Upaya

“My whole life I’ve had a great vow that I’d rather suffer the pains of hell with this body on behalf of all sentient beings, than portray the Buddha Dharma with this mouth as a human sentiment, and blind people’s eyes.” - Ta Hui, Swampland Flowers 

Most people who have meditated for a while in groups or read any books on Buddhism have heard the term “skillful means,” referring usually to the action of a presumably wise teacher meeting their students at their level of understanding in order to help them toward progressively more subtle or challenging practices and perspectives.

Skillful Means, or Upaya, is generally considered to be something like a benevolent bait and switch: offering something people want, that the practice can in fact deliver, that is also only a fragment of the teaching, and is almost certain to be misunderstood - all ostensibly in order to encourage students to continue, gain trust and understanding, and obtain greater fulfillment than they could have imagined. If that sounds tricky - both to implement well and in terms of risking bad feelings in a student who doesn’t knowingly consent to being “tricked,” I agree with you on both counts.

I’ve been home from Vermont for less than a week after teaching a weeklong retreat there at a beautiful lakeside location at the height of fall colors. One student surprised me with a challenge when we met for a 1:1 talk. I was surprised that he came in aggressively, making strong statements about what he was and wasn’t willing to do, and with demands to know more about my own beliefs and aims as a teacher. I was surprised because I had already worked with him directly in the past and we’d had an easy rapport when discussing meditation techniques and benefits both in groups and in private meetings.

Surprised, but not thrown, I reoriented toward understanding this new prickly distrust of me. I encouraged his skepticism and cited great teachers who emphasize that one should always trust themselves and doubt the teacher until they are satisfied that trust is warranted. This is not only a good way to avoid wasting time with an unqualified teacher (or even worse - being misled by trusting the untrustworthy and coming to real harm), but also leads to deeper trust and greater growth in the long run. “Go slow to go fast,” a school superintendent used to tell me when she was mentoring me through a challenging tenure as a school board president. That is, take your time and focus more on the integrity of the process than the desired outcome, and things will work out better in the end than they would if you hurried to get to where you wish you already were.

I was interested in meditation myself and sought out several different teachers before I settled in for a few years with a mindfulness teacher. In retrospect, I see that it was my distrust of what I couldn’t understand that led me to select a typically western, rational approach. I reflected on my interactions with teachers and their communities, accepted that I might miss out on something extraordinary due to my cautious nature, and in the end, went with my gut feeling and left more than a few teachers whose recommended paths I couldn’t understand. Some of those teachers may have been deeply realized, but my mistrust would have severely limited any potential for personal growth. I’ve never regretted moving on until I found a teacher and a practice that felt safe. 

Mindfulness with my pragmatic dharma teacher felt safe because I could understand the way he described meditation immediately and completely. 

What happens when you feel safe?

For most people, there is some relaxing. With relaxing, some opening, and with opening, deeper fears and challenges come up as our minds recognize we’re getting into unfamiliar territory. What could be more natural, and wise than this response?

I attended one-day and online events and classes with the mindfulness teacher for almost 10 years before I went to my first weeklong retreat with him. 

I was trusting, eager, and (over)confident.

On that first intensive meditation retreat, all hell broke loose. I experienced transcendent states and recognized I was far from my comfort zone. For the next couple of years, paranoia and doubt about the teacher and the community rose up periodically - not just reasonable doubt, like “why do so many of these people seem like they still feel frantic all the time,” but also doubts that are the hallmark of a panicking subconscious that isn’t sure it wants to heal all that quickly after all. The paranoia globbed on to details like the fact that there was little biographical information about this teacher readily available on the Internet, that there was an intensity to the adoration by some of his students towards him that a friend of mine had called “religious fervor,” and that the teacher himself tended to name drop people more famous than himself as friends and colleagues, as though their names were worth more than those of master teachers.

Fortunately, I had learned to seek the input of others when doubting myself. I asked the other students - those who had known the teacher longer and seemed immune to the religious fervor - questions I didn’t dare ask the teacher. They met my skepticism with identification, respect, and reasonable answers. Soon, I came to see that my fear projected onto the teacher came from my fear of losing control. I knew deep down that I was headed into unchartered territory, and so are you to some extent. 

