Meditation & the Illusion of Control

Control can create bottlenecks and hinder our progress. It also clashes with the core principles of Dharma, the teachings of Buddhism, which emphasize letting go.

Of course, control isn't inherently bad. Sometimes, it's necessary to mitigate problems or manage situations before they spiral out of control. Think of controlled burns – strategic fires set to prevent larger wildfires. However, I'm not referring to this kind of control.

I'm talking about the pervasive attitude of control, the constant need to be in charge. We wouldn't want to be labeled as controlling people, would we? It's not exactly a compliment. We can extend this concept of control to how we address emotional difficulties in our meditation practice, and in our relationships.

When someone is labeled as controlling, it often stems from a desire to control their partner. We can all agree that's not a recipe for a healthy relationship, be it friendship, romance, or marriage.

The kind of control I'm focusing on here is the constant search for solutions. The moment discomfort arises, the moment things don't go according to plan, we desperately seek a fix. This constant striving for solutions creates stress and compounds the suffering we're already experiencing. We become consumed by the fear and anxiety of getting rid of the discomfort as quickly as possible.

This approach simply doesn't work in meditation. Meditation is primarily about self-discovery, about understanding the nature of our minds. It's about identifying what hinders our inner peace and contentment, and what prevents us from acting compassionately towards ourselves and others.

Just as control doesn't work in our relationships, it also fails us in our relationship with our own thoughts and emotions. In meditation, if we try to control our thinking, I've found it to be not only dysfunctional but also completely ineffective. There's a well-known quote from a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, that perfectly captures this: "Trying to stop our thoughts in meditation is like trying to stop a waterfall." Imagine seeing someone trying to hold back a waterfall with their bare hands. You'd likely think they were either delusional or completely clueless about the situation. The same applies to meditation. We don't need to stop the flow of thoughts we simply need to become aware of them. We need to recognize them as thinking, as thoughts, and allow them to arise and fall away. Easier said than done, of course. But when we approach meditation with this attitude, it fundamentally changes how we relate to thoughts in our practice.

In the Himalayan Buddhist traditions I follow, thoughts themselves aren't necessarily the problem. It's the rumination, the getting lost in a constant stream of thoughts, that throws us off track. This indicates a lapse in mindfulness. Through mindfulness practice, we need to reconnect with that present-moment awareness, the very essence of meditation. Awareness fosters the ability to observe thoughts without judgment.

So, while recognizing thoughts is important, we don't need to demonize or control them. Interestingly, when we become aware of them, thinking itself can settle down. We can simply observe the "waterfall" of thoughts flowing through our minds without getting caught in the current.

However, when we encounter other challenges in our practice, we might resort to control, especially when struggling with a specific issue. As I mentioned before, this tendency to control spills over into other areas of our lives – thoughts, emotions, relationships.

From what I've observed, control often stems from fear. We see this in the world when governments enact stricter controls. They fear people wielding too much power or not following the desired path. Without commenting on specifics, it's clear that control over others arises from a fear of loss – losing power, control, or security.

Similarly, we exert control over our own emotions and thoughts because we're afraid of them. This is where Dharma practice becomes crucial. We need to understand that thoughts are just thoughts, and emotions, while potentially pleasurable, can also be painful. We need to learn to befriend them, not turn them into enemies.

For working with emotions, I highly recommend a practice called "handshaking practice" developed by my teacher, Tsoknyi Rinpoche. You can find plenty of resources about him online. It's a somatic awareness practice where we drop into the world of bodily sensations, emotions, and even subtle energetic feelings. We cultivate a sense of allowing and feeling these sensations with awareness.

For most of us, letting go and allowing doesn't come naturally. That's why it's called meditation practice. We cultivate awareness while feeling and being present in the body. The key point is to find ways to work with emotions, sensations, and anything arising in the body that we tend to control or constrict. Open-ended questions and inquiry practices can also be very helpful when grappling with control over emotions, memories, or thoughts.

Here's something important: I've found that incorporating somatic or body-based awareness practices is almost indispensable. If we rely solely on inquiry and are already very analytical, we risk strengthening that dominant tendency within us. It's good to have a balance of inquiry work with some form of somatic or body-based practice.

Inquiry work involves asking open-ended questions about what we're trying to control. For instance, if we face financial difficulties or relationship problems, instead of getting lost in ruminating thoughts and catastrophizing, we can ask open-ended questions to explore our experience.

We're not necessarily searching for immediate solutions; we're seeking prompts or questions to help us de-catastrophize our relationship with the problem. This involves opening up to the reality of the situation and learning to be with it, rather than running away.

There's no one-size-fits-all approach to these questions. For me, they often involve taking a few steps back. When overwhelmed or stressed by a problem, I find myself four steps ahead, anticipating what hasn't even happened. The first step is to bring my awareness back to the present moment – what's happening now?

Usually, what's happening now involves bodily activations, emotions, and sensations. Stress and overwhelm might manifest as quicker breathing or tightness in the chest. We can explore these experiences through somatic practices.

We can also open up inquiries about what's arising now. For example, a healthy prompt for me might be, "Can I allow this? Can I be with this?" When we return from those imaginary fourth or fifth steps that haven't happened yet, it's just a thought. Coming back to the present allows us to ask, "Can I be with what's here now? Is it as bad as it seems in my catastrophizing mind?"

These practices help me not only return to the present but also develop a fresher perspective on what's actually happening, as opposed to getting caught in rumination and catastrophizing.

Coming back to the idea of control, these inquiry and body-based practices aren't about controlling our experiences; they're about understanding them. How can we understand something we're unwilling to connect with? When we try to exert control, it implies an unwillingness to relate to the experience.

However, if we pause and say, "What if I don't try to control this right away?" it opens up the possibility that things might not be as unworkable as they seem. It also opens the door to establishing a sense of friendship and compassion.

This is the key takeaway: all these approaches need to be infused with a compassionate attitude, both towards ourselves and others, if possible. Life comes with ups and downs; they're natural. It doesn't mean we're doing something wrong or that we're flawed; it simply means we're human.

So, how can we soften towards our own humanity, and the humanity of others? How can we soften around an experience that's arising, a pain point we want to control? Can we even soften towards that part of ourselves that seeks control?

For me, this realization has been quite helpful: "Oh, this is me trying to help. This is some aspect of myself that thinks control is useful and is trying to help." Then, I can soften or be compassionate even towards that behavior.