Sitting and Forgetting, or, Mind Fasting
One of the things I learned when I was at a Daoist retreat centre was a form of meditation called “just sitting”. And that's all they taught. You sat on a cushion and all the teacher did was walk around correcting your posture if you were slouching. You weren't expected to sit in a lotus posture or anything, you just sat as comfortably as possible. Nor were you supposed to sit for any specified length of time. If you found it too difficult to sit any longer, you were supposed to stop.
What was that all about?
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Sir Motley of Southurb sat leaning against his low table. He looked up to heaven and exhaled slowly. Disembodied, he seemed bereft of soul. Sir Wanderer of Countenance Complete, who stood in attendance before him, asked, “How can we explain this? Can the body really be made to become like withered wood? Can the mind really be made to become like dead ashes? The one who is leaning against the table now is not the one who was formerly leaning against the table.”Zhuangzi, “On the Equality of Things”, Mair trans. "I'm making progress," said Yen Hui.
"What do you mean?" asked Confucius.
"I have forgotten rites and music."
"Not bad, but you still haven't got it."
Yen Hui saw Confucius again on another day and said, "I'm making progress."
"What do you mean?"
"I have forgotten humaneness and righteousness."
"Not bad, but you still haven't got it."
Yen Hui saw Confucius again on another day and said, "I'm making progress."
"What do you mean?"
"I sit and forget."
"What do you mean, 'sit and forget'?" Confucius asked with surprise.
"I slough off my limbs and trunk," said Yen Hui, "dim my intelligence, depart from my form, leave knowledge behind, and become identical with the Transformational Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by 'sit and forget'."
"If you are identical," said Confucius, "then you have no preferences. If you are transformed, then you have no more constants. It's you who is really the worthy one! Please permit me to follow after you."
Zhuangzi, “The Great Ancestral Teacher”, Mair trans.
What these two posts are talking about is Zuowang, or “sitting and forgetting”. A respected scholar of Daoism, Livia Kohn, describes this as: "a state of deep trance or intense absorption, during which no trace of ego-identity is felt and only the underlying cosmic current of the Dao is perceived as real" (from the Wikipedia.) Zhuangzi is describing the ultimate goal of “just sitting”, which is “sitting and forgetting”. What is it that people are supposed to be forgetting? I'd suggest that they are the delusions that cloud our minds and cut us off from the world as it really is.
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The thing about formal meditation practices is that no matter what you do, you are really only doing one particular thing, and, when you do it, you are prey to one particular problem. The thing you are doing is learning about your thinking. And the problem you face is that the act of thinking about thinking gets in the way of observing and learning about thinking.
When you are sitting on the mats meditating, you will notice that there are a lot of thoughts that rattle through your mind. “My legs hurt.” “What will I have for supper?” “Is my wife OK?”---and so on. If you stick with the practice over a long period of time, people generally start to find that their minds quiet down. Usually this involves some practice like taking deep breaths and counting them. “One, two, three, four, five,”---and so on. You will notice that you get distracted “That jerk at work so annoyed me today! Oh, yeah. I'm supposed to be meditating. One, two, three, four, five. Damn the boss! He shouldn't allow that jerk to get away with---. Oh yeah, meditation. One, two, three, four, Who does he think he is anyway! One, two, three, four---”. Oh crap. I forgot to meditate. I'm never going---. Whoops! One, two, three, four, five---”.
The thing about meditation is to observe this rattling, chattering, distracting “monkey mind” that intrudes on your existence. If you calm yourself and pay attention to it, the noise will begin to slowly drift away. You will gradually find that you can sit and count up to ten or twenty for longer and longer periods without being distracted by your thoughts. Other distractions will begin to present themselves, however. You will probably start falling asleep. But if you stick to the practice, day after day, and this too will pass. Many people then start to hallucinate. In my case, for example, one time I was sitting in meditation and suddenly I found myself downhill skiing at very high velocity.
These phenomenon are different from person to person, but predictable percentages of the population will manifest them in any given group. In fact, they are so predictable that the meditation master who taught me had a volunteer who's job it was to stand by with towels in case someone started to cry uncontrollably. I've seen this happen. A woman started to weep so much that she was given a towel to dry herself off. Later, I also went through a long period when I wept so much while meditating that each time I got off the cushion so many tears had flowed into my lap that I looked like I had peed my pants.
