Doing a practice you hate

I came across an interesting recommendation. Bill Bodri--who Kate mentioned--recommends doing both a practice you love and one you hate. He says this because he and his teacher feel that doing the practice you hate most often generates the best results. I never thought about this, coming from the school of thinking that one should do the practice that the heart tells him/her to or the one that feels most natural. Of course, maybe the heart could tell someone to do a practice s/he hates doing...

Thoughts?

I think there's a time and place for it. Early in ones practice is not necessarily a good time for it. But when ones practice advances, it can be interesting to challenge yourself. All kinds of stuff you don't like is going to show up anyway, just in regular life and daily meditation. You don't have to go looking for it. You do eventually need to sit with it (rather than avoiding it). In the beginning, I think taking on an uncomfortable practice just for the hell of it is likely to make ones overall practice more difficult than it needs to be and maybe distract or scare off a beginner. Later, it is useful to attend to things that are unpleasant, scary, uncomfortable, etc rather than trying to avoid them (see shark dream for good example!). But like I said, that timing will probably take care of itself. There's tons of opportunities every day to be with boredom, anger, frustration, physical discomfort, fear, and so on, without being masochistic and forcing it on oneself.

How would you define an uncomfortable practice? I think that's better than the word "hate."

An uncomfortable practice for me is one that doesn't come naturally and so requires more effort. Often times this type of practice creates tension in my body rather than releasing it. Reciting a mantra and visualizing are good examples for me. It feels much more pleasant and simple to place my attention on one point and let meditation work its magic. Although it is more pleasant, it still doesn't allow me to bypass any "stuff."

I wonder if more practice at these practices though would decrease the amount of effort required...

I guess an extreme would be something really unpleasant, like going and meditating in a cemetery (something tantrics do in some places, to contemplate death) or doing some kind of ascetic practice like extreme fasting or sitting on a bed of nails. I think that's an example of something that may or may not be appropriate, depending on your temperament and what you think you will get from it.

A more moderate example, which is personal, is that I tend to find the idea of going to a Theravada or Zen center to do all-day-long sitting practice rather boring. But I have gone to such things (with my husband, because he wanted to) several times, and took the opportunity to be with my resistance to the practice, the discomfort in my body from sitting for so long, to find appreciation for a practice style that is not one I use at home daily, etc. One step further is going to church with family members who are Christians. I have often found the topics in the sermons offensive (such as anti-science, anti-gay), and the way they relate to God so shallow and weird it is sad. But there's a good practice for me in being with those judgements, appreciating that the people there take a lot of solace in the practice, and being with the experience as it is. I don't have to believe it, nor do I have to take a stand and refuse to go. It's not going to kill me, and everything I experience offers an opportunity to do my own practice, being aware of my reactions, etc.

I teach myself new practices all the time, and they may require effort (ie memorizing the mantra or the steps in the ritual, for example), but that's different than having a kind of inner distaste for it.

Oh okay, I did not know of or think of these examples. I can see how some might find meditating in a cemetary a little "distasteful"!

The uncomfortableness I experience in practices I don't prefer, like reciting a mantra or visualization, derives from feelings of being "unbalanced" once my session is complete. I think I may be concentrating too hard when I use these techniques, and if I practiced them more maybe I could learn to do them "gently" without as much effort.

Might be. It's like when kids are learning to write letters and they scrunch up their face and stick out their tongue with effort. You can concentrate totally without being tense, but we tend to associate the two. Like more tension means more effort. Experiment with different levels of softer attention maybe? That will reveal if that's part of the problem or not.

Long story short, the essence of the instruction seems to be: face into that to which you are averse.

My guess is that the purpose is to widen your awareness, to discover its capacity-- not to grind away at something that affects you adversely. There are plenty of things we don't wish to do-- for very good reasons; but there's no need to both refuse them and squinch our eyes shut and stick our fingers in our ears on top of declining to participate.

So I guess the key is to keep an open mind and experiment dutifully to find what works. In that way, there will never be a practice you "hate."

Funny-- you know, this is one of those subjects that returns, cyclically. There was a thread about 'disgust' as I recall. No matter how I come at it, or how many times I come at it, I've never found anything more profoundly useful for practicing with ANY emotion than the Aro instructions for 'trek-chod.' Opportunities for this practice present themselves many times a day, every day; the practice can become ever deeper, more subtle, and pervasive-- but is not exhausted as long as I live.

