Dharma Talk April 25, 2010

by John Corbaley, M.S., M.A.

Meditating in the Thunderstorm

I run the Brain Fitness Center at Saint Luke’s Hospital, where part of the program involves mindfulness-based stress reduction. Our sessions always begin with the instructions, “assume a comfortable position in your chair, your feet flat on the floor, your hands in your lap, and your eyes lightly closed. Let your attention rest on that point right at the tip of the nose where the breath enters and leaves.” Then without warning, the drilling starts. Or the buzz saw. Or the jack hammer.

The instructions for each stress reduction session assume a certain level of calm surroundings. Little did we realize when we started training Brain Fitness gym members in stress reduction that doing such an activity in the center of a campus where construction was the norm not the exception, would present challenges.

We began our program about 18 months ago, at the same time that several physician groups in our building were renovating. We were in temporary space in a conference room there which looked out onto the parking lot. This was also the drop off location for the construction crews and delivery services that were constantly delivering new furniture and equipment or hauling away debris. This activity created a constant backdrop of noise. Sometimes low, sometimes loud and jarring. The day they installed carpeting with electric hammers directly upstairs from our space was particularly memorable. And who can forget the wood chipper when all the trees on the street were removed. Right outside our picture window.

As it turns out, the noise has been useful. This is because the process of mental relaxation cannot take place in a vacuum. The mind needs something to periodically redirect it – it needs something to push against -- in order to successfully go through the process of relaxation. It is the weaving back and forth between some outside stimulus -- noise, for example -- and the returning to an object of inner attention, like the breath, that brings on a deep relaxation state.

Harder to do in a void with no distractions. In fact, when this happens, the mind must create its own distractions in the form of random thoughts, giving it something to “push against” in the relaxation process. This way, the mind moves like a pendulum between the distraction and the focus point, each swing bringing the relaxation to a deeper level of calm.

This relaxation practice is an integral piece of the Brain Fitness program. Using the body’s natural mechanisms, this stress reduction practice purges our bodies of adrenaline and cortisol, the chemical deposits created by stress which damage the blood vessels and the brain. At the same time it’s ridding the body of these substances, it causes the body to create its own set of healing chemicals: serotonin, anandamide, and nitric oxide. These substances mend blood vessels, reduce blood pressure, and cause a cascade of healing effects in the body.

So we sat with the periodic noise. And we were able to have really successful stress reduction, using the noise to attain deep relaxation states to throw off the harmful effects of stress on the body. This changed about a month ago when we moved into our permanent space. It has been designed to be quieter, with special sound insulation in the walls and sound attenuating carrels for each gym member. So now our stress reduction sessions are quieter, but no more productive without the sound of the jackhammer or the buzz saw.

We are now more dependent on the mind’s own periodic thoughts as the vehicle for the ‘back and forth’ necessary for the relaxation process to be successful. With each breath, the mind gradually moves to a quieter place, using the distraction of thoughts to push against. More subtle than the jackhammer, but distractions just the same. Sometimes we miss the noises; sometimes we’re happy to just sit in the quiet, the jackhammer a distant memory.

Take that one step further and appreciate the noise — embrace it with metta, loving kindness for its place in the wonder of creation. As you prepare for meditation, really notice and appreciate all of the noise around you.

Bodhipaksa is a teacher who was raised in Scotland and trained by the Western Buddhist Order. He currently lives and teaches in New Hampshire. He has this mindful teaching about dealing with noise during meditation. He writes:

Call to mind the living, breathing, feeling human beings behind the noise and wish them well. And then accept that noise as part of your meditation practice. Stay loosely focused on your breathing, and let the noise be a sort of secondary focus of the practice — like the ring around the bull’s-eye. If you stop seeing the noise as the enemy of the practice and instead see it as part of the practice, then the conflict will vanish.”

Bodhipaksa continues to explain, considering the noise in the context of the five aggregates:

Trying to fight the noise is unlikely to work. The noise is not going to go away because you don’t like it. If you respond aggressively to it then you’re just getting yourself into a fight that you cannot win. When I lived in Glasgow I had a dance club across the street, a taxi stand outside the windows, and a washing machine through the wall from where I meditated. When the washing machine got noisy, for example, what I would do was embrace the noise.

I’d take this even further. What I’d do was reflect that the noise of the washing machine was a perception that existed in my consciousness. Since the noise of the washing machine was in my consciousness, and since my consciousness was meditating, then I reasoned that the washing machine was also meditating.

Realizing this made the washing machine noise just another part of my experience, like the sense of weight on my cushion, or like my breath, or like the emotions in my heart. It was no longer something separate from me that was interfering with my practice, but was a part of my practice.

At my own insight retreats around the Midwest, I remember my teachers explaining noise with a kind of gentle remonstrance. When the original insight teachers were in Burma and Thailand learning Vipassana, they rarely had a quiet place to meditate, so unlike the retreat centers we can escape to in America, with nothing but the birds and the wind in the trees for background noise.

They were usually in the middle of some densely crowded Asian city, with all the sights, sounds and smells of civilization around them. “Use the noise,” was the instruction. Like the itch on your nose or the pain in your knee, investigate it when it occurs, observe it with bare attention. Watch it rise and fall.

I remember that some of my most memorable and deep sitting sessions were when it was raining and thundering outside. Such a blissful peace in between the ebb and flow of the noise. There are important lessons to learn from the noise. Like meditation is not about stillness, even though the stillness is important, necessary, and blissful. Meditation is more about observation: whether that be observation of stillness, or observation of noise—just observe whatever is coming up.

I’ll close with a quote from Meditation teacher Dhiravamsa, who puts it this way:

When you can observe closely enough…one has to be aware of things as they are, and then one will understand the connection… see the ground for their connection…to see the wholeness of what is really there. In that freedom there is love yet independence, equanimity, and understanding. There is no “actor,” but the flow of intuitive wisdom.”