I can normalize fear and mistrust when I meet with you, and reduce your suffering a little bit in that way, but your path remains your own. Each person has a unique set of conditions consisting of their personal history, fears, personality, affinities, and more. It is a path that, while we can benefit greatly from the company of spiritual companions, ultimately each of us walks alone. If that has never scared any particular meditator, I know that they haven’t yet opened up much to their own vast unknown.

I started to develop a palate for not knowing, for freefall being a reliable indicator of progress. I relaxed again, and realized there was nothing nefarious about my teacher . . . and . . . he was a strong proponent of upaya - skillful means.

It’s not easy to balance being inclusive with having integrity. Most modern (meaning less traditional) meditation teachers put a high value on inclusivity and accept that they will lose students who don’t share that value, but they lose fewer students than they would by taking a more traditional stance. A benefit, then, of having a system that is comfortable for a huge number of people is that more people are exposed to practice. The more people who practice, the more surface layers of suffering can be reduced. Those who feel compelled to go deeper can then veer off toward more traditional teachers who can mentor them personally.

Traditional teachers, in my experience, tend to put a higher value on integrity and trouble themselves little with how many students they have. They would rather have few students and see more walk away than pretend that what they have to offer is easy or of less value than it is, or risk leading people astray by using means that are more expedient, but less skillful.

This week, after returning from Vermont, I connected with two separate students who were experiencing distress in part due to an idea that they should be happy. Where on earth did people get the idea that we are supposed to be happy all the time, or even most of the time? Happiness comes and goes, and it comes more for some than others, and yes, we often get in the way of our own happiness through obsessive or misguided thinking, and - the idea that we are failing at being happy is one of the most ironic, invisible, pernicious, and suffering-inducing habits of mind that I know of.

And it makes a lot of money for the wellness, mindfulness, and meditation industries.

People already chase happiness, and these industries promise explicitly or implicitly that the very happiness you’re after can be yours. The bait and switch on this point is about how we define the word happiness. Good teachers know this and are happy to clarify, but it is difficult to do outside of personal relationships with their students.

This is the point at which I’d like to underscore that upaya doesn’t translate alone as “skillful,” but only “means,” as in, “expedient means.” Expedient means are those that are convenient, but also improper or even immoral. In order to make the phrase “skillful means,” one adds the word kaushalya to mean skillful, as in, upaya-kaushalya.

The difference between expediency and skillfulness is, as my mindfulness teacher might have said, subtle, and significant. Take so-called “crazy wisdom” teachers. Defenders of powerful teachers who abused and harmed their students often say that they were using classical skillful or expedient means to try to break through their students’ delusions. It’s easy to see that, not only were these actions frequently immoral because whatever breakthroughs they brought were at the cost of harming others, they were consistently more expedient than skillful. They worked sometimes, but were lacking a high level of both compassion and wisdom.

My suggestion here is that a focus on happiness is not skillful means, but expedient. It’s a good starting place because people often come to practice wanting to be happier. We can work with that, and also honor the obligation to let people know that the happiness meditation promises is a better match for phrases like “reduction in suffering,” “fulfillment,” and “satisfaction.” It’s fine to address those areas where mindfulness can increase happiness by reducing confusion, distraction, and reactivity, but it isn’t skillful unless we’re clear about where practice ultimately leads, which is insight.

Happiness comes and goes; unhappiness comes and goes, and meditation offers wisdom, clarity, and ease regardless of whether or not happiness is present.

Wise and compassionate teachers won’t use means that are so expedient that they cost them your trust. A mentor once said to me, “I would give up your friendship in a heartbeat to save your life.” I believed her, and I knew trust for the first time. I knew that she would tell me the truth to the best of her ability rather than tell me what I wanted to hear or what would make our relationship smooth and easy.

I tell you all of this today in part because I’m a little bit on fire after coming off the intensity of teaching for a week, and in part because it pained me to see people I care about adding to their own suffering because of the trope that they are supposed to be happy. Whatever you chase in this life will elude you. Be still, and know peace.

This isn’t about how green the grass is - or how blue the sky. This is about Freedom - Sisupachala, the Third Sister, from the Therigatha

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