Ian Gawler Blog: Go with the Flow or Intervene?

As meditators, are we meant to learn to go with the flow — letting whatever happens around us simply happen, without reacting, and making the best of it? Or are we meant to step in, make choices and exercise discernment?

Fifteen years ago, Aine was struggling with difficult Multiple Sclerosis symptoms and a poor prognosis. We met just as she was beginning the Gawler Foundation’s lifestyle program, and she has now been well for many years. Meditation became a cornerstone of both her recovery and her daily life.

In a comment on my post The Brain, The Mind and Relationships, Aine raised a great question that I suspect many meditators will recognise, which I sum up as “go with the flow or intervene?” Specifically, Aine asked whether we are wise to shield ourselves from certain things and certain people — or, if we really have “got it”, whether we should open ourselves to everyone and everything and expect to turn even the toughest situations into peaceful bliss?

This question has prompted a good deal of reflection on my part over the years. The need for insight was sharpened further when I recently gave a talk for ATMA (The Australian Teachers of Meditation Association) on the theme: “What is all this about mindfulness?”

Let me go “Out on a Limb” and share the insight that emerged. It will be valuable if this stirs some reflection and comment, because to me this is an important life issue.
The confusion about what to do — the uncertainty — is, I believe, actually a product of how two words are used and the concepts they carry. The solution lies in clarifying the meaning of those two words: mindfulness and meditation.

Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgementally”. Taken literally, mindfulness is non-reactive and non-discriminatory. It is a way of training the mind to notice — to be aware of what is happening around you — in a way that removes the reactive stress from things.

Mindfulness is about how to be with the given, how to be with what is. It is non-judgemental. Mindfulness tells us how to observe what is going on, not what to do about it. It is undoubtedly a wonderful practice: it brings our attention to the present moment, cuts through the reactive anxiety we call stress, and leads to a peaceful way of being. Mindfulness is easy to teach, easy to learn and easy to research. It has a great deal going for it, and much of its appeal lies in its simplicity. It has a standard answer for everything — be mindful!

Yet on its own, in its pure form, mindfulness says nothing about wisdom — particularly the wisdom of discernment, the wisdom that helps us work out what to do. All the great traditions address this, because mindfulness is taught within a context of other teachings that supply the wisdom component.

As I understand it, the word mindfulness is being used more and more loosely, in a way that implies or covers all the other teachings. That is fine, but it can create confusion. If in modern times we fixate on the literal definition of mindfulness and aim only to apply that way of training the mind, we may miss a vital point.

In our book “Meditation - an In-depth Guide”, Paul Bedson and I included an appendix of definitions of meditation drawn from all traditions. We spent years with excellent colleagues developing our own modern definition:

 “Meditation in its simplest and most general sense is a mental discipline involving attention regulation. More specifically, the broad act of meditation can be sub-classified according to the processes it involves or the outcomes it leads to.”

Have a look at the book if you would like all the details!

By this definition, meditation is both a process and a state — something you do and something you experience.

So what do you do, and what do you experience? You begin by learning to relax the body and settle the mind, arriving at a state of inner peace. With that peace comes the experience of a clearing mind. You start to see more clearly what is happening around you and within you.

The most common Tibetan word for meditation is “gom”, which translates as “getting used to”. Getting used to what? Getting used to your own mind — getting to know its contents, how it works, what it is capable of, how to use it, and what its true nature is really like.

Here, then, is the key difference. Mindfulness is a way of using the mind; meditation is a way of getting to know the mind. For many of us, this “getting to know” is not necessarily plain sailing! The mind can be a tricky beast — good, bad and indifferent — and the aim in meditation is to tame it. By definition, meditation is an intervention.

Meditation leads to clear seeing, and with clear seeing comes the natural wisdom of discernment. It becomes increasingly obvious that the task is to know ourselves. Wisdom suggests we learn who we are, acknowledge where we are at, become comfortable with our limitations and capacities, and act accordingly. Yes — act!

So as a beginner on the meditation path, it can make great sense to develop mindful awareness — to learn to be present, attentive and non-judgemental. But even to do this we may need to intervene, use some common sense (or is that wisdom?), and choose what we expose ourselves to: what we do and who we spend time with.

For beginners — and even for the more advanced — there are bound to be some people, situations, thoughts and even feelings that we find so difficult, so challenging, that we need to intervene and cocoon ourselves away from them. It is perfectly sensible to accept that some things call for this active intervention and prompt us to find the best way to protect, avoid, change or perhaps even transform.

Many of us will have heard of the great Tibetan practitioners who spent years being tortured in Chinese prisons. On release they smile, thank their persecutors for teaching them about compassion, show no signs of post-traumatic stress, and calmly return to lives of service.

Chogyam Trungpa put it along these lines: “The general idea is that you open yourself to what the given situation is, then you see its completely naked quality. You don’t have to put up a defence mechanism anymore, because you see through it and you know exactly what to do. You just deal with things rather than defending yourself.”

This is no casual achievement! The great practitioners may make it look easy, as if it were simply a matter of going with the flow, but what they are really demonstrating is the fruit of serious intervention — a great deal of very deliberate, well thought-out mind training.

Moving from beginner to accomplished practitioner is quite a piece of work. It can be arduous, demanding, confusing, delightful, joyous, frustrating, wonderful and nearly always challenging. Once you wake up to how precious and how short life is, there is little choice but to plunge in and make the best progress you can.

As clear seeing and the wisdom of discernment begin to dawn, what they bring is flexibility. There are bound to be situations in life where accepting things as they are makes sense, and others where putting huge effort into intervening makes sense.

The answer, then, is not to go with the flow mindlessly; the answer is to go with the flow accompanied by the wisdom of discernment — the wisdom that comes from getting to know yourself, and especially your mind, through meditation.

RESOURCES:
Mindfulness:

• Wherever You Go, There You Are - Jon Kabat-Zinn
• The Miracle of Mindfulness - Thich Nhat Hahn

Meditation:

• The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche
• Meditation - An In-depth Guide - Gawler and Bedson

Practice CDs:

• See our Mediation Audio page.

MEDITATION OPPORTUNITIES:

• Sogyal Rinpoche’s Australian summer retreat and speaking tour.
• Details of the visit to Melbourne on Nov 20&21 of Janet Solyntjes, a leading teacher trained in  Chogyam Trungpa’s work and also of his Shambala Training - the Art of Being Human which is now available in Melbourne, and for details elsewhere. (Link to come...)