The Great Paradox of Meditation

Most of us, even if we’ve not meditated much or never before, have all heard that it’s transformative.

We’ve all heard snippets of scientific studies or know someone that has tried it at some point. You might even have a friend that’s a meditator. More and more we’re understanding that it’s a transformative practice. 

What’s often disregarded are the downsides to meditation. This is relevant right now because students have been bringing up a particular downside, and that inspired us to write a piece on it. It’s also a paradox of meditation practice.

This is also an upside or a strength, so it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s a sign you’re making progress with meditation. But we just want you to be aware this happens so that you can anticipate it as your own journey progresses. 

The Great Paradox

So what is this this great paradox? What are our students realizing?

The great paradox of meditation is seeing how messed up people are, seeing the state of the human condition.

In what way, you might ask? In what way do you realize that people are messed up as you meditate more?

Well, here’s a short list for you:

• Their suffering,
• their mental patterns,
• their self-flagellation,
• their lack of presence,
• their falseness,
• their arrogance,
• their lies,
• their addictions,
• their pain,
• their sadness,
• their addiction to themselves,
• their body language,

AND… their deadness. You see that people aren’t really alive in a certain way.

Now it might seem quite overwhelming to have this realization, to look around and see this in people. That’s true. It can be quite overwhelming.

It’s similar to when you have a friend, family member or acquaintance who is messed up in some way. They have self-destructive tendencies or a hard addiction, and you just really want to save them somehow. You wanted to just click your fingers and take their pain away. It’s painful because you can see the mess they’re in but you obviously don’t have that power. 

This experience of seeing the screwedupness of people is similar. You know that the work that you’ve done on yourself, the meditation, the self-awareness work, the growth you’ve experienced, that this could really help them with the problems that they’re having, but you can’t force them to undertake it.

Judgment or Compassion?

It also sounds quite judgmental to say this. Who are we to say that people are messed up?

It certainly can go the way of judgment and alienation if you get lost in those judgments and only focus on the dark side of people and on their dysfunction. So you’ve got to be careful with that.

At the same time, this phenomenon is one of the side effects of meditation. The reports from relatively inexperienced students confirm that, as do the words of long-term meditator and teacher Shinzen Young: “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the state of the human condition.”

That quote also reveals why it’s not judgmental and not a cause for feeling alienated from the world. It inspires great compassion in you, because you know you could have been a similar way without all the work you’ve done.

Realising Your Own Dysfunction

Another reason why it’s not judgmental is that by extension, if you’re doing meditation right, you also realise how messed up you are.

You recognise…

• your own suffering,
• your own mental patterns,
• your own self-flagellation,
• your own lack of presence,
• your own falseness and arrogance and pretension,
• your own addictions,
• your pain,
• your sadness,
• your addiction to your identity,
• your patterns and habits,
• your body language and what it conceals about you,
• your own deadness,
• your own zombie-like behavior,
• your own lack of attention,
• your own lack of appreciation of life.

This all becomes very apparent. This is why it’s not judgmental to see it in other people, because you see it in yourself.

If you only see it in other people and you can’t see it in yourself, that’s lopsided. You’re not looking at yourself enough, rather you’re using meditation as a way to judge the world rather than to improve yourself.

When you realize this about yourself, it’s very humbling. And though you can recognize the brokenness of people and their dysfunction in all these different areas, it’s not about judging. It’s about seeing the human condition with more clarity, not just in others, but in yourself too.

Why Meditate, Then?

This might sound depressing, and you might wonder why you’d want to do meditation if that’s the effect. Let’s address this issue.

First of all, if you’re not seeing this screwedupness, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It means that you’re lost in it, lost in the human condition. Look at the lists again. Isn’t it a tragedy to be lost in all that?

Though meditation will not transform all these patterns overnight, it will help you see them, and that is the first step. Now you’re in position where you can start to change them.

Funnily, I feel inspired when I see the brokenness of myself and others. It inspires me to change. It inspires me to keep doing meditation. It inspires me to become a better person and meditation teacher.

If you can see the upside to this paradox, and you can see the deeper wisdom behind it, it becomes an enormous strength. Not just for yourself, but for everyone that you interact with.

And if you decide to become a guide or teacher at some point, this will make you a much better teacher. You’ll clearly see all your dysfunction, and it won’t get in the way.

In a certain way, I also find it heartbreaking, and that inspires me to serve people, to help them, to try to show them a new way to live. We don’t deny the problems of life, we don’t deny our difficulties and our pain, but we learn a new way to embrace them and a new way to be in the world.