Teachings from Meditation in Recovery: Dhyana Paramita, the Perfection of Meditation
Written by Anonymous   

This is the fifth in a series of essays on recovery as seen from the Buddhist perspective of the paramitas and the Brahma Viharas. The paramitas are the so-called “perfections” of generosity, morality, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. The Brahma Viharas, the “divine abidings” are compassion, loving-kindness, sympathetic joy and equanimity.  These essays emerge from the ongoing Monday night Meditation in Recovery group that meets at City Center from 7:30-9 pm. and we hope they will be useful to you. [If you are interested in acquiring these essays or the preceding series of essays on Buddhism and the Twelve Steps in booklet form, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .]

Dhyana Paramita: The Perfection of Meditation

Although dhyana can be translated as concentration, a wider sense of the word as meditation may be most useful for this discussion.

From the beginning, meditation has been the primary tool of Buddhism in the search for awakening. The historical Buddha himself is said to have awakened while in profound meditation under the bodhi tree.

In recovery, the Eleventh Step recommends prayer and meditation as the means to “improve our conscious contact” with our higher power. For many or most, even those raised without a particular religious education, prayer is not so mysterious. We may not believe in it, or really understand why anyone would do it, or feel that it is ineffective, but it is not an unknown. Meditation, on the other hand, can seem foreign and frightening, a practice for spiritual athletes. Particularly the perfection of meditation. We might as well not even begin if we have to do it perfectly. It seems to be an ideal set-up for the alcoholic or addict who has both perfectionism and defeatism warring constantly within.

In fact, meditation is both simpler and more profound than we might at first imagine... 

Buddhist literature is full of meditation instructions. So full that it can at first seem overwhelming and frightening. There are meditations which are antidotes to specific unwholesome states of mind (anger or lust or confusion); there are others which are specifically aimed at increasing concentration or insight. Some forms of meditation use the breath, or a mantra or external objects or visualizations of Buddhas or deities. There are instructions for what sort of meditations are appropriate for what sort of personality types. The reader may feel she needs a nap more than a meditation session after surveying the choices, or simply walk away discouraged.

To make the discussion simpler, we will confine ourselves in this essay to the Zen meditation as practiced at San Francisco Zen Center, which shares its basics with most Buddhist schools. Anyone who is interested in examining the literature on other forms of meditation will find a wealth of information. Anyone who wishes to practice a particular form of meditation should not have too difficult a time finding a place or a teacher.

In terms of our recovery work, meditation can be understood as being implicated with not only Step Eleven, but also with Steps Two and Three. It can be meditation which we use  to “restore us to sanity.” And when we sit down in the Buddha’s posture of awakening (and this is true no matter what position we take), we are in effect embodying the Third Step. We are indeed “turning our will and our life over” to a process that is beyond our rational control. And this is where the aspect of faith comes in.

Many people are attracted to Buddhism because it seems rational, not demanding belief in the supernatural or anything else that cannot be proven by our own experience. For the most part this is true. It is not necessary to believe literally in rebirth, for instance, to practice Buddhism. The more exalted states described in the teachings we can take with a “wait and see” approach. But meditation, the willingness to practice it, does demand a very specific faith. This is the faith that we already have what we need. That we do not require something outside of ourselves to make us whole or worthy or complete. For many of us in recovery, this will be a reach. We are so used to thinking of ourselves as lacking, as terminally flawed, that the idea that the ability to be awake is intrinsic to our nature is startling. So, until we are able to prove it to ourselves through our own experience, we must take it on faith.

Our faith in this comes through the observation of those who have gone before us. Just as our faith in the efficacy of the Steps depends on watching our fellows in the program who have been working at it longer than we have. Do I want what they have? Then I should do what they do. It is a simple cause and effect schema. Or at least intellectually simple. The practicing of it is very difficult. Serenity, it seems, is—in spite of our favorite prayer—not “granted” but earned through hard work.

The reason the work is so difficult is that we are dealing with a fear that is basic to all minds, indeed to all living things. This is the fear of dissolution. Our bodies are programmed to protect their integrity: we eat, drink, sleep, flee from danger to protect the flesh. Procreation protects the species. This need to keep our separate selves separate, from dissolving, is intrinsic. These mechanisms are what Bill W. is talking about when he discusses “instincts.”

The mind also has its instincts. And one of the strongest is to resist ego-death, the dissolution of the self. At the bottom of the mind’s well is an animal which will do anything to protect its security. The work of meditation is to, first, calm and tame the beast. Next, we have to encourage it to trust—to trust that letting go of the chokehold it has on circumstances does not mean death, but a wider life. Putting aside the metaphor, meditation challenges us to let go in ways which are naturally frightening. If we are to know freedom, we have to abandon our “old ideas,” to “let go absolutely.” What this means in practice is to sit quietly with our defenses (which can be loosely described under the headings of Buddhism’s three poisons: greed, hatred and delusion), observe them, not act out on them and, eventually come to see that they not only do not serve us well, but actually harm us. As alcoholics and addicts, it will come as no surprise how difficult it is to let go of what is destroying us.

