Dwelling on peace

"Shamatha," as I may have pointed out before, translates as "calm abiding," or "dwelling in peace." Sometimes, however, that can turn into "dwelling on peace," as in "What?! I've only done 5 hours so far today? Shit! Relax harder, you idiot! You gotta make this session count!"

Surprise, surprise -- that doesn't work at all. Mingyur Rinpoche teaches:

We are just going to sit with our body and mind relaxed, just like we had finished a long job that made us tired. ... This relaxation is meditation. But I did not instruct you to meditate. But it is said, non-meditation is the supreme meditation. Therefore we don't need to meditate. We relax our body and we relax our mind.
...
This meditation technique that has just been described is called shamatha or calm abiding meditation without object.
...
So meditation in this way is extremely easy, but there is one difficulty: it is so easy that it is hard. It's hard because we don't trust it. We are always thinking that meditation must be referring to something very special.

"Shamatha without object" is the most advanced form of shamatha, and now I can see why. His brother, Tsoknyi Rinpoche (Rinpoche is their title, not their last name) describes the very same practice as "stupidity training," and says it can only lead to vegetation. It can take a while to get the hang of the subtle difference.

After weeks of rather good practice, suddenly my goal-driven mind kicks back in and gets fed up with me "doing nothing," and expects me to do it better, faster, harder. Otherwise my friends and family will think I'm a failure, having spent months with nothing to show for it. More neurosis instead of less.

I have to keep reminding myself that you guys will still love me if I'm a failure.


Won't you?