The Pursuit of Balance Digest | Vol. 01 | Issue 02
Meditation, resilience, and mental freedom: A guide to cultivating strength and balance from within
Table of Contents
Meditation Types for Every Personality | Mix meditation styles for balance.
The Inner Citadel: Mind's Stronghold | Build resilience with an inner citadel.
A Practical Approach To Cessation | Finding freedom through letting go.
Don't Give Them Your Mind | Protect and cultivate mental autonomy.
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From The Editor
I chose four topics for this issue. As always, I try to maintain an even balance between articles inspired by Stoicism and those inspired by Buddhism. I chose the topics based on things I’ve been reading lately, books like How To Focus by Thich Nhat Hanh, Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright, and How To Think Like A Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson.
The four articles were chosen independently from one another but as they all began to shape up, I noticed that a theme was emerging: mental autonomy. Sometimes, I listen to Shi Heng Yi interviews while working on basic, administrative tasks. He talks about being unshakable. The Stoics wrote about it, too—this idea of the fortified mind as a safe haven, sheltered from the troubling winds of external influence. It’s an even-keeled-ness. We don’t allow what’s going on around us to inflate or deflate us. It’s the idea that strength, balance, and happiness come from within.
I’m glad that a theme accidentally emerged for this issue. I think it goes well with this new magazine, digest format (how are you liking this new format, by the way? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the Substack comments). As mentioned in the previous issue, this new format has solved a few problems for me. It’s allowing me to write at my own pace, and it’s allowing me to express myself creatively, making the whole process a lot more fun. So much fun in fact that I’ve decided to launch a new Substack in this format. I haven’t locked a name yet, but it’ll be about how to save and earn more money so that you can donate a small portion of those gains to the most effective charities. It’ll be a mashup of personal finance, career advice, and effective altruism. I’m also going to be more active on my other existing Substacks: The Eightfold Parent and my personal blog unimaginatively titled Brechen MacRae. So keep an eye out for new content under those banners.
Brechen, Editor
Three Types of Meditation Explained for Every Personality: The Artist, the Poet, and the Philosopher
I liken my approach to meditation practice to how I approach physical fitness. I like variety in my training. There are periods where I train with weights. I’ve done trail half marathons. I mix in different sports like hockey and boxing. Yoga is part of my bedtime routine. I’m currently trying to get good at calisthenics. It’s more fun this way. It keeps things interesting, but it also works the body in ways that lead to well-rounded athleticism. If I need to run fast or far, I can do it. If I need to lift something heavy, no problem. If I need to spend all day playing with and chasing after my kid, no sweat.
“Use every distraction as an object of meditation and they cease to be distractions.” – Mingyur Rinpoche
I find the same to be true for meditation. Incorporating different styles and techniques into a practice leads to well roundedness. So I thought it would be fun to break down three of the most prevalent forms of meditation by leaning into their stereotypes.
Tibetan Meditation Is For Artists
There are many different forms of meditation within the various Tibetan sects, but one style that might appeal to the artists out there is visualization meditation. This is simply the act of bringing an image to mind. I like to picture a scene in nature—often places I’ve been, like the bank of a small river that ran through the forest behind the house where I grew up, or the Nepalese Himalayas where I once visited. Tibetans often visualize the face of a loved or revered person or even intangibles like energy or light.
Zen Is For Poets
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
You’ve probably heard that one before. Koans, paradoxical questions rooted in Zen meditation traditions, are widely recognized in the West for their strong paradoxical nature, which has helped them permeate pop culture. Koans like the ‘one hand clapping’, or ‘If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’, or even ‘Who am I?’ force the meditator to let go of their supposed knowledge and return to what they truly are, which is a student who must begin anew each day as if it were their first. These questions humble us and strip away a lot of the learned thought and behavior that clouds our true selves.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that Zen meditation is all about paradoxes. Its more common practice is called zazen, which is largely a focused breathing type of meditation—the type my favorite meditation teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh taught.
Vipassana Meditation Is For Psychologists
Most meditation traditions fall into one of two buckets: concentration or insight. Vipassana is an insight practice. Its intent is to understand the object of focus. To take the breath for instance, once we’ve observed it long enough, trained ourselves to focus on it singularly for more than a few fleeting seconds, then we can try to understand it—to see deeply into its true nature. It’s the act of stripping away delusions and stories we tell ourselves about the true nature of things. It’s about ceasing to identify with labels and view things without judgment.
