Meditation for a world on edge

Leaving Preston, Lancs for London just now, I saw a poster on the train platform:

It’s okay not to be okay.

Nowadays there’s lots of sad thoughts and anxiety around, and much of this is suppressed, pushed down, and generally undealt with. Suppressing thoughts and feelings makes them more intrusive. It means that they can and eventually do erupt into physical and mental health problems. We’re seeing this a lot. You can’t keep a jack-in-the-box down forever.

Why do we deny, suppress, and/or mask our unpleasant thoughts? Perhaps because it seems too scary or embarrassing to look at them, own them, or even feel them. It’s NOT okay not to be okay. We have to put on a front for others, and even for ourselves.

Do you remember this experiment seeing how long people could stay on their own in an empty room without their phones before they gave themselves electric shocks? (Don’t leave me alone in here.) When asked why it was so impossible to sit with their own minds for more than 6 to 15 minutes, people basically replied that they were scared of their thoughts and didn’t dare dwell on their feelings. They didn’t want to look their unexamined thoughts and fears in case they’d become too sad or even more anxious.

Buddha gave a practical analysis of our underlying problem 2600 years ago that is just as insightful today: firstly, an average of 9 out of 10 thoughts are unpeaceful and uncontrolled, as explained here: Control your thoughts or they’ll control you. In other words, we have so-called “delusions”. Secondly, with the underpinning delusion of self-grasping ignorance we are too closely identified with these delusions of anger, fear, critical thoughts, depression, cravings, and so on; we are thinking, “This is me. I am angry, etc.” This is what so-called “samsara” is about – we’ve always been up against these mental problems.

So, what are we specifically up against these days?

Take anxiety. It’s normal to be anxious these days. In fact it’s practically obligatory, even amongst young people in the prime of their lives who once upon a time might have been at their most carefree. Nowadays they’re full of cares. They’re worried about having enough money or somewhere to live – avocado toast and a dog are no substitute for affordable housing and kids, a 39-year-old said to me the other day, yet no one amongst his friends thinks they’ll ever be able to afford a house or children. For different reasons, young women and young men seem more skeptical about dating, romance, and a happy-ever-after. They’re worried about their futures, the climate, the toxic political environment, and, most recently, AI coming for their jobs, as my nephew-in-law was telling me just yesterday, saying that half his company have already been replaced.

As a UK friend who’s a social worker and parent put it:

“It sometimes seems that the under thirties, even the under forties, are having to navigate a radically different world compared to even ten or twenty years ago. The rise of technology, social media, gaming, and the environmental and societal changes of recent years have shaped these generations’ attitudes and emotional landscapes differently; and these dramatic incursions are showing no signs of slowing down. These developments are almost impossible to avoid, so their needs, hopes, and aspirations are having to evolve in response to this new reality.”

She gave a couple of examples: there’s a rise in ADHD that seems not just due to better diagnosis but is a symptom of the “plugged-in” generation. And the technology doesn’t just affect people’s minds – a physiotherapist told her recently how many young boys he was treating for back problems and curved spines from spending so much time gaming.

I also read that an increasing number of children all over the world are needing glasses due to eye strain. In the queue in a supermarket the other day, we all watched as a one-year old in her mother’s arms reached over to swipe the cashier’s screen, disappointed when nothing moved. Things are changing at breakneck speed, who can keep up?

So who can blame young people for feeling anxious. What’s not to worry about these days?

Was life ever relatively good?

To be fair, it can’t have been much more fun to be born in 1900 than in 2000 – facing great industrial and geopolitical upheaval including two world wars, the Spanish flu, the great depression, and all the “isms” (sexism, racism etc). I cannot in any way dismiss the major and considerable upheavals, war, poverty, and trauma of that period; it was terrible. And where and when in human history, ever, have things been all peachy all the time? Nowhere and never. This is samsara, the cycle of uncontrolled minds and lives; it’s very nature is suffering.

However, I’ve been recognizing lately that many (not all) people born in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, such as myself, lived for a while in a relative golden age, with some clear advantages compared to the generations before and after. I remember Venerable Geshe-la explaining to his early students, in the context of this period of relative stability and prosperity, that we were not more special than people in other parts of the world or other periods of time, just luckier right now. That our merit was ripening, but this didn’t mean we didn’t have the same seeds of suffering within us, waiting their turn. He was trying to help us develop renunciation and I nodded my head wisely at the time; but I also remember how complacent I felt. No longer.

Today’s unique challenges

So what are the unique challenges that people are facing now? I and others are working on understanding this so as to figure out how Buddhist meditation techniques can be successfully introduced into the mix. Why? Because, not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve seen that bona fide meditation solves problems that affect the mind, and I would like it to go mainstream.

