Post #31: Satiphobia, Fear of Meditation-Induced Personality Loss

28 May 2023

Experienced meditators may have a bit of trouble relating to this fear, but phobias, however real their torments, never look very rational to those who do not share them, and meditative types are, much to their credit, not often judgmental about the issues that the practice brings to the fore.

It’s not just a matter of faith, vital though that may be as an underpinning of one’s practice, provided that it does not turn blind. It’s got even more to do with the fundamentals of the practice: not many of those among us who keep going back for more treatment do so in hopes of getting our senses dulled, our passions deadened, or our wits and creativity dimmed. It is not what we are asking for, and what is more, it is not what we have come to expect as a matter of confirmed personal experience.

There are quite a few aspiring celibates on the Vipassana trail, it is true, especially at the higher altitudes, and renunciations of all sorts enjoy fairly high prestige; but these are ancient preoccupations, well borne-out by the scriptures, and mildly applied today by canonical standards. The point is not to diminish the love but to take it to a higher level, and what can one really say to that except that it’s not one’s idea of a good time? Compared to what the Pali scriptures have to say—harrowing talk of inserting privy members into the mouths of black vipers, or into blazing fire-pits (as in the Sudinna tale in the Dhamma-Vinaya, the Buddhist monastic code according to the Pali canon)—the Vipassana way is very mild indeed. And what needed to be said in order to keep young male monastics on the straight and narrow a few centuries BC does not anyway have much bearing on how the middle way should be applied to adult householders in 2023.

Those of us committed to the practice hold this truth to be self-evident: that the establishment of mindfulness (sati-patthana), that is, training ourselves to observe the reality of the moment with a little more equanimity, does not erode what is precious about our unique personalities, but brings it out in more glowing colors, and with a frame that enhances and does not detract from them. A loss of personality could occur only if one valued those parts of one’s personality most that are linked to blind reactions and sharp edges on which others tend to hurt themselves. Can there really be any doubt, for anyone looking at himself honestly, that much could be gained, and little lost, if one’s existing strengths and virtues were paired with a little more patience, acceptance, and reliable loving kindness towards others? That is what we practice for; all else is secondary.

But those for whom this confident belief is a confirmed fruit of personal experience are the very ones who keep finding their way back, while those who have not done so yet may have their equally good reasons to be more skeptical. They, after all, might see something completely different and a lot less reassuring at a Vipassana center. The purity and peacefulness of the atmosphere may be palpable, only perhaps a little too much so, as if all colors were white, meaningful conversation only possible in hushed tones (and ever so inferior to noble silence), and sensuality of any sort a stain on one’s being. At times one might find oneself tempted to check the walls for padding, lest one have committed oneself inadvertently to the Vipassana wing of the new and improved Nurse Ratched Memorial Hospital. The servers are marvelous people, no doubt, and the excellent food is made with unmistakable love (is that where they hide the happy drugs, and if so, why are they not working for me?). In the age of the cell phone, the surreptitious use of electroshock therapy and elective lobotomies could presumably not be hidden for long. But still: the almost aggressive lack of any kind of discernible edge to these scenes can be pretty disconcerting to worldly newcomers, and can leave one understandably doubtful—in the full throes of satiphobia—whether this is really a direction one would want to take one's life in. Understandable enough, I say, but still a little skewed.

The first thing to consider by way of tempering such attacks of satiphobia is that the serious meditators who might appear in such a peculiar light are not, anywhere in the world, a very representative group—least of all if they are willing to shut themselves up voluntarily for weeks on end in minimum-security prison-style facilities. Whatever their virtues and distinctions may be, a typical cross-selection of the population these men and women are not, and the unusual and perhaps not very flattering impression they may give at first sight, to the unfamiliar eye especially, does not solely reflect what their Vipassana training has made of them, but also what they were probably predisposed to all along. Second, there is at all such centers, and in meditation circles generally, a group dynamic—a particular aesthetic or ethos, a kind of Vipassana chic—that many feel they need to abide by in order not to look Dhamma-laggards in front of their peers. As closer inspection will reveal after a course, they are by no means all as bland and edgeless as they may look at first sight, though one may have to tease their more colorful side out of them, given the prevailing sense of how a serious meditator should look and act. It is not an ill-intentioned show or a mere façade, but that’s not to say that there is not an element of putting on airs even in the most authentic such settings (see my post on Dhamma posturing).

As a satiphobe will soon discover if he bears up under the pressure and stays the course, the practice works so incrementally that there is little prospect and certainly no great danger of sudden, unexpected, and dramatic changes taking one by surprise against one’s will. Any evolution in one’s personality that may occur as a result of the practice will make itself felt and known so gradually that if one does not like it, one can get the old self back very easily: all one needs to do is quit one’s sittings and everything will blow over in a jiffy, except for the nagging memory that one once had the option of turning one’s life in a different and perhaps better direction.

The real trouble with the practice, a recovering satiphobe may come to see before long, is almost the opposite of what he so dreaded initially: not how readily his old personality is transformed, but rather how hard it is to keep going and stay the distance if one does like the precarious new version of oneself better than the old. The change, in other words, is not a threat so much as an elusive promise, and any effective redirection of one’s personality under the influence of meditation, though certainly possible, is a big and hard-won accomplishment. What is to be feared, then, is not that one’s practice should prove to potent, since it can easily be shut down, but that it should prove too weak to be upheld and maintained against the often overwhelming contrary currents of one’s daily life.

So take heart, satiphobes of the world: you are extremely unlikely to make any lasting, let alone deforming dents in your cherished personalities unless you persist with great determination. The risk of taking a truly detrimental turn is practically zero, unless perhaps it be from starting to burn with such enthusiasm that you might neglect other parts of your life unduly (recall Post #3). Chances are far greater that you might begin to see yourself in a light that makes you wish that making changes were a lot easier, faster, and more reliably lasting than they commonly turn out to be.

(This one goes out to Alex.)