Does meditation still work when you're old? Of course it does, when done properly and with the right attitude.
But I meet many Buddhist meditators these days who say to me, "I've been meditating for decades. I've been to numerous retreats. When I was young it was fantastic. I felt like I was making tremendous progress and being transformed. But I'm getting old now. I can't sit cross-legged anymore. I've got lots of problems in my life -- problems with my children and aging parents in addition to myself. Meditation doesn't seem as helpful or useful as it once did."
My teacher used to say that whenever we feel discouraged or disappointed in our meditation, it is a sign that there is something missing or lacking in our attitude. Many people come to meditation with an idea that through the practice they will be able to find a blissful or ecstatic state of mind or transformation that will offer relief from suffering and lasting happiness. This expectation is not entirely wrong, but it is lacking something.
Thirty years ago, psychologist and Buddhist practitioner John Welwood coined the term "spiritual bypassing" to identify a problem in meditation that he observed in his Buddhist clients and in Buddhist communities. He has expanded on this idea in his book "Toward a Psychology of Awakening," and in a recent Tricycle interview, where he defined it as "a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks."
He went on to say:
When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it. And then we tend to use absolute truth to disparage or dismiss relative human needs, feelings, psychological problems, relational difficulties, and developmental deficits.
In the last 30 years, many Buddhist teachers and communities have come to see the importance of working on spiritual bypassing, often by including psychotherapy as part of the spiritual path. Still, I think we have a ways to go.
There is also our own American penchant for quick solutions. In the 1960s there were few books on meditation and even fewer teachers. We knew from reading that there was something called "enlightenment" and that it sounded wonderful. There was the naive hope that meditation led quickly and directly to a life-transforming experience that would change things forever. The early books on Zen tended to reinforce this view. Even when authentic teachers such as the Dalai Lama and Shunryu Suzuki explicitly refuted this view, it was too seductive to give up easily.
Once, in Central Park in front of tens of thousands of rapt listeners, the Dalai Lama was asked, "What is the fastest way to get enlightened?
In response, the Dalai Lama simply started to cry -- in front of 50,000 people! Why was he crying? What did his crying mean? Was he perhaps thinking, "How can I explain to this sincere but misguided Westerner all the hard work that is really required for true spiritual transformation?"
When we are young we have, as Welwood says, "unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks." If we actually use meditation to face those issues, to thoroughly investigate them, and do the hard work of step-by-step inner transformation, meditation indeed can prove fruitful throughout our life. But now that we are much older, we have (in addition to any old unresolved developmental tasks from our earlier life) a whole set of new developmental issues, those that come with an aging body and mind.
Once after a lecture someone asked my teacher Shunryu Suzuki, "Why do we meditate?"
He answered, "So you can enjoy your old age."
We all thought he was joking, but now that I am the same age he was when he gave that answer, I know he was just being truthful. The real test of a lifelong practice of meditation is not whether it gives you great insights when you are young, but whether it is deep and thorough enough to allow you to confront the age-old challenges of growing old and the approaching end of life.
Now that I have 40 some years of meditation practice under my belt, I can ask myself: Am I enjoying my old age? Well, first of all, like most 60-somethings, I would retort, "I'm not old. Not just yet. I'm just getting older."
But after that weak disclaimer, I would say yes, I'm enjoying the age I am. I do wish I had the energy I had when I was younger, though.
There is an episode of Seinfeld in which Elaine wants to get a cartoon in the New Yorker. Her idea is this: a small pig is at the Macy's complaint counter, looking up with a plaintive expression at the customer service person peering down at her. "I wish I was taller," the pig is saying.
Right. We are all like that little pig, wishing things might be other than they are. Yes, I wish I was younger, but I'm not. I need to learn to enjoy my old age, just as Suzuki said. That is the challenge for me and for the other 76 million baby boomers. We are all in this together.
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Lewis Richmond: Adulthood, Elderhood, Buddhahood: The Stages of a ...
The other 2/3rds of the teachings are about a) an ethical way of life and b) increasing in wisdom.
One cannot gain deeper levels of meditation without consciously, intentionally, keeping an ethical way of life. That is why there are vows for ordained and lay people. Being a vaguely nice person doesn't cut it.
Without deeper levels of mediation, one cannot reach deeper levels of wisdom. Without wisdom, then ethics are less clear.
Stated positively, wisdom increases ethics, which improves meditation, which deepens wisdom, which increases kindness. . . the upward spiral that real practice is meant to produce, which leads to enlightenment.
It seems that boomer Buddhism glosses over the ethical component, because it seems like so many 'rules,' too restrictive, as if that were a bad thing.
Meditation works at any age, if and only if you have a regimen of keeping an ethical code in the 23 hours of the day that we are not on the cushion. At least monitor oneself in avoiding the "10 non-virtues" every day, or several times a day. That is REAL mindfulness and awareness.
Frankly, mediation is just a waste of time without that.
one of the core things i grapple with in many of my posts on my blog, such as "nice thing 'bout getting old(er)" -
http://yoga-adan.com/2011/04/08/nice-thing-bout-getting-older-my-yoga-to-dance-aha-moments-–-5/
or http://wp.me/p1kLQ4-pJ
lewis' article here is very much needed, i think, and am glad to be able to share it with others; thank you much!
Just goes to show, if you keep at it, you eventually get it right . . . even if it
took me over 40 years!
abuse produces bad results...
pretty simple ...just like Buddhism
Article's title seemed strange, my experience is that, like a lot of things, the longer you practice the better you are at it. Use to more often get distracted/frustrated at the dog barking outside or unwanted thought pattern or emotion, thinking its impairing my meditation practice. Eventually getting that observing these coming up is the practice. Or even noticing I'm not observing this. Then back to observing the breath. Gradually this process of observation and being in the moment carrying over to daily life and noticing some thoughts and emotions not having so much controlling power. Or noticing if they still do.
If by meditation alone one hope to achieve enlightenment then it is certainly out of the question.
In the Buddhist practice of doing good, avoid evil and purify the mind then meditation is only 20% of the practice.
If we start out meditation at an old age then we may lack viriya(energy) and tend to fall a sleep when need to focus. It is good to start gradually and practice daily. Going for a retreat under the guidance of an experienced meditator is certainly a good start. In Buddhist meditation we need to develop calm and clarity to develop insight into our own suffering. Upon realization we still need to p;ractice what we have realized. To develop mindfulness in our daily live so as to break habitual thoughts and perception when our senses come into contact with internal and external phenomenon. Then only will we be free form fetters.
I realize now that my years of experience as a meditator turned out to be a disadvantage when I got sick: I had this established practice with expectations that were no longer being met, so I quit. Had I been new at meditating, I would have been instructed to just be mindfully aware of the physical discomfort that accompanied the illness. Instead, that discomfort was IN THE WAY of where I wanted the meditation to take me!
It took me ten years to return to meditation. I am now, as Shunryu Suzuki so simply and profoundly put it, a meditator with "Zen mind, beginners mind" and I'm grateful that I've found this practice again.
Toni Bernhard
http://www.howtobesick.com