What Does Meditation Solve Anyway?

About three years ago I learned to meditate. My friend and colleague, John, an experienced meditation and yoga teacher had invited a small group of friends to learn about mindfulness meditation. This type of meditation, briefly  summarized, focuses on breathing--the flow of exhaling and inhaling--as a way of concentrating the mind. As the meditating person focuses on their breathing thoughts will come up and present "distractions" from the focus on breathing. The process of emerging thoughts and distractions is often referred to as "monkey-mind" (invoking a monkey jumping from one tree to another without being able to rest). Meditation, i.e., focus on breathing, is meant to help the practitioner notice the thoughts, but not engage with them. As one becomes more experienced with this kind  of practice thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. are perceived more like clouds that move across the sky (without the practitioner interfering with them).  So far, so good.

My experience with this kind of practice is overwhelmingly positive.  It works! And, I find it relatively easy to sit and engage in this process of concentrating, being distracted and re-concentrating. Sometimes concentration lasts longer, sometimes it seems hardly possible at all.  Sometimes my back hurts, or my legs fall asleep, or I have to cough…but the overall experience of meditating is positive. It always calms me, makes me feel "rested" and open. I look forward to doing it, just how I would look forward to going for a walk or a bike-ride or even sitting on our deck.  In all these cases I am noticing a flow of things, impressions, etc. I don't engage with them. And, strangely, I'm also not aware of my breathing, or my pace. I'm just walking, just sitting, just pedaling . . . being aware of a full emptiness--or perhaps an empty fullness--in me.

The big question is what can meditation do for us? More and more research is devoted to this question. Brain scans seem to indicate that meditation changes the way we think and feel (not just when we meditate but also outside of the time we set aside to do so). Meditation seems to help with concentration, sleep, work, love, sex, parenting . . . everything, really, we do as humans on a daily basis. This is no surprise, because all those things are also areas in which we could be distracted. Learning how to concentrate and, especially, learning how to redirect ourselves when we are getting distracted, apparently proves helpful across the board. However, the problem with all these "uses" of meditation is that they turn into something that in the end supports a deeply embedded guilt so pervasive in the American psyche: The guilt about not working enough or not working efficiently enough. Meditation is supposed to make us better workers, students, employees, etc.

(I am tempted to state the radical opposite: when meditation "works" it will precisely stop of from even paying attention to work and work efficiency.)

A question that came up yesterday after our monthly group meditation was, if meditation can increase our capacity for compassion. More exactly: How does meditation affect our tendency to distinguish between "good and bad?" And what is the meaning of "neutrality" in this? One thing we all seemed to agree on is that meditation is a "response" to certain states of mind, not, perhaps, so much a preemptive readying of the mind. Although the latter may be a result of the former it is likely more accurate to say that meditation can be a response to emotional states such as anger, grief, sadness than that it would "prevent" such emotional states. As such a response meditation can help the practitioner gain some distance from the direct impact of his emotions and judgments. Experienced meditation practitioners may say that emotions are closely connected to "ego-states" (i.e., they are about my survival, my prevailing in any given situation). Ergo, when we learn how to detach from them, we open ourselves to more than just our own experience. One could say that, in this way, meditation renders the practitioner intrinsically altruistic. This is not the altruism that comes from a rule or commandment. It is an altruism that simply comes from the fact that the meditation practitioner sees and perceives more comprehensively the world in its totality. As this process is going on previous judgments such as "good" and "bad" seem shallow, without depth. Rather than being able to distinguish them sharply the larger view of the world seems to meld them together. We become aware of how much good is underneath something that is bad and vice versa. We may also see how much bad can come out of something good, etc. Good and bad are no longer clearly delineated, they fuse and grow together, and, in the end become "one."

Assuming that the meditation practitioner really is able to see the world more comprehensively in the way described, how will such a view impact his ability, willingness, desire to act in the world? Can we still love one person and not another? Can we punish one but not the other? What happens, if we find that both should be loved or punished? Are there really victims and victimizers, dominators and those who are dominated? It seems clear to me that, the more we push ourselves in this direction, i.e., the direction of seeing and understanding the world more comprehensively, the less we will feel inclined and able to act in either one or the other direction. What we will see instead is that the pulse of the world is such that good and bad no longer apply. "Bad" and "good" as they occur do so randomly without rhyme or reason. And even though we can always ascertain the "cause" of an event we can also run down that line of causes infinitely without ever reaching an original cause. This means that taking meditation's challenge to open ourselves up to the world will mean, finally, that we must sit still, behold the world and let it do it's thing (which, by the way, it will do anyway, whether we attempt to intervene or not).

Meditation, in other words, does not solve anything. Rather it dis-solves everything. Even the idea of "seeing the world more  comprehensively" still implies a seeing (and therefore a subject (an ego) that sees). Seeing implies perspective. Meditation's effects will dissolve that as well.

The big question that remains is this: Given that meditation aims at this kind of dissolution of perspectives, given also that the possibility of reaching such a mental state of dissolution is just as faint as the moment itself is fleeting, what will have changed about the way I am in the world upon my return to it, after I have meditated? If the world forces me into perspectives, opinions, ideas, concepts, dynamics, systems and constellations--all the products of ego-activity--how will the experience, if only momentary, of an ego-less state affect my relationship to the infinite multitude of ego-constructs (also known as "the world")?

The only half-way satisfying answer I can come up with is "compassionate skepticism." In the world (of ego-constructs; which is the "world") meditation holds the practitioner apart from all opinion and perspective while allowing him/her full comprehension of the emotional world that underlies all opinions and perspectives. It is a full comprehension of something that is infinitely complex. Knowing it implies a simultaneous inability to articulate it. Such compassionate skepticism does not not take sides because it wills itself so. Rather it does not take sides because it can do no different. It is unable to inhabit opinion and perspective!

Looking at meditation as compassionate skepticism also helps us see why it really does not meet the criteria of what we think of as neutrality. One could say that, in a paradoxical way, compassionate skepticism carries within itself an extreme emotional bias--towards everything. While this bias towards everything is certainly not neutrality it is so strong that it "dis-solves" and tears apart. We may therefore have a better understanding of the Buddhist monk who sets himself on fire publicly: it is not an act of "pro-test" as much as it is a way of demonstrating dis-solution, the dissolution of the embodied ego. In quite the same way Jesus' death on the cross, mostly referred to by Christians as his "sacrifice," is really not a sacrifice, i.e., an intentional willful act. Rather it is the dissolution of a body-mind-soul who understands the world comprehensively, compassionately and skeptically. It is the last act at the outer limit of action. No more action is possible.

Meditation doesn't solve anything. Rather it dis-solves everything. It can afford us a glance into, a taste of this state of dissolution, of what is is like to experience our ego-structures melting away.