Going Beyond Methods

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What is happening in meditation is that we are going beyond the method, going beyond the procedural side of things. So – we might quite reasonably ask – what does it mean to be going beyond the method, beyond the procedural side of things? How does this work? What does it involve? To ‘go beyond the method’ is also to ‘go beyond the map’ however and so we’re not actually going to get any answers to these questions! It is very natural for us to wonder what it involves to go beyond the method, to go beyond the map, but we can’t really expect any satisfactory answers. Or rather, we can expect an answer alright -no problem about that – but the point here is that we’re just not going to get one!

 

We can’t really expect an answer when we ask “What’s beyond the map?” because if we were to receive an answer then this answer would itself constitute a map! Going beyond the map or beyond the method is to go beyond any possibility of saying anything. We are no longer in the ‘consensus reality’ that for most of us constitutes the only reality we know. We’re no longer in the consensus reality because no one can tell us either what this so-called ‘beyond’ is or how to get there, and if no one can tell us what it is or how to get there then we’re very much on our own. We’re ‘thrown back on our own resources’…

 

Whilst it is very much true that there’s nothing wrong with being on our own in this way, being thrown back on our own resources in this way, it is also true that we are very much not used to it! This is a challenge and the thing about a challenge is that we need some kind of a ‘muscle’ to respond to it. If we don’t have the muscle – or rather if we don’t know that we have it – then we start to panic. The challenge is there but we have no way of dealing with it, no way of responding to it – it is as if the only way of responding we have is to ‘cave in’ to it. It may be true that we do have the muscle there somewhere but that’s no good to us because we neither know where it is nor how to use it…

 

So the first thing is to actually know that we have the muscle there and the second thing is to exercise it, to get it to a little bit of work so that it might gradually start to grow stronger. This sounds like a method in itself – we could call it a ‘Two-Step’ method and try to market it – but if we thought it was a method we would be wrong. It isn’t a method for the simple reason that no one can tell us how to find the muscle and even if we did find it no one could tell us how to go about using it. We keep coming back to this – people can tell us a certain amount but we always come to this ‘jumping off’ point where we have to do it ourselves. We always reach that point at which we have to leave behind the comfortable camaraderie of the consensus reality (the ‘group mind’, so to speak, and all it’s advice) and go it alone.

 

This is a lot like ‘bringing a horse to water’ – we can bring the horse to water without any major problems (which is the ‘procedural bit’) but then the horse has to drink for itself, without any external direction, and this is quite another matter. There’s no ‘procedure’, no ‘method’ for making the horse drink, in other words. So the bit of the practice where we sign up for the meditation class, where we get ourselves to the meditation room and sit ourselves down on the stool or cushion, is a procedure. The bit of the practice where we follow the basic instructions of following the breath, of bringing the attention back to the breath each time we get distracted is a procedure. But none of this is meditation – this is only the preliminary. This is only the ‘jumping-off point’. We have brought the horse to the water but now it has to drink…

 

So, within the terms of this metaphor, what does it mean when we talking about ‘the horse drinking’? What does this actually involve? These are the questions that we want to have clarified. It automatically happens that we want to ask for ‘descriptions and prescriptions’ regarding the process of what is happening in meditation but there are none forthcoming for what we’re talking about here. There are as we have said no descriptions of what happens when we leave the jumping-off point, nor prescriptions for how we should go about doing this. ‘The horse drinking’ means that we are moving beyond methods, moving beyond procedures, moving beyond planning and purposefulness and no one can tell us how to do this. Naturally enough, no one can tell us how to go beyond following instructions! We can’t even tell ourselves this. We can’t plan for how to go beyond planning; we can’t set the goal of moving beyond goals…

 

The procedure of ‘coming gently back to the breath every time we get distracted’ is of course very easy to describe, and also very easy to make a prescription of. It is also relatively easy to follow, under most circumstances. This however is not meditation! The reason following the instructions for ‘following the breath and coming back again every time we notice that we have been distracted’ is not meditation is because precisely because we are following the instructions for how to do it, precisely because we are following a procedure. A ‘procedure’ is something that we can direct ourselves to do – in this case I am directing myself to pay attention to the breath as it leaves and comes into the body, and then come back again to paying attention when I notice that I have been distracted, when I notice that I have been side-tracked into thoughts and led astray. This is all well and good and it is the procedural basis for meditation without being meditation itself.  It isn’t meditation because there’s still a controller; it isn’t meditation because meditation isn’t where we direct ourselves (or tell ourselves) to do this, that or the other. Meditation isn’t ‘a following of the rules’ or ‘a following of the method’ – it is as we have been saying a going beyond the rules, a going beyond the method. Meditation – as Krishnamurti says – is

a movement in and of the unknown…

 

In the state of meditation there is no controller and no controlled, which is in complete contrast to our normal ‘directed’ mode of consciousness. There is no one there issuing instructions or directives as to what should be happening next, what the attention should be attending to next, and so on. If this were the case then the attention (or the ‘awareness’) would be the slave of the rational mind, the slave of the rational mind’s purposes or game-plan, and the state of having one’s awareness enslaved in this way isn’t meditation!