From a generously complete account of this practice and its basis, found here: http://www.aroencyclopaedia.org/shared/text/e/emotions_ar_eng.php

"The practice of meditation in the context of embracing emotions as the path gives us
another option. This option is one in which we neither repress, express nor dissipate our
emotional energy. But one in which we let go of the conceptual scaffolding and wordlessly
gaze into the physical sensation of the emotion. This is what we describe as ‘staring
into the face of arising emotions in order to realise their empty nature’. This is
where meditation becomes an essential aspect of our method of discovery. The form of
meditation we will discuss here comes from the system known as Trek-chod, which
means ‘exploding the horizon of conventional reality’. Trek-chod involves
finding the presence of awareness in the dimension of the sensation of the emotion
we are experiencing. Simply speaking we locate the physical location of the emotion within
the body (it may be localised or pervasive). This is where we feel the emotion as a
physical sensation. We then allow that sensation to expand and pervade us. We become the
emotion. We cease to be observers of our emotions. We stare into the face of the arising
emotion with such completeness that all sense of division between ‘experience’ and
‘experiencer’ dissolve. In this way we open ourselves to glimpses of what we actually are.
We start to become transparent to ourselves. Through this staring, the distorted
energy of our emotions liberates itself. In the language of trek-chod it is said: ‘of
itself – it liberates itself’, and ‘it enters into its own condition’. In order
to use meditation in this way, we need to have developed the experience of letting go of
obsessive attachment to the intellectual/conceptual process as the crucial reference point
on which our sense of being relies. In short, we need to be able to dwell in our own
experiential space without manipulating whatever arises to referential ends. We need to
experience mind, free conceptual activity – yet qualified by the effulgence of pure and
total presence.

Through the practice of meditation, we discover that we can make direct contact with
the unconditioned essence of our spectrum of liberated energy. We can embrace our emotions
and realise the unending vividness of what we are."

The crucial point seems to me that this practice does not extinguish or 'conquer' any of the usual suspect emotions; it does not constrict our capacities. It is just that it is possible to be sane, as well as emotionally vivid and responsive.

You've probably spelled that out before Kate, but that's one of the best articulations of what for me has been a very useful practice. I would emphasize:

...we need to have developed the experience of letting go of
obsessive attachment to the intellectual/conceptual process as the crucial reference point
on which our sense of being relies. In short, we need to be able to dwell in our own
experiential space without manipulating whatever arises to referential ends. ...

because it's not the same as sitting there thinking about or looking at your feelings. The instruction about paying attention to the physical aspects is very helpful there. It's not unrelated to Jackson's post about the RAIN method. Thanks for posting that.

This is very pertinent for me. This morning during practice the mantra "Be with, not through" arose and dominated my awareness. This is a very big development for me. Up until now, I tried very hard to "go through" my experience, which requires much effort, pushing, forcefulness. I would probably never enter deep meditation by "going through" because there's always a actor who's "going through." I never tried "being with" because it didn't make sense to me. What would be accomplished just by "being with?" This skepticism is inherited from the culture in which I live I believe. But amazingly, much is accomplished by "being with" with very little effort involved. There is a pleasant freedom to being with and watching sensations arise and evolve and dissipate in awareness. They do this of their own accord without my interference. "Being with" releases tension and induces relaxation and a clear awareness. I realized and practiced this today. This practice also requires that I have even more patience on top of the great patience I thought I already had. Because of this I will have to continually remind myself "be with, not through" going forward on and off the cushion. Finally--and this is a very close tie in to above--this practice helps me simply be with my emotions and helps cut of the connection between emotion and the action spurred by the emotion. This will be extremely useful and illuminating going forward I think.

I want to thank everyone for their contributions to the board. I think you all have been instrumental in helping me come to this point in my practice.

Gassho _/\_

Jake2

Outstanding, Jake2! You're really getting it. What else can I say?

The crucial point seems to me that this practice does not extinguish or 'conquer' any of the usual suspect emotions; it does not constrict our capacities. It is just that it is possible to be sane, as well as emotionally vivid and responsive.

-kategowen

Thank you for this, Kate. This is very well put.