In Zen practice this can be even more frustrating as we are not taken by the hand and led gradually along the path that leads to freedom. Rather we are presented with our own completeness and trusted to make of it what we will. This understanding of meditation is the end point of a long dialectic in Buddhist understanding. It is a radical solution based on the notion that there is no problem. In the words of the Heart Sutra: With nothing to attain the bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita and the mind is no hindrance. (Prajna paramita is the perfection of wisdom and subject of the next essay.)

The perfection of meditation does not require us to do anything, to achieve anything, to become other than we are. It is relaxation and letting go. And yet, this surrender also has its effort. We must make an effort to make time to sit, make effort to maintain our upright posture, to stay with the breath and the moment. In the Serenity Prayer, we ask for both acceptance and the ability to change. It is the same in our practice as in recovery. We create in our silent sitting an arena for our thoughts and emotions to play themselves out free from our interference. We watch and allow them. And watching without acting, we come to see that they have their own arising and falling away and are not the terrifying forces before which we must bend. They are like sound: everywhere and nowhere, overlapping, transitory, without permanent existence, unable to affect the world by themselves unless we embody them. When we have observed them often enough and long enough to understand their nature, we can become progressively more free of their tyranny.

Another way in which we can understand meditation as perfection is by thinking of it as experimentation. Every experiment is perfect in that it provides new information. Sometimes the information is about what works. Sometimes the information is about what doesn’t work. (It is for this reason as well that we listen to others speak in meetings. Everyone has something to tell us, either about how to stay sober or how not to.) If we keep this spirit of inquiry and discovery, every period of meditation is perfect.

In an odd way, meditation is a paradox. On one hand, we are asked to confront and disable our deepest animal fear, the fear of dissolution that lurks at the base of the brainstem with hunger and sex. This is no small feat. On the other hand, we are told that there is nothing to do, nothing to accomplish, that we are already perfect just as we are. That meditation is simply resting in what is. (Zen is particularly fond of paradoxical statements, not because they confuse us but because they are the best suited for expressing the truth of our reality.)

So, what to do? The paradox, experienced, is not so complicated. By resting in our practice, we eventually, little by little, gain more access to the deeper places of our being. We need not charge ahead, lance in hand, into the lair of the dragon. The dragon will come to us. There is a story of a man in ancient China who was fascinated by dragons. He collected paintings and sculptures of them, read and wrote poems about them, thought about them constantly. Some dragons heard about this and one of them said, “He pays us such honor, but he’s never met one of us in person. It would be courteous to visit him, I think.” So off the dragon flew and knocked at the man’s door. The lover of dragons opened the door, took one look and ran off screaming.

The dragon will come to us when it is ready. We needn’t send an invitation. But we can ready ourselves by cultivating a quiet mind. In a way it is like the work we do with the Steps. In Step One we cultivate a sense of acceptance of our real life instead of desperately maintaining a fantasy for ourselves and a façade for others. In Steps Two and Three we create within ourselves a safe space where we are held. We will need this safety in order to go forward into Step Four where we meet the dragon. It is in this Step that we confront, some of us for the first time, the darker truths about ourselves—the resentments and envies, wrongdoings and fears that have torn us apart.

In our Step work and in meditation, it may take frequent excursions into the dark before we reach the bottom. We may pull back or run away like the lover of dragons. This is to be expected and says nothing about our courage. We are doing something that many never undertake at all and can congratulate ourselves. If we must withdraw, regroup and try again—or again and again—it is to be expected. This is the work of a lifetime. And even if we only do a little now, it will not be lost.

Under the circumstances, it seems perhaps odd to discuss the perfection of meditation. But it is useful to recall that the word we translate as perfection can also mean “complete” or “whole” or “beyond description.” Our experience of meditation is complete in itself, wholly our own and ultimately indescribable in words.

Another story: a young Zen student was given the job of arranging flowers for the various altars in the temple. He was a very serious sort of young man and was concerned about doing a proper job. There may also have been a bit of vanity involved. “Flowers no higher than the statue’s eye. Check. Odd number of flowers in the vase. Check. No thorns or spiky flowers. Check. No all-white arrangements except for funerals. Check.” As he was working, an older monk came into the room, watched for a moment and asked, “Do you want to know how to make a perfect arrangement for the altar?” “Oh, yes!” said the youngster. “Well,” said the monk, “You take a bunch of flowers, put them in a vase, step back and say ‘That’s perfect!’”

This is our life. This is meditation. It is good not to ignore the advice and wisdom of those who have gone before us; but ultimately we must incorporate their wisdom into our own and find our own way into, and out of, the dragon’s cave. This is dhyana paramita, the perfection of meditation.


 

Last Updated ( Friday, 29 August 2008 )
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