Overall, we are experiencing a hugely accelerated shift in all areas of human activity that as a society we have not yet figured out how to transform. Until not that long ago, the world still operated on analog time. Previous changes were revolutionary but they happened over longer periods of time, seemingly leaving a bit more of an adjustment period. Communication was linear and localized: newspapers, radio, word of mouth, or the three TV channels of my youth.

If you were born in or around 2000, however, you grew up with the internet already in place – and then witnessed a tech explosion: smartphones, 24-hour entertainment, social media, mass surveillance, biotech, geo-tagging, online working, shopping, AI, etc. You have inherited a climate crisis that is already reaching a tipping point and could easily tip right over in your lifetime (whereas I’ll probably be dead and gone by then). The rate of change seems exponential, not linear. Entire social norms are being reshaped in just a few years or less. Communication is instant, global, and overwhelming. The world is always on. This acceleration of instability, along with the lack of time, space, and willingness for silence and introspection, seems to be undermining the traditional models of work, identity, and even meaning. Like I said, no wonder anxiety and overwhelm are widespread.

The old methods are not working for these new challenges. And who or what can you trust for solutions – not only are the older generations dubious sources of sense and wisdom these days, but they can’t even keep up with the mess they’ve created! They have far less clue and experience about the impacts of technology, for example, than their kids.

Worry may be the new normal – but having company doesn’t make it less of a torture. Is it not the definition of torture to have to worry about everything and not be able to let that go? Day and night? This is no way for us to live our whole lives. We must never accept this as the only way to be.

Now is the time

What does all this have to do with meditation and Buddhism?

A lot, as it happens.

There is a huge silver lining to all of this. Unlike every single previous generation in the West at least, in the modern world as a whole there is now unprecedented access to Dharma and meditation. Theoretically, billions of people can now discover it, with the path to lasting happiness and freedom at their fingertips if they’re interested. That is mind-blowingly good, to be honest.

This tipping point is the time to explore alternatives. We need a new way of doing things and this needs to become part of the culture. New to us, but not new in general. Not a fad or a trend, but something rooted in timeless wisdom that has a proven track record of bringing about inner peace. In our crazy mixed up modern world, meditation is an idea whose time has come. Unlike the artificial, plastic, and increasingly deceptive digital world we have been feverishly creating for ourselves, meditation is an authentic, natural, non-deceptive, sane, joyful, and radically effective way to solve our problems. It is not that hard and it is not that time-consuming – in fact it can end up saving a world of time.

The million dollar question is, how can we help everyone these days access this life-saving wisdom and compassion? In a way that will change their lives as much as it changed the lives of Yogis in caves in the past? That will solve not only their temporary problems but their deep-rooted ones? In a way that slices through the obstacles and takes advantages of this wired world?

Critical mass

Why do you think meditation has not become completely mainstream yet? Why is it not taught from a young age as the essential coping and transforming mechanism for the growing challenges of modern life?! I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot lately and this is my conclusion.

On one level, this is no mystery. For meditation to take root, it has to be taught in a way that works; and this is not yet widespread knowledge because most modern people don’t know how to meditate and so aren’t able to pass it on. Meditation apps can be a tool but alone they don’t cut it.

Less than fifty years ago, when I started meditating, no one had even heard of it – you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. So although there has been an exponential rise of access, including more centers and teachers, the actual number of people who can teach meditation and Dharma is still vanishingly small. For example we have 250 or 300 resident teachers in the Kadampa tradition, which may be a 200 percent increase on 50 years ago but is still a drop in the ocean of 8 billion human beings. The entire corps, someone quipped the other day, could fit on an oil rig.

At her first ever meditation course this past weekend, a woman said to me afterwards that meditation makes so much sense, this was a life-changing moment for her, she felt so happy. And immediately she wanted to know how she could teach it to the kids in her elementary school class, who “really, really need it”. “I know, I have to get good at it myself first, right?!”, she said, following that up by asking whether the local Buddhist center could send a teacher. This is a normal occurrence – centers all over the world are being requested for teachers in schools, colleges, hospitals, workplaces, prisons, etc. The demand currently outstrips the supply in every area. And that is just the demand by people who know about it for, conversely, it is also an immense challenge to reach everybody in all directions and generations to let them know this medicine exists.

In other words, although meditation works for people of all backgrounds, ages, and belief systems, it has not yet reached critical mass. Nowhere near. In general, look around – our modern society has very little clue of what meditation is, how to do it, and how quickly it can lead to good and far-reaching results. I believe that if people did know this, and how it is not that hard to learn, meditation would take off. But for that tipping point to ever happen where meditation spills over into the mainstream, we will need (A) the ability to reach and show its relevance to people of all backgrounds and generations, especially the under forties. And (B) a lot more qualified teachers who can meet the demand. Please see an excellently thoughtful comment below for more on (B).

Is this doable? I think so. If we want it enough.

I’ll stop here in the interests of time, to be continued. I would love to hear your suggestions.