I often talk to people who tell me they’re Buddhist, so I ask them about their sitting practice.
Some will say something like, “Well, I don’t get into that part of it, I just read and study.”
Others, when asked the same question may tell me how they sit for an hour a day. “Very good! What are you studying currently?”
“I try to keep it to the more practical side and just concentrate on the sitting.”
The struggle to balance practice and study is something that most, if not all meditators face. I’m currently way to far on the study side and am slowly trying to work my practice to balance it all out. It’s important for us to understand that these are two very necessary parts of a single process. It’s somewhat akin to someone saying they are going to cook a hamburger, but without using both meat and fire. While either can serve some small purpose on it’s own, you must have both to eat a hamburger. Likewise, to follow a Buddhist path, you can’t JUST meditate and you can’t JUST read and study.
This is even pointed out to us, albeit subtly, when we take the refuge vows. The vows have us repeat ‘I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.’ But what are we actually talking about? Taking refuge in the Buddha is looking to the Buddha as the example. He is the example of someone who can practice, follow the path and attain enlightenment. We are talking about the meditation part here. The Buddha is the example to us of one who can attain enlightenment via meditation.
Taking refuge in the Dharma is talking about the teachings. We have to study the teachings and gain that knowledge that they contain. These two are two sides of the same coin (well, really three sides if you include the sangha, but who’s counting here, right?). The Dharma, or the teachings, provide that foundation that we sit in when we meditate. The meditation is the practical application of the teachings. While meditation has some secular benefits to it, from the perspective of following a Buddhist Path, it is one of our main methods of working with the teachings. Without the teachings, we are essentially working with nothing.
Likewise, simply studying the teachings without putting them into practice is at best mental gymnastics and at worst, futile. There are many aspects to Buddhist teachings that, without allowing the mind to actively work with them in a formal mediation setting, will remain nothing more than a neat, but mentally confusing little saying. You must take the teachings and work on experiencing them first hand. It’s only through this experience that we can progress along our path.
By the same token, meditating without benefit of the teachings is like studying for a test without having a book or notes. Pretty futile. Of course, you will learn a little more about how your own mind works but there will be no context from which to work with this. You could think of it as having a car with a really powerful engine but no drive shaft. There is a lot of potential there, but without out the drive shaft, all you can do is rev the engine really loudly and waste gas and time.
Now, I am not saying that practicing meditation without benefit of the teachings is useless. Far from it! We have talked on many occasions about the secular (for lack of a better term) benefits of meditation (reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, improving concentration). What I am talking about is the person trying to follow a Buddhist path.
Likewise, I am not saying that Buddhist teachings are not without merit in just reading what they have to say. But to comprehend and apply much of what is being taught on anything more than a rudimentary level takes a trained mind. And the way to a trained mind is on the cushion.
So the point here is that we have to strike a balance. We must devote some of our time to study of the dharma and some of our time to sitting on the cushion. After we study a teaching for a little bit, we need to ‘let it stew’, by sitting with it on the cushion. Sometimes this can be an active contemplation, which we haven’t really discussed much. But contemplative meditation changes the object of your concentration from the breath to a concept. Thinking back, I guess we have talked about on contemplative practice, Tonglen, the practices of sending and taking. In Tonglen practice, we are actually working with the concept of compassion during the meditation. However, you would be amazed what insight can arise on a particular teaching when we are practicing our plain old, normal, daily meditation.
So I would suggest all of us on the path take a little inventory and see if we have a good balance between practice and study. If not, maybe add or subtract a little here or there. This is something great to do on a recurring basis because we can easily get caught up in one aspect over the other depending on where our life and path happen to be at the moment. As I mentioned above, I currently find myself leaning far to heavily to the studying side, but after a quick inventory, the scales are beginning to even out a bit, back to the Middle Way.
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