 

That enslaved state is just the ‘mechanical modality of being’ – the machine-mode of existence on which basis we live most of our life. In meditation there is no one directing the attention, no one telling it where to go or what to do next, no one telling it how it should be. That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening, however!” Our inbuilt prejudice is to image that unless there is a controller issuing instructions then nothing will ever happen. Without the red-faced sergeant barking out orders on the parade ground there is only going to be unruly chaos. Nothing productive, nothing worthwhile is ever going to happen. This is very much what the rational mind believes – that nothing worthwhile will happen without its say-so, without its explicit instructions or guidance. This is why the thinking mind’s essential nature is that of a tyrant, or a boss who doesn’t trust anyone enough to delegate responsibility. The thinking mind has serious trust issues, in other words!

 

The ‘back-to-front’ thing about this however is that who we actually are is the spark of awareness, not the dead mechanical system that is guiding it, controlling it. We’re the consciousness, not the Sat Nav! The system of thought is saying that the consciousness which is who we really are can’t be trusted, can’t be allowed to ‘run free’ and do its own thing. That would be a disaster, it tells us. The mechanical system which is who we aren’t can’t trust the spark of awareness which is who we are! This is like a slave-owner who says that his slaves would never amount to anything without him telling them what to do, without him motivating them (coercing them!) every step of the way. This – very clearly – is no more than a self-serving lie! The slaves may not do what the slave-owner wants them to do anymore, but that is a different matter entire. The slave-owner’s goals only matter to him, after all – they don’t have any wider significance. The point is not really that the slaves won’t do anything if they are freed from coercion, but that they will no longer do what the slave-driver wants them to do!

 

The spontaneous self is far more, unimaginably more, infinitely more than who (or what) we are when we are being controlled every inch of the way by the rational mind, when we are no more than the slaves of its dead mechanical purposes. To be the slaves of a whole bunch of mechanical purposes is to be no more than those purposes, and the purposes are nothing at all unless they serve something higher than themselves. When these ‘mechanical purposes’ consume us there is very little of our true spontaneous nature left in evidence – we become stereotypical stressed-out humourless emotionally-repressed adults. Who – we might ask – is more truly who we are – the humourless emotionally-repressed adult or the free spirit we started off as being, all those years ago? Clearly the spontaneous self or free spirit is so much more us than the person we are when we are controlled by the thinking, but somehow we end up getting used to being controlled or regulated by our own thoughts, our own ideas and beliefs. It becomes very normal for us. Anything else becomes frightening, anything else becomes very threatening…

 

The snag here is of course that we have identified with the rational mind. The prisoner has identified with the jailer, which is the Stockholm Syndrome taken to the nth degree. We don’t have any life any more – we have given the life that we had to the conditioned self, and the conditioned self is not of itself alive (being no more than a glorified reflex). The mechanical shell which is the ‘reflex-self’ is who we think we are, and so what it ‘wants’ becomes what we want. When we can see things like this (i.e. in terms of consciousness identifying itself with the rational mind or conditioned self) then this clarifies our situation hugely. We started off perceiving ourselves to be the ‘controller’ who directs the attention back to the breath every time we get distracted by thought. We perceive ourselves to be ‘doing’ the meditation, in other words – if someone were to ask me what I was doing then I would answer, “I am meditating”. This situation however – as we have been saying – is not meditation. It has nothing to do with meditation! As Wei Wu Wei says,

As long as there is a ‘you’ doing or not-doing,
thinking or not-thinking,
‘meditating’ or ‘not-meditating’
you are no closer to home
than the day you were born.

 

All methods cause us to identify with the controller. As Wei Wu Wei also says –

All methods require a doer. The only ‘doer’ is the I-Concept.

 

All methods belong to the I-Concept and wherever the I-Concept is there can be no peace…

 

Wherever there is a method there is the I-concept, therefore. Generally speaking, we think that methods are great – we can’t have enough of them! It’s methods, methods, methods as far as our modern rational culture is concerned. We have methods coming out of our ears. We eat them for breakfast, lunch and tea. Our love affair with methods is our love affair with the I-concept, however. Our love affair with methods is our love affair with the controller; our thinking here is ‘what’s good for the I-concept is good for us’! Actually, our modern way of life is all about the controller, all about the I-concept. The world we have adapted ourselves to is purely for the benefit of the I-concept, not for our benefit. This world has been designed by the I-concept, commissioned by the I-concept, instigated by the I-concept. It is managed and policed by the I-concept. It is the I-concept’s standards we have to live up to!

 

As long as we are identifying with the I-concept, the controller, everything in this world seems fine, everything makes sense. But by the same token just as soon as we stop identifying with the mind-created phantom which is the conditioned self the way of life that we are so proud of is revealed as being little more than a concentration camp for the spirit. Consciousness – which is who we are – is being persecuted on all sides. Everything serves the unreal self-image and we insist on identifying with this imposter. Consciousness herself has been kept in captivity and used for the benefit of the abstract self-image so long that this seems like the normal way for things to be. We know no other way. Our suffering is as a result very great – whether we know this to be the case or not – and the one thing we don’t need is yet more methods to help ‘manage’ this suffering.

 

Symbolically speaking, we may point to the story of St George and the dragon. Consciousness – we may say – is the fair maiden held captive by the fearsome fire-breathing dragon and the dragon in question is none other than the thinking / controlling mind. When it comes to the heroic task of freeing the maiden therefore this is not to be done according to a method. Methods are the dragon – St George is not an extension of the rational ego!

 

 

 

 

 

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