A Practice:
To end, I’d like to give more credit to zazen from the Zen meditation tradition, because I only glossed over it in my above foray into koans. Here are some simple instructions for anyone looking to get started with zazen meditation:
Before you sit, show some sign of reverence for the practice you're about to undertake. It could be a bow or a silent acknowledgment that you’re about to partake in an important practice.
Sit in a cross-legged position.
Lower your chin and open your eyes, look down at the floor about three feet in front of your body and soften your gaze so that you’re not looking at anything in particular.
Hold your tongue against the roof of your mouth to promote proper nasal breaking.
Place your hands in the classic mudra position, with your right hand cradling your left hand, so that your thumbs are pointing upward, about an inch above your navel.
Breathe in normally through your nose, feeling the air filling your belly. Bring awareness to the air’s passage. ‘Watch’ its journey as it leaves through your nostrils.
Once you have settled in on the rhythm of your breath, begin to count each breath. One as you breathe in. Two as you breathe out. Once you’ve reached ten, reset and return to one.
At any point during the practice, when you become distracted by thoughts, simply acknowledge them and restore focus on the breath.
The Inner Citadel: A Stronghold Of The Mind
One of the greatest ultramarathon runners ever, among both males and females, is a woman named Courtney Dauwalter. At first glance, she doesn’t come across as a high-level athlete, much less someone who finishes a 240-mile race more than 17 hours before her male and female competitors.
Interviewers have prodded her to reveal her secret. Could it be her diet? Not likely. Unless you consider beer and nachos the stuff of champions. But as many long-form interviews with Courtney progress, her secret eventually reveals itself.
She talks about entering what she calls ‘the pain cave’. It’s a place in her mind where she goes when every inch of her body is screaming in pain—perhaps around mile 100 of a 240-mile race, I’d guess. She goes there and stays there as she continues to run night and day through the mountains. It’s a place of acceptance. A place where she becomes the pain, rather than the pain being something external to fight against.
The Stoics, too, had their concept of a place in the mind where we can go when things get hard. They called it The Inner Citadel. They thought of it as our core, protected from external events by walls of resilience, self-reliance, and composure.
I love this idea of returning to yourself for the answers—for the solutions to the problems you’re facing. It starts with believing in yourself. Some of us doubt ourselves, so we fail to take refuge in The Inner Citadel because supposedly we’re not good enough. Some of us take to fighting, quick to take up arms against whatever opposes us. Others may even believe that the enemy lies within, and therefore spend all their time avoiding introspection.
But once we overcome these self-defeating beliefs and realize that we have the innate ability to look inward for resilience, strength and compassion, then there are no unsafe places in this world. We are all capable of walking around in a suit of armor, shielded from the whip of life’s blows.
Buddhism echoes this message. Much of Zen Buddhism is built upon the notion that we are all capable of the compassion of the Buddha—that our essence is pure, but that it has been deluded by things we’ve learned. Shi Heng Yi, headmaster of the Shaolin Temple Europe, speaks about being unshakable. He talks about how we should not be inflated by praise nor demeaned by criticism or blame. Then there’s the instruction that comes up in ninety-five percent of all meditation guides which tells us to return to the breath. Thich Nhat Hanh said that to return to the breath is to return home.
The Inner Citadel might sound like an airy concept, but it’s nothing more than one’s confidence in their own resilience. You don’t get to that place of composure without the ability to pause and look inward. Mindfulness meditation helps build that skill. Layer on years of practice, self-reliance, and acting in accordance with your virtues, and yes, you will construct an inner citadel—a vantage point from which you can make sound decisions and say the right things under stress.
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A Practical Approach To Cessation
I’m not in the best position to write a piece on cessation, as I’ve been wanting to quit nicotine for many years now and have yet to actually do it. But I did quit alcohol three years ago and haven’t had a drop since. I’ve also adopted a form of minimalism in my life. I seek simplicity, often opting for analogue over digital and looking for creative ways to fill needs without making a purchase. So at least I’m trying to trim the fat from my life.
