Do Meditative Techniques Have Any Value?

A lot of people, myself included, come from various traditions where meditation is taught as a technique. We are taught various forms of control, such as focusing on the breath or focusing on various parts of the body. In the Zen tradition, we often focus just slightly below the navel. Often we are taught to sit in a certain posture, with our backs straight, and to breathe in a particular way. These techniques and disciplines have been taught for hundreds and thousands of years, and I am not suggesting that they have no value or merit. They do have value and merit. What I am saying, however, is that it's when we start to let go of these techniques, when we start to let go of this focusing, that we can approach our natural state of being. Often these techniques obscure our natural state of consciousness. When I am leading a retreat I often begin by saying that I know different people have different ways of meditating and of centering themselves. Some people follow their breath. Some people say a mantra. Some people do deep breathing. Some people do visualization practices. I say to the group that to engage these techniques at the beginning of a meditation session is fine. These are perfectly appropriate ways of bringing the mind into the present. They allow you to gather the psychic energy and the resources of the active mind and to pool them into right here and right now. And yet what I suggest is that, in any given period of meditation, we also take time to let go of whatever technique we're using. If I'm following my breath, I also experiment with what happens when I let go of following my breath. What happens when I let go of watching my mind? Or saying my mantra? These practices may help us gather our attention into the moment; that is their primary value. But once our attention is in the present, then the invitation is to let go of these techniques and to start to investigate our natural state of being.

And so I have found that often, if we are not careful, these ancient traditions and techniques—many of which I myself was taught, and which have great value—become an end instead of a means to an end. People end up with what is simply a discipline. They end up watching their breath for years and years and years, becoming perfect at watching their breath. But in the end spirituality is not about watching the breath. It's about waking up from the dream of separateness to the truth of unity. That's what it's about, and this can get forgotten if we adhere too closely to technique. So we might start with a little technique, a little watching the breath, saying a prayer, saying a mantra, using a visualization. But my suggestion is always that we should move relatively soon into a curiosity about what happens when we allow everything to be as it is. At this point we start to transition from control of mind into True Meditation. It's a revolutionary transition. A lot of people I've met have forgotten that transition, forgotten to let that transition happen. They've forgotten that the point comes relatively soon when you can—and should—let go of control.