Practice method, not results. METHOD NOT RESULTS.

a short PSA

In meditation, practice methods. Don’t practice results. This is a point that was, I believe, first articulated in these words by Ken McLeod. The first time I read it, I thought it was a good point. But the more experience I get, the more I appreciate it. I think it’s one of the most important warnings in contemplative practice, a warning sticker that should go on every single meditation book.

Another way of translating it is: you want some “after picture” of meditation. Tranquility, insight, to shoot love lasers out of your eyes. Grand. But you can’t get there by forcing an after picture to appear. You have to get there via a procedure, which sometimes is a very counterintuitive way of achieving the results.

Almost any time I hear that someone has had a damaging experience with meditation, I find that it’s because they’re violating this rule. I get it, I’ve been there too. It’s really tempting to read an inspiring description of a Zen master, and think, “alright, if I crunch up my forehead correctly, I’ll just snap myself into being that person.” I spent about eighteen months of my early 20s this way. But it was a mistake.

The importance of this will become clear if we review a few genres of contemplative practice, and how they can be distorted by practicing results instead of method.

Non-dual or Nothing practice.

Result: Spontaneity and ease, an openness to the mystery of being and a thinning out, and eventual disappearance, of the illusory sense of separation from life.

Method: Relax and open and settle bit by bit, such that habitual processes of mind can slow and stop, as they are revealed to be unnecessary protections from the vividness of experience.

The cost of practicing results instead of method: Practitioners affecting a dead-eyed blankness rather than engaging with their present-moment experience, which may contain frustration or envy or other things they’re ashamed to feel. Reinforcing a new self-concept, one oriented towards rigid tranquility rather than normal humanness. In worst-case scenarios, humanness shoved into the shadow until it erupts, causing interpersonal scandals.

Heart practice.

Result: Open-hearted compassion, extending even to your enemies. Not always, but in many moments. A contagious glow in the chest that connects inner and outer.

Method: Facing your feelings as they are, in all their ambiguity, while encouraging and cultivating the heart’s potential for openness, which slowly grows over time.

The cost of practicing results instead of method: oh my God, about 1/3 of the California spiritual world, it feels like sometimes? Strained nice-nice fakeness that is good for nothing. The New Age community, where people pretend to be benevolent Teletubbies, but behind the scenes are as money-hungry, power-seeking, and gossip-spreading as anyone.

Concentration practice.

Result: A flow state that can be restful, beautiful, and even healing. Often, as a bonus, insights about the nature of mind spring from the ability to observe it in more detail.

Method: Without strain, repeatedly choose an object of awareness such that it eventually becomes the default during a session. Shrug off distractions, seeing them generously as an opportunity to unite more layers of mind. Eventually, deepen into levels of absorption where most habitual mental scattering is gone.

The cost of practicing results instead of method: Straining to produce an effortful, taxing pseudo-concentration by tightening the mind. Sometimes, temporary concentration followed by renewed or increased jags of negative emotion or distraction. Sometimes, dissociation, agitation, or energetic disturbances.

I welcome the addition of other practices in the comments. I’m not a divination expert, so I don’t know how you can screw up the I Ching by practicing results instead of method. But I trust that it can be done.

Photo credit goes to Daido Moriyama.