We’ve been talking about both additive and subtractive aspects of meditation—cultivating wholesome states and diminishing unwholesome. This is the framework from “right effort” in the Eightfold Path. But if we take even a simple interpretation of this instruction to mean that we should work on cultivating the awakening factors and work on diminishing the hindrances, that’s still a complicated internal dance. And the moments fly by so fast. So fast. How do I do this, really?
In any given moment, attention could land on the presence or absence of a long list of inner qualities as well as external sensory impressions. This is true for entire meditation sessions, seasons in the year, or large-scale phases in our practice. Even entire lifetimes, we have to assume. So it’s a fractal: the same patterns are duplicated at every level of scale.
Let’s think a bit about one of the middle-ground levels: seasons in one’s practice. Maybe this is about a months to years scale. I think that there are phases in practice that are more about working on diminishing the unwholesome, and other phases that are more about cultivating the wholesome. I’m thinking about it in a very specific way in relation to meditation. When do I primarily work on relaxation, letting go, and doing less—especially around thinking, which is a kind of doing? And when should I turn my attention to strengthening, building up (good qualities), and doing more (stuff that’s awesome)? [I said “wholesome” but the dictation bot wrote “awesome” so I’m leaving it.]
This has cultural parallels to the extent that modalities of practice like relaxation and strengthening can become ideological, meaning that identities form around them. I’ve been doing postcolonial Yoga āsana practices for long enough to have seen the successive trending of “Power Yoga,” “Yin Yoga,” “Crossfit,” and “Yoga Nidrā” in western Yoga communities. So if you like a certain style, watch out for the tendency to make an identity out of it and demonize the other polarity. It’s true in meditation as well. There’s no classical tradition that only consists of either letting go or building up.
Going with the bot, we can translate the famous summary of the path:
Don’t do stuff that sucks,
Dhammapada
Do stuff that’s awesome!
And deal with your trauma.
That’s how you get free.