, whereas I didn't have any religious inclinations.
So I stopped being a Buddhist.
I don't believe that Buddhism or Buddhists are crap. But I wish one of those teachers had said to me something I read and realised only recently:
Many people start meditating and then get frustrated with how much suffering and pain they experience, never knowing that they are actually starting to understand something. Daniel M. Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, p.54.
[S]uffering is almost a time of rejoicing, for it marks the birth of creative insight. Ken Wilber, No Boundary
(Boston & London: Shambala, 1985), p. 85.
Recently I sat on the cushion for seven hours, and got nowhere. Fucking shit were the first words uttered as I stood up. No bliss. No transcendence. Just a silent room, and me trapped inside the bag of turds that is my mind: bored, tired, and awful.
But here's what I wrote in my notebook shortly after:
All deviated and conditioned states of mind arise from thoughts, because thoughts link to one another and carry attention away. Dreams do this too; the only difference is the style of linkage.
I habitually personify or characterise the object of my attention. States of mind take on an appearance as if they were people; they seem to have a 'character'. This is because my ego identifies with them and so they appear to be things like itself. If things would lose this personalised form I would see them more clearly.
My mind seems like a bag of turds, because that's what it is! Permanently distracted, clinging onto a deluded notion of self, and projecting that false image onto other things. With a mind like that, of course it's going to feel unpleasant when I become aware of it. But now I've realised this doesn't mean there's nothing to be learnt from the discomfort. In meditation, learning things the hard way seems to be the only way there is.
(Bastard buddhists. Why didn't they tell me that ten years ago? I could be enlightened by now.)
