Meditation Techniques Are a Dead End…And What I Recommend Instead

I have seen both students I've worked with over the years and friends who meditate get a little bit obsessed over “mastering” a meditation technique and or finding the “best” one to practice. Because of this I’ve come to refer to meditation techniques (in and of themselves), as dead ends. I realize that this is a controversial statement, and so I ask for your generosity in hearing me out on my full perspective below.

To start, I would like to say that in the beginning of our meditation journey, we might not have much of a choice but to focus on a simple meditation technique we come across. That's usually what we encounter initially, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

For example, we're taught to watch our breath, and when we lose awareness of the breath, notice that, and gently return to the breath. It's a straightforward and simple instruction that gives us something to hold onto when meditation is new to us.

If we're given too much information about the purpose of meditation in the beginning, it’s probably going to overwhelm us. And let’s be honest here, most people do not start a meditation practice because they are itching to adopt a new religion or belief system!

So now that we’ve established some common ground for beginning a meditation practice, what do we do when we’ve been practicing for a while and we wish to deepen it?

In my experience, if we don’t move beyond our initial curiosity or relationship to a meditation technique, it will either become extremely limiting for us, or we will eventually get bored and go shop for yet another self-help strategy. So at some point we will need a path or structure to investigate and explore our practice more deeply.

In traditional Buddhism, we call this exploration or investigation, "view," which is an understanding that gets cultivated over time. As we study (a path) and meditate, we gain more insight into the broader purposes of meditation, and what we may want to shift in relationship to our thoughts, emotions, habits, and perspectives.

For instance, we might have an initial view of cultivating mindful awareness so that we can be calmer, and or relate to our thoughts and emotions in a more healthy way. At the beginning of our practice journey, we're going to relate with that in a certain way, but that's going to naturally grow and change over time.

Therefore, what I'm suggesting is that over the long term, it's important to not just get stuck in the technique itself, but to really have an understanding of why we're practicing the technique and what we're trying to accomplish through it.

This requires developing a deeper view and understanding of our own mind and the nature of reality. In Buddhism, this is known as cultivating wisdom, which involves studying and reflecting on the Dharma to gain insight into the nature of our dissatisfaction and how to alleviate it.

Ultimately, the goal of meditation is not just to feel calm or relaxed (although those can be helpful byproducts), but to develop a deeper experiential understanding of ourselves and the world around us. And by doing so, we can live (and die) with more wisdom and compassion.

In Buddhism, the practice of meditation serves as a means to develop mindful awareness so that we can examine our mind, emotions, thoughts, and perceptions and clearly see what binds us to dissatisfaction and the small self. This serves as the primary focus, and the techniques of meditation are there to support this endeavor.

While the techniques of meditation themselves are not necessarily bad or good, they can become limited if we are only using them to escape and find a cozy, secure space where we can hide from the world. Buddhism does not recommend this approach. Rather, we need to investigate what we need to include in our practice to avoid getting stuck in a limited relationship to a technique or unskillful goal that only inflates our self-clinging.

If you have been practicing meditation for some time, I recommend considering why you want to cultivate meditation and whether there are other ways to use it beyond serving only what feels good in the moment. Perhaps we can reach a point where we feel less stressed, which is great, but we need to be mindful that this is not the end goal of meditation. As a meditation teacher, I first focus on helping my students feel grounded and open in the body because feeling overwhelmed and stressed can hinder progress. However, being grounded is just a preliminary, and our intentions for meditation eventually need to go beyond it.

My perspective is that the techniques of meditation should serve as processes for cultivating our natural awareness, helping us to see though our limiting beliefs about ourselves, our thoughts, our emotions, the world around us, and towards a deeper connection with our limitless nature.

In Buddhist meditation, the key is in developing awareness through meditation, which allows us to examine the reality (or unreality) of our thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. The technique(s) of meditation serve this purpose, rather than being an end in and of themselves.

Although feeling grounded is important, it is not a permanent state, and we should learn to ride the waves of being grounded and ungrounded. The ultimate process is to investigate the mind and the causes of dissatisfaction and suffering to uproot them. The path is a journey of embodying our learnings through practice, and deepening our direct insights, which is impeded by solely focusing on a technique.