CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Meditation opens the mind to the greatest mystery that takes place daily andhourly; it widens the heart so that it may feel the eternity of time andinfinity of space in every throb; it gives us a life within the world as if wewere moving about in paradise; and all these spiritual deeds take place withoutany refuge into a doctrine, but by the simple and direct holding fast to thetruth which dwells in our inner most beings.

—Shunr yu Suzuki Roshi

AT THE HEART OF EACH GREAT RELIGIOUS TRADITION is a wisdom school oftransformational contemplative teachings. While the exoteric religious teachingsprovide many guidelines and examples for conducting one's daily life, the morepsychological and meditative teachings of the esoteric schools have providedpractitioners throughout the ages with practical and systematic guidelines fortransforming ourselves and fully developing our human potential. Meditationtechniques are best understood as methods of mental and spiritual training.

Today, meditation techniques are undergoing a secular revival as our stateoracle of science discovers and proclaims the benefits of meditation as a remedyto the epidemic stress of modern life. In the last ten years, it has becomeincreasingly common to find the practice of meditation encouraged in high-levelcorporate creativity sessions, in locker rooms, during coffee breaks, before andafter work, prior to academic tests, before athletic competition, and even inmilitary maneuvers. With the use of relaxation, imagery, attention training, ormeditation many people are being introduced to powerful and highly effectivemental technologies of personal transformation that have been the cherished andoften secret practices of many ancient traditions.

This trend has sometimes been attributed as a shift from left-brain to right-brainthinking, or as the meeting of Eastern and Western values in life. For ourpurposes here, let's consider meditation as a skillful means for moving from thepain of our personal and planetary fragmentation toward the direct intuitiveunderstanding of our wholeness and potential as human beings.

Contemporary psychology and medicine regard the contemplative traditions as arich source of skills for mastering attention, promoting health and stressresilience, reducing pain, awakening creativity, and building the power ofpositive emotions such as empathy, patience, joy, and loving-kindness. Thousandsof research studies have documented the benefits of these methods, and manycenters for medicine and peak performance have integrated them. Acknowledgingthat most people have little control over their attention and have few effectiveskills for developing their mental health and emotional intelligence, thecontributions of meditation training are receiving more and more attention.

INTEGRATING ACTIVE AND QUIET MIND SKILLS

One way to understand meditation practices is that they help us integrate anddevelop the dynamic synergy of both our active or creative mind skills, and ourquiet or receptive mind skills. Insights and inspirations emerge first assubtle, formless impressions, gossamer-like and transparent—so elusive that theyare easily ignored. If our "quiet mind skills" are keen enough, however, eventhe subtlest emerging insights will be noticed and drawn into awareness. Oncethese impressions are brought onto the screen of conscious awareness, our"active mind skills" come into play, shaping and developing them into thoughts,images, and intentions that can be communicated to others and guide our actionand work in the world.

The "active mind skills" are the tools of our intellect and reasoning. Theyinclude intention or will, thinking and reasoning, and our faculty of creativeimagination. These skills each play a role in shaping or transforminginformation through the power of intention. They also give form and meaning tothe flow of information and the chaos of our experience by creating orderthrough the power of thought and imagination. The active mind skills are vitalto organizing and expressing our inner knowing, insights, feelings, andintentions, and for translating our thoughts and visions into action. Activemind skills help us to make sense of both internal mental experience and theperceived experience from our outer world, and to communicate our understandingto others.

The "quiet mind skills" represent a domain of powerful mental functions that arecomplementary to and essential for the effective use of the "active mindskills." Quiet mind skills are primarily attentive or receptive mental functionsthat gather information through the faculty of mindful attention, sensing, andfeeling. These involve the qualities of receptivity, "being," or presence, incontrast to the creativity, or "doing" nature of the active mind skills. By wayof analogy, the active mind skills can be compared to the forms and patterns ofmatter or clouds that we can see or touch, and the dynamic forces of wind,water, or electromagnetism that shape them. The subtler mental functions andbrain states associated with the quiet mind are more "transparent," like thesheer presence of the sky—vast in scope, clear, and open. For this reason theyare rarely recognized, and seldom fully developed. Their level of development,however, determines the coherence and power of all other mental functions.Critically important to accessing and expressing a deeper quality of wisdom andpresence in our lives, the depth of our quiet mind skills determines ourcapacity for coping with intensity and complexity. They also provide access tothe subtle revelations of intuitive insight so vital to breakthroughs increativity and innovation, and are the key to integrating both intellect andintuition.

Consciously or unconsciously, all the great scientists and sages of the worldhave tapped the quiet mind skills as the access states necessary to discover the"universal organizing principles" that have inspired and guided the developmentof humanity throughout the ages. By allowing us to focus our attention moredeeply, they enable us to discover a more fundamental wisdom that revealsinsight into the nature of our inner most being and the world in which we live.In this way, the quiet mind skills awaken our sensitivity to life-giving forcesthat are expressed as universal values, such as wisdom, compassion, heartfeltappreciation, and wonder.

Though few people have received any formal training in either the active orquiet mind skills, all of us, to some degree, rely on these faculties to makesense of our experience, and to organize our thinking and working. In...