This morning I sat on my little bench and “meditated” for the first time in many weeks. No big deal, just attended to my breathing and the other thoughts and sensations passing through. Presently, I’m enjoying a cup of coffee and playing on the computer, and a few minutes ago I took a peek at Matthew Dallman’s latest blog entry On Wilber’s advocacy of meditation. Dallman links to an essay by Jim Andrews, who questions the validity of Wilber’s general assertion that meditation is the Royal Road to Enlightenment.
I wasn’t as impressed by the essay as Dallman seems to be, but it still raises a few interesting questions in my mind, questions I have grappled with many times before. The first is: What exactly is meditation anyway? If it is, in fact, the Royal Road, then we can expect to benefit greatly from a thorough understanding of the process by which such an “activity” facilitates personal transformation. And if I’m to be quite honest here, I’d have to say that understanding the basic principles of transformation–in experiential terms–is the only part of the “integral” agenda that I find truly compelling these days. In this regard, I am not satisfied with Wilber’s theory, and so I will have to get off my duff and inquire for myself.
Now, this is an important issue, not just because it’s my thing, but because it speaks to the heart of Wilber’s core message which, in the early days at least, was essentially: “MEDITATE!” Quite recently, in fact, Wilber concluded: “the single greatest thing that the world can do to stop starvation is to meditate…Nothing else has been demonstrated to move people stages.” How has this been demonstrated? By Alexander’s TM study? Is that it? There’s obviously more to Wilber’s claim, and I think it’s the fact that he attributes HIS OWN transformation to his years of meditation. I’m fine with that logic, as long as one is honest about it.
In order to be considered properly scientific, I would assume researchers have to define meditation in terms of a particular form that all research subjects must follow. In the Alexander study, it was TM. But who’s to say what’s really going on within an individual’s consciousness while they practice a particular form of meditation? For one person, the first five years of zazen practice might be a striving to achieve some sort of special, spiritual experience, preparing one for some big moment of realization down the line that there’s no “I” to achieve anything. For another, sitting in meditation is simply an expression of an already-apprehended realization of peace and contentment. I know from my own experience that there is a particular attitude or mode of awareness that accompanies and is strengthened by a number of practices I consider “spiritual” and “transformative.” For me, there something going on during the creative process (while playing and writing music) which feels the same as what’s going on while I do sensory awareness stuff on my floor, which feels the same as what’s going on while I make love, which feels the same as what’s going on when I sit zazen… In other words, there are principles of transformation that go way beyond any particular form of practice, so that propping up one’s own favorite forms (like sitting meditation and weight-lifting) with references to “studies” feels too biased, like it’s partially an unconscious attempt to justify one’s own choices. I’m not saying we should ignore research, I’m just suggesting that what we consider significant or insignificant can often be more a matter of personal bias than anything else. We all do this to a certain extent, I think. We unconsciously employ selective attention to highlight those “studies” and arguments and ideas that justify and maintain our current “status quo.”
Okay, out of intellectual laziness I just cut and pasted the above paragraph from a blog I wrote a few months ago, but my issues are still the same I guess. Even if you give people the same instructions, there’s no way to tell what a person is really doing or experiencing while they sit on a cushion and breathe. Some people are able to turn everyday activities into spiritual practice. Others go through the motions with a technique or practice for years without ever really “getting” it. So, I believe it’s mindfulness in the broad sense that inspires or fuels the transformative process, and that this mindfulness has to do with a quality of attention one can bring to any activity. So, the current research, which does not account for this, has demonstrated DIDDLY SQUAT! And yet, I believe my hypothesis to be true anyway, simply because it fits with my experience and my intuition of other’s descriptions. Upper Right quadrant research is great, but it doesn’t tell us much if we don’t even understand what it is we’re looking at. I think we have to get a much clearer phenomenological account of the meditative process, and distinguish it (if it can be) from other “transformative” processes (mindfulness, creative expression, flow) before we can set up a UR research study that can even begin to support Wilber’s bold claims.