Meditation Techniques - Week 14

About This Course

Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.

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Greetings. This week’s post concerns the meditation method called lhatong. Because it is subtle, we will approach it via a more common experience—flow—to which lhatong bears a resemblance.

Flow

‘Flow’ is a state familiar to many musicians and athletes. It is sometimes called ‘being in the zone’. Flow is experienced by everyone – but may not be noticed. Typically it occurs in an activity that is difficult – but which you have practiced so extensively that you have become proficient.

Flow involves:

• a heightened and narrowed state of attention, so that you are aware of nothing outside the action;

• an absence of self-consciousness (‘losing your self in the music’);

• a sense of the merging of action and awareness, with the loss of distinction between the actor and the action;

• the feeling that the action is effortless, even when objectively it involves great exertion;

• absence of thought combined with presence of awareness;

• confidence, or absence of worry about losing control; and

• transformed perception of time, so that a moment may seem to last minutes, or hours pass like minutes.

Scientific studies have demonstrated that flow can result in dramatically improved practical performance. It is also enormously enjoyable – and people are happy roughly in proportion to the amount of flow they experience.

For most people—unfortunately—flow is transitory, infrequent, and unpredictable.

Just as non-thought cannot by produced by force – you cannot force flow. Non-thought is produced by patiently repeated, gentle non-doing. Flow is produced by patiently repeated, vigorous doing. You may discover flow when playing guitar, skiing, making love, or even playing a video game.

The good news is that shi-nè increases the frequency with which you experience flow – and makes it easier to remain in flow longer. This is because thinking about what you are doing immediately ends the flow experience. As long as you allow your fingers to play guitar by themselves, the music flows. The moment you think ‘wow, this is great’ or ‘the next bit is complicated’ – it falls apart. In fact, flow occurs when we allow action rather than acting deliberately. Action in flow is neither voluntary nor involuntary: it is choiceless but mindful.

Lhatong

Lhatong (pronounced lah-tong) is a state similar to flow, but found in meditation.

They differ in that:

• lhatong involves panoramic awareness of the physical and mental environment – rather than the narrowed focus of flow;

• you practice lhatong while sitting still – so there is no physical activity;

• lhatong allows thought where flow allows action.

They are similar in that both involve:

• absence of self-consciousness, or a merging of identity with the unfolding events;

• absence of deliberate action;

• effortlessness, confidence, and enjoyment.

Lhatong differs from ordinary thinking in that thought spontaneously appears in empty space. Ordinarily thoughts appear in ‘the mind’ of a thinker who produces them. In the lhatong experience – there appears to be no thinker. There is no one to interfere with thoughts – and no one to be distracted by them. They simply flow of their own accord.

Lhatong may occur unpredictably during shi-nè. It is also possible to encourage lhatong using a specific technique.

The Technique

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that most techniques other than shi-nè are applicable only in certain situations.

The technique for lhatong strictly applies only when your mind has settled sufficiently in formless shi-nè that no thoughts have appeared for several full minutes. Typically this occurs only after you have been practicing for at least an hour a day for several months – often several years. However, you can experiment with this technique any time your meditation is calm and relaxed, thoughts are slow and faint, and you are aware of gaps between them.

The technique is to alter your posture – in order to open yourself to the world. The world then provokes thoughts – which you allow to flow.

In the fully-opened lhatong posture:

• Your eyes are completely open and you gaze straight ahead.

• You raise your chin slightly to allow the raised gaze.

• You place your hands palms-down on your thighs, rather than palms-up in your lap (refer to week 8).

The more open your posture – the more thoughts are likely to permit distraction. So experiment with opening your eyes gradually – then raising your gaze – then your chin – and then repositioning your hands.

Do not allow your gaze to wander. The doing of eye movements breaks lhatong.

Obstacles & Antidotes: Nyams

A ‘nyam’ is any unusual experience that occurs in meditation. The states of non-thought, and of thoughts flowing spontaneously in empty space, are nyams. Other nyams include non-ordinary perception—what might be described as ‘hallucinations’ in other contexts—and various ‘altered states’. Nyams can be ecstatic, weird, or dreadful.

Nyams can be an obstacle if you react to their intensity with avidity, repulsion, or disregard. Grasping at blissful nyams risks turning you into a ‘seeker after nyams’ rather than a meditator. Nyams are not the goal of meditation – and like non-thought and flow they vanish if you pursue them. Fleeing, disrupting, or screening out confusing or frightening nyams shuts you off from the next stage of your natural spiritual development.

The antidote—as in all else—is to allow nyams to be as they are. Do not attempt to either produce or impede them. Experience them fully—enjoy them fleetingly and lightly when you can—and let them pass.

Nyams usually occur only when you have been meditating intensively for months. They are a sign of progress on the path – but they are not progress in themselves.

Nyams can be an obstacle if you take pride in them. Especially dangerous is mistaking them for ‘enlightenment’ or proof of great spiritual accomplishment. The antidote is the knowledge that nyams occur eventually for all persistent meditators. The types and frequency vary from person to person – but there is no significance to this.

This Week’s Meditation Technique

Practice shi-nè according to whichever technique seems appropriate for your mind-state.

If you find yourself undistracted and can maintain formless shi-nè – apply the lhatong technique.

If you find yourself distracted – sing the sound ‘Ah’—as follows.

Open your eyes fully. Fill your lungs by breathing first into your belly and then continuing to fill your chest. Sing ‘Ah’ at a comfortable deep pitch. Allow the sound to continue to the end of your breath – to attenuate gradually – and to disappear into silence. Repeat the sound with each out-breath. Continue until you no longer feel distracted – or for up to five minutes. Then resume shi-nè.

Allow your sense of being to be flooded by sound. Find the presence of your awareness in the experience of sound. Allow the distinction between yourself and sound to collapse.

Singing ‘Ah’ may allow the flow or lhatong experience. If you review the characteristics of flow – you may be able to see why.

Singing ‘Ah’ relaxes vocal energy. The resonance permeates being and dispels tensions created in attempts to establish concrete definitions of what you are.

Breathing first into your belly is a way of taking a full breath. Many of us habitually breath only into our chests because we habitually contract our stomach muscles unnecessarily. It may feel odd at first – but relaxing the belly to breathe fully has many benefits in life as well as in meditation.

The alternating conditions of sound and silence are analogous to the alternation of thought and non-thought – lhatong and shi-nè – form and emptiness. Listen to the stillness after the sound vanishes.

‘Ah’ is the sound of the Tibetan letter A – which has special significance in the Aro tradition. ‘A-ro’ means ‘the taste of the letter A’ in Tibetan. This week’s meditation technique may allow you to discover that taste.

Recommended Resources

See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.

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