The great thing about this predictability is that it allows people to teach these methods with a fair degree of confidence that if someone sticks to the practice they will eventually gain the ability to quiet down and experience moments of clarity and peace with greater and greater regularity. And this new experience isn't just relegated to time spent on the cushions. In your day-to-day life you will also find that you are more peaceful, centred, and, have greater insight into how your own mind works. This will bleed over into having a better understanding about how other people's minds work, and, what subtle rules govern the world around you.
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As I said earlier, however, there is also a universal problem with meditation.
Early on I suggested that meditation is about dispelling delusions. These come in many sizes and shapes. Of course, what I've called the “monkey mind” is the source of many of them. They can be things like “I'm no good”, “I'm too fat”, and so on. Others are more subtle like “I simple cannot do that!” For example, I once saw a historical movie about King Charles the 2nd of England. His father had been deposed by revolutionaries and executed, and the son was living in exile with his mother. The scene showed her complaining bitterly because she had to eat off china plates that had been used before, washed and used again (ie: just like everyone else.) She felt that this was disgusting. Her son was appalled at this delusional thinking, but was forced to humour her in order to keep harmony in the family.
Outside of royal households delusions also reign supreme. People buy expensive homes that they cannot afford. People pursue careers that kill them with stress and over work. People piss away money that their families desperately need. People refuse to admit that people with different skin colour are human beings just like them. People complain bitterly about any attempt to build a sustainable society and deny the reality of climate change. A moment's thought will provide lots of examples. Sitting and forgetting is a wonderful corrective to delusional thinking because once you learn to quiet down the monkey mind, you gain the clarity to see your own personal delusions for what they are.
This is a general truth with, however, ONE ENORMOUS CAVEAT!!!!!!!!! In the New Testament Jesus talks about people looking to remove a speck of dust from another person's eye while walking around with a huge wooden beam in their own. The human mind is a very subtle and inventive thing, when we drive away the delusions we can see, invisible ones will try to move in and replace them. Some of the delusions that come from meditation are:
- an excessive love of peace and quiet, to the point of no longer being able to function around ordinary people
- an unwillingness to engage in society, to the point of refusing to work together for political issues, do charitable work, or, be a useful member of the community
- a belief in the ultimate metaphysical importance of “spiritual things”: for example, believing that simply meditating for long periods of time makes the world a better place all by itself
- becoming obsessed with teaching what you have learned through meditation to other people, whether or not they are capable of, or even interested in, learning it
- becoming addicted to altered states of consciousness and losing the ability to function in the world of ordinary people
Some of these delusions can grow into full-blown manias. A very small percentage of people will even develop real psychiatric problems and require treatment. Unfortunately, many people teaching meditation techniques tend to be people holding onto one of the more subtle delusions (ie: that meditation is a universal panacea that will solve all problems) which keeps them from understanding how it can lead to its own delusions and be outright dangerous for some.
A Daoist teaching book expresses the danger of excessive meditation through a story about an initiate who finds himself living a life of contemplation in a cave. One day he meets someone who teaches him a lesson.
---Hao T'ai-ku walked out of his cave to enjoy the peace and quiet of the surroundings. He noticed a man sitting under one of the arches of the bridge. The man was polishing a stone. Occasionally he would take the polished stone and look at it for a while, then he would resume polishing. He would polish a single stone until it becames so thin that it disintegrated; then he would pick up another stone and begin the process all over again. Hao T'ai-ku thought this behaviour strange and decided to ask the man the purpose of his activity. He said, “Sir, it appears that you are polishing stones for nothing. Your activity does not seem to lead to any accomplishment. What are you trying to do? Maybe I can help.” The man replied, “I am trying to make a mirror by polishing the stone.” Hao T'ai-ku said, “People make mirrors by polishing bronze, not stones. If you keep on polishing stones, you will never get what you want.” The man laughed and said, “You are telling me that if I stubbornly sit here and polish my stones, I shall never make a mirror! What about you? Do you think that by sitting here stubbornly in the cave you can become an immortal?” Hao T'tai-ku realized what the man was trying to teach him by his actions. But as he was about to ask this strange man for more instructions, the man suddenly disappeared. Hao T'ai-ku said to himself, “The sage was right. Stubbornly sitting here all the time is 'dead sitting.'” He went back into the cave, collected his belongings, and left the area.
Seven Taoist Masters: a Folk Novel of China, chapt 16
translated by Eva Wong. Shambhala, first published 1990, (ISBN: O-87773-544-1)
Sitting and forgetting is a wonderful practice to help people live better lives. But if it becomes an end in itself or reinforces a delusional belief system, it becomes yet another way of estranging yourself from the world around you.
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