Post #25: Meditation Meltdown

22 May 2023

What to do when your practice unravels and disintegrates around you one day, even to the point of collapsing completely?

First of all, try to keep your nerve and retreat from one line of defense to the next. Say you practice Vipassana and sweeping around the body is out of the question; then you stick to observing the parts of the body one by one, forgetting about sweeping for the time being. That doesn’t work either? You go to the breath. Hopeless as well? Then observe the chaos on all sides and see whether you can catch it changing from moment to moment…

Say any and all meditation becomes unthinkable for the time being: then you can walk a little and watch your breath, or lie down and observe the palms of your hands. Negative? So you remind yourself of your good intentions and any meritorious deeds you have ever done, not to preen but just to reassure and calm yourself. Nothing doing. Then try reading something inspiring, invoke the Buddha in your thoughts, pray or chant, whatever works. Still nada? Lord have mercy…

So you go exercise, do your yoga, eat something, take a shower or a nap. But that still doesn’t revive you enough to practice in any way? Fine, so better let the whole thing go for a bit. If you’ve been doing it for a while, it will come back before long. And if not? Well then at least you won’t have to worry about your practice anymore. I doubt very much that it’s ever so far gone that it really cannot be brought back at all—see “Starting Again” (Post #11)—but even if it were so, the practice is supposed to be a vehicle, not a life-support machine. It’s quite possible to live without it, and live well.

But I am miserable, I still need it very badly, you may say. Fair enough. But if it is so very needful, should you not be able to get it back? Is the universe really so cruelly constructed that it would dangle something of this kind before your nose only to make it unattainable, as if taunting Tartarus with ever-receding ambrosial fruits just beyond his reach? If that is the hell you live in, you do indeed have a serious problem, and my prayers are with you; but this is not the Dhamma, this is some other kind of inferno.

The more serious we get about the Path, the more we should probably remind ourselves, sometimes at least, that the way-markers we value so much are merely meant to help us on our journey; they are neither the journey itself, nor the destination. Ideally we would enjoy nothing but the delights of life, I’d be the first to say; but such rosy scenarios failing as they usually do, perhaps we can learn to bring a spirit of curiosity and enjoyment to the downturns as well. I’m not preaching from a position of attainment here, I am merely pointing out a possibility for others better able than I to avail themselves of it.

If even that is too much, then just fall back upon going about your life on its ordinary terms. If others can make it somehow, then why shouldn’t you? And since the Teaching is not holding you, it seems, you probably don’t need to be too concerned about the supra-mundane hypotheticals that might otherwise worry you. Last line of defense: keep buggering on, not because it’s all so worthwhile and meaningful, but to spare others the heartache of losing you and holding themselves responsible (see Post #4 on Anicca and the Bog of Despond). If even that falls through, who can keep you from drawing the line in the Stoical manner and saying your good-byes? I’m not recommending it, not at all. But you are your own master in that last existential sense. Only sleep on it first, not once but as many times as possible. The morning may be better, or the day after.

The sun sets on everyone sometimes, in the Dhamma or in anything else; but it also rises again. Keep the little flame going in the darkness, no one can ask much more. Even if you feel like a rusty old faucet dispensing water one miserable drop at a time, you can fill a sink that way too, or a bathtub, or even a pool. The snail is painful to watch as it oozes on its pitiful way. But snails too get there in the end, and who is to say that they are even troubled by their lack of speed? Take heart, and let’s keep walking together.