Too Tight, Too Loose: Right Effort in Meditation

There's a particular question that pops up a lot in mentoring sessions. I also hear it sometimes in public teachings, or in the Q&A section. People are wondering about right effort in meditation. And I think the main question is one around, am I doing it right? That's the larger question. And then often it's a struggle with what we call agitation in traditional shamatha meditation, or dullness — which are the two main obstacles to developing a settled mind, more or less.

These obstacles get more and more refined as we settle the mind. It's not like they go away. It's more of a spectrum. And then they reduce as the meditator gets more and more skilled at settling the mind. And settling the mind doesn't mean getting rid of thoughts. It just means not being controlled by thinking anymore. Therefore the body and mind can settle, and they can develop one-pointed concentration, or just go through the nine stages of settling the mind.

So often when I hear this question of agitation or dullness, and wondering how to remedy them, it's also a question of effort. Like, how much effort do we need to sustain attention or awareness?

Awareness as the way to tell

In traditional shamatha meditation there are factors of mind set up, where awareness can have these components of itself. There's the vigilance and introspection of watching how much agitation or dullness is happening, and there's the mindfulness to come back and remember the meditation practice when distracted, to come back to present moment awareness — or if we're using an object like the breath, to come back to the breath. But it's typically this introspection that's looking for agitation or dullness.

Now, in the beginning, that way of separating out awareness into these different things confused me, and actually led to more agitation. So that might not necessarily be the way for you, but I just want to mention it, because it's part of the way we traditionally present shamatha sometimes.

But either way, I tend to like simpler approaches, coming from teachers like Mingyur Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, where it's more about: is there awareness or not? So you can simplify what meditation is. Are you sustaining awareness, or are you lost in thinking, or lost in semi-sleep, or being spaced out? And so from that we can strengthen the awareness over time. And as the awareness strengthens, as we're able to settle into the present moment more, the awareness doesn't waver as much — just like, if we've lit a candle, the wind is not disturbing the flame of the candle as much.

And so it is a little bit of a chicken-and-egg thing — or a catch-22, where you need the strength of awareness to see how your effort is going, right? We don't have a way to completely observe ourselves from the outside, although if we have teachers or mentors or guides, that can help a lot. But awareness becomes its own way to see, its own way to tell: is there too much agitation happening in the practice, is there too much dullness? And then we know how to move our effort. Do we need to increase the effort? Do we need to relax it a bit?

Knowing how we lean

But in the beginning, I think knowing a little bit about ourselves can help. It does depend on our nervous system and how we tend to lean. And this is where some practical advice might help some of you who are newer to traditional Buddhist shamatha, or calm-abiding meditation, or you've been doing it for some years but you're still struggling. It's a matter of knowing — and doing some reflection, maybe asking your partner if you dare, or someone close to you — how do you tend to lean? Do you tend to be more of a buzzy, anxious person? That's definitely how I lean. Or are you more chill, but can easily fall asleep during a movie or something like that? Maybe that's a good example.

So knowing ourselves a little bit, we can start to know how we lean in meditation. I also want to say that we can lean towards both, right? Often in the beginning both are very strong as an obstacle, so we need to work with both.

When we lean anxious

So when we lean more towards the anxious direction, actually what we need to do is learn how to relax in meditation. Now, I want to make one distinction here. If you want to use meditation to relax, go for it. No judgment here. It's not particularly what I teach meditation for. But I know a lot of meditation is done for that reason. That's why a lot of people want to go to it. So I'm just saying this to make a distinction. The meditation itself is not to relax, but we need relaxation to help the meditation. Right?

When the body's relaxed, we don't have to fight with the thinking mind as much. So knowing ourselves to be more anxious, we can give ourselves permission to work on relaxing the body more in meditation.

So for me, when I was first starting out in shamatha — and for some years — I read some of the traditional teachings on it, and I was forcing it for many years. So I was already anxious, and my nervous system was overwhelmed to some degree, which is very common for a lot of us modern meditators. And then I would push it even more to try to get this tense, focused concentration. And it was like a pot of boiling water, and trying to keep a lid on the pot.

And so, luckily for me, that broke at some point, and then I had to find another way. And I remember the moment — and it probably wasn't a single session, it probably happened over some time — but I remember it as a big aha, experiential moment of: oh, if I just relax the effort a little bit, I can actually sustain awareness much better than pushing. So that might be, for some of you as well, something to try.

When we lean dull

For dullness, often what helps the most is opening the eyes. A lot of people who tend towards dullness, enjoy the coziness, and then the coziness becomes more and more cozy until you're under the sheets of your bed, asleep — which is fine if you want that, but it's not necessarily meditation, right? It's not necessarily going to help in the department of getting more liberated or free. But that is to say, opening the eyes, freshening up, eating less, or just fasting before meditation, eating breakfast after meditation — things like that can really help.

I noticed the eye thing is a big one, because a lot of people, when they're struggling with dullness, they really like closing their eyes during meditation. And again, there are some meditation practices that would benefit from closing your eyes. But generally we can keep them half open or fully open, gazing slightly down. We can also gaze up a little bit if we're experiencing extreme dullness. Maybe keeping the room a little cooler than normal. So there's a lot of things like that. These are just classical remedies for dealing with dullness.

There is a type of dullness I want to mention too, which is actually agitation. It's agitation in the disguise of dullness. And what I mean by this is a nervous system that has tapped out. A nervous system that's been pushing and forcing, and very tight and anxious for many years, and then when we sit down to meditate it just shuts down — because, maybe in a good way, we're finally giving ourselves a moment to chill. But it's not a sign of a dullness problem. It's a sign of an agitation problem that is pretty common in modern meditators, myself included at times. And so we actually have to treat it like agitation, and learn to settle the body more, essentially. And that really helps.

Not too tight, not too loose

So either way, how this relates to right effort in meditation is this famous quote from the Buddha of not too tight, not too loose. If you tune the strings of an instrument too tight, the string has the potential to break. If you tune it too loose, there's no sound.

And what I found is that it is not a set-it-and-forget-it function. I wish it was. I wish there was just a button, and we just went, oh, I got it now, I'm there every time I meditate. Instead, what I find is that it changes on a daily basis. It changes on a sometimes minute-to-minute basis in meditation. So maybe for some very advanced people there's an autopilot, but for most of us there's not. We have to actually stay aware of the experience of dullness and agitation, and remedy accordingly throughout the session. But we don't want to be helicoptering over our meditation experience, ready to pounce. That will create agitation. So again, a right amount of effort, a right amount of introspection, vigilance, all of that.

What the effort is for

And remember, this is all in the spirit of discovering our nature, of discovering the nature of mind, of discovering the heart, of discovering how to be more in line with wisdom, love, and compassion. So that's the purpose of all this. Just meditating for meditation's sake — I don't know about that. The purpose is really for developing the skill to see more and more what's binding us, and how to remove that bondage. Or another way to say it is, what's causing harm — and we're able to move away from that — and what's going to actually provide more freedom, and we're able to move towards that. We might not know exactly what that is right now, but if we come with that attitude, if we motivate with that attitude, with a sense of responsibility to help others as we move on our path, our practice will go in a good direction.

And in one way, intention is also so helpful in finding the right effort. Because if we're obsessed with becoming the best meditator, maybe we have to investigate, check our motivation a little bit, and upgrade it.

So try some of this. I hope you can discover something new about yourself, and about meditation.