‘The Art of Meditation’: A Guide to Finding Stillness
A review of ‘The Art of Meditation’, by Matthieu Ricard; Atlantic Books, 2011.
I began to meditate when I was twenty-two. I have meditated, with varied degrees of eagerness and vigour, more or less constantly in the 11 years since. The zeal of some meditators can, I acknowledge, be trying; but that zeal springs from the fact that if we meditate consistently, (and not even for that long) our life will get better. Meditation can elicit really quite profound changes in how we think, feel and see the world.
Matthieu Ricard’s The Art of Meditation is a guide to getting started. Ricard, once dubbed ‘the world’s happiest man’ by the Independent newspaper, was a molecular biologist at the Institut Pasteur in France who abandoned his lab for a monastery in Tibet. He is therefore a kind of gateway drug for sceptical, materialist, rationalist Western types who is able, on account of the fact he is a) French and b) a scientist (as well as, c) a striking example of what happens when we stop thinking for ourselves), to talk about Buddhism in a way that does not turn them off.
Ricard is a kind of gateway drug for sceptical, materialist, rationalist Western types.
His primer to meditation blends Buddhist philosophy with practical advice, often citing the benefits of meditation in respect of our well-being. The book is slim; but it nonetheless contains a good dollop of wisdom. The central flavour of this can be summarised thusly: consider, just for a moment, that your worries are neither as important as you think they are, nor the sum-total of your brief existence. And consider, moreover, how you might feel if you thought less about living and concerned yourself with the actual business of living. Meditation is the path.
The book is split into brief sections: why should we meditate, how we should start and what we should expect. Ricard (clearly mindful of his Western readership) goes to great pains to demystify the process. There are no secret mantras, no claims about levitation, no demand to sell your things and run off to the middle of nowhere and sit on a rock for thirty years. There is only the invitation to sit, breathe, and watch the mind. In doing so, we widen the gap between observer and observed, and come to see that what we are basically is, to quote Alan Watts, the ‘fabric and substance of existence itself’. More practically, we come to see that our thoughts are not us, and ought not be taken too seriously. As we move through the chapters we move through the stages of meditation, encountering anecdotes, Buddhist teachings, and a spot of neuroscience. Ricard underlines that meditation is not about checking out, as it were: not about ‘thinking of nothing’. Rather, it is a checking-in.
As we all know from (bitter) experience, the human mind has a bad habit of being everywhere but here. When we notice this tendency, we need not give ourselves a hard time about it. We should just turn our attention back to the present. To increase the distance between observer and observed, we also collapse the boundaries between self and other, and come to see by degrees that we are interdependent at every level and in every way. That naturally gives rise to compassion, for what hurts you, dear reader, hurts me as well. Compassion, for Ricard, is the highest form of human expression. On the path of meditation, we develop patience, focus, and a general sense of contentment with what is; but these are only happy by-products of the process, says Ricard, and not the aim. Some monks, mystics or meditators like to emphasise calm when they speak of meditation. For Matthieu, it is kindness that is key.
Compassion, for Ricard, is the highest form of human expression.
Now, how does one describe sitting still without making it sound crashingly boring? Pablo d’Ors managed it. Frankly, Ricard doesn’t always. He weaves in little stories and observations; but the advice he gives can be a bit vague. That could frustrate those beginners who, full of enthusiasm, have sat down to meditate, find that nothing seems to be happening, and have the distinct impression that they are just sitting around when they might be doing something useful. Ricard does give some guidance on dealing with wandering thoughts (the famous ‘monkey mind’) and restlessness; but it seems to me that he assumes a level of serenity which (if it wasn’t bloody obvious) most people do not have. Meditation is—and d’Ors is very good on this—a sort of battle. That will sound odd; but consider that we are, basically, taking on the ego, which exists solely to help us survive and is therefore a tricky opponent.
Stylistically, the book is unremarkable; but lack of style is not the worst sin an author can commit. (It is a better than writing badly, after all.) It is clear, readable. It is perhaps a touch too long, despite being quite short—though I accept I hold the extreme view that almost every book, film, play or production could do with a 20-percent trim. Ricard likes to tell us often that meditation takes time. Well, so does reading. But it is a book that achieves its aim. It is a calm, well-reasoned guide to meditation. I am not very practically minded, and so prefer personal accounts of someone’s meditation journey (hence my immense affection for Biography of Silence). But some people are. They will get some use out of this book.
