Signs of Dharma Practice
By Michael Erlewine
I would like to emphasize that, at least in my experience, dharma practice and progress toward any kind of greater awareness or enlightenment is very slow going. It’s not quite like watching paint dry, but it’s close.
It takes months, perhaps going on for half a year, for me to notice how, if anything, I have improved via dharma practice. Yes, given enough time, I can see it, and yes, there is progress, just not the kind you can set your watch by.
It’s more like landscape photography, where day-to-day change may not be perceptible but looking at photos of my mind, so to speak, months and years later shows the ‘View’ has shifted and seems to have changed perceptually. It’s encouraging, because I can see the change.
And so, this dharma dance we do in extreme slow motion is only perceptible over time, just not immediately, not like we can see sudden change tomorrow except very, very rarely, like maybe one time in my entire life’s experience.
And it may be hard to tell which of all the dharma practices we do or try out actually work best for us. The Buddhists like to say there are 84,000 forms of dharma paths, so that should tell us something.
I can testify that we can do a particular dharma practice for a long time and still not get it right. For example, I practiced Shamata (Tranquility Meditation) for 32 years quite religiously and never got it down. How futile that seems and what a waste of time, IMO.
And the reason I could not learn Shamata was because, due to my occupations, I already knew this form of meditation more than well enough, and just as you cannot salt the salt, so I could not learn that form of concentration because I already knew it well, thanks to my attention to detail. LOL.
How could that be, I asked myself. That could ‘be’ because I learned how to concentrate and focus my mind quite naturally early-on, and the way Shamata practice was presented to me to learn by dharma instructors, it was anything but natural, my being instructed to sit on the cushion and focus on atwig or a pebble. For me, that dog would just not hunt.
Then, many years later, when I had finally succeeded in implementing Insight Meditation (Vipassana) as part of learning Mahamudra practice, simultaneously with realizing Insight Meditation I also realized that I already knew Shamata (Tranquility Meditation) because it just naturally popped up and was obvious.
In other words, I had that skill of fine focus and concentration since early-on, but had learned it doing things I loved and did not need to try to learn what I already knew. And the instructions to focus on a twig or pebble was, for me, just not interesting. That’s how gullible I was about trying to follow instructions, even at the expense of my common sense. I don’t suggest that approach. Hitchhike on your natural interest instead.
So, my takeaway here, the reason I write this, is to put anyone interested on notice that there is a wide world of dharma practice, and if you don’t get anywhere with one method, please feel free do try others.
Another of my favorite head-shakers back in the late 1950s and 1960s was that we student practitioners somehow got it put into our heads that we did not discuss our personal experience learning Shamata (Tranquility Meditation). It was private.
What a joke that is. There is nothing secret about Shamata meditation and its learning process. When I went to Tibet it was clear that Tibetans did not keep silent as to learning dharma. They not only talked, but debated and discussed their dharma practice in great detail, at least what are called the Preliminary Practices.
About all that was secret back in the 1950s and 1960s here in America was the fact that we did not know anything about sitting meditation and did not want to share that. LOL.
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Of course, I understand that while many roads lead to Rome, ultimately, we have to travel one road to get there. That’s true, yet at the same time, don’t waste 32 years beating your head against a wall as I did. Try other practices, other paths, and you may find that progress is much more forthcoming.
If there are 84,000 dharma (or some high number), they are there for only one purpose, to help us on the way to greater awareness of our innate enlightenment. Look around, try things, and if the textbook instructions don’t work for you, use your own natural abilities to find ones that do, practices that feel right, and offer results.
[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
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As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.