When I walk into my apartment, I can see and feel that simplification works. When I look around our small, one-bedroom apartment, I usually feel relaxed and at ease because there’s space. Things have their place. I’ve worked hard to reduce the amount of stuff. We have a tiny sofa. I got rid of our coffee table to give our toddler more room to run around.
Wanting and having fewer things not only gives my home space to breathe, it alleviates a lot of psychological burden on us. I’m less often faced with the paradox of choice or the burden of dilemma on which thing to buy, because I’m seldomly looking to buy.
Buddhism teaches that cessation of craving and desire is the path to the end of suffering. It’s no small thing. Reading about this concept recently in The Four Noble Truths by The Dalai Lama, it prompted me to consider the question, ‘What are the things people crave and desire the most?’
Obviously, human craving and desire span a wide spectrum, but my best guess is that material things and the approval of others are probably two that most people chase.
I’ve already touched on stuff. It’s a simple one. Get rid of as much stuff as you possibly can. Stop saving things for ‘just in case’. If you haven’t used something in 12 months, it’s garbage. The first step is letting go of the things you already have. Then, learn to make do. Delay purchases by a few days or weeks. Often, as time passes, the shine of the idea of owning that new whatever wears off.
As for approval from others, we all crave it to some degree. In some cases, like at our jobs, it’s necessary. If your boss disapproves of you, then you’re out the door. But we need to temper this with a firm foothold of compassion. When I practice loving kindness meditation and say to myself, ‘May you be at peace’, I almost always mean ‘May you be untroubled by what others say or do’. Loving yourself is essential. Knowing that you’ll be OK no matter what others say is a massive step towards ceasing to crave approval. Even if your boss did one day decide to can you, so what? You’d find another job, eventually, and it might even be a better one.
It all comes down to cultivating a feeling of wholeness. You have everything you need. When you work upwards from the most basic essentials like food, shelter, and clothing, you’ll find that all things considered you have more than you need. You have everything you need internally, too. Sure, it would feel nice if everyone adored you, always recognized your contributions, and never blamed you unjustly. But that’s not reality. Despite praise and criticism, you’re whole. You have your breath. You have your home. At the end of the day, you are satisfied because you acted in harmony with your values and you’ll show up tomorrow to do the same, and for that, among other reasons, you love yourself.
Don't Give Them Your Mind
Mental autonomy is shaping up to be the theme of this issue. It was a core element of The Inner Citadel piece. I touched on it in the Cessation piece. Independently from my thought process on those two articles, it came up again while I was reading Epictetus’ The Enchiridion, in which he writes, “If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet we so readily hand our mind over to other people, letting them inside our heads or making us feel a certain way.”
His perspective, and his choice of words (gave away your body) are founded in something we’ll never be misfortune enough to experience. Epictetus was a slave, a fact which in and of itself explains his choice of words. But he shares those words with a broader audience composed mainly of free individuals, including us.
Today, physical fitness is ubiquitous. But who among us regularly sees a psychologist not to treat an illness, but to maintain mental hygiene? Who among us takes sick days when we’re feeling overwhelmed? Who among us actually has a consistent gratitude practice, either through meditation or journaling? My guess is that very few of us, myself included, do enough to safeguard our mental health. Epictetus’ words speak of protecting the mind from others, but the underlying message here is that we need to take care of our minds.
Indeed, a big part of taking care of your mind is recognizing that you have the power to choose whether you give your mind over to others. We must discern between constructive input and detrimental interference when we communicate with others. It’s useful to decide in advance as you enter into a relationship whether to let the person in. Each morning, recall that your reaction to criticism, blame, and slander will be negative—you will open the door to your mind. The key is to close it quickly. Cultivate emotional resilience by recognizing when someone is knocking on the door of your mind. Once you’ve recognized it, it’s your choice whether to open it.
Detach your sense of self from others. Hell, detach your sense of self from yourself. Emotional sovereignty comes from non-attachment. Be fluid in your concepts. Be present. Above all, take care of your mental health with the same regularity and attention that you take care of your physical health. Stoicism and mindfulness traditions are nothing but empty words and good intentions to an unhealthy mind.
