Who has the best advice?

There’s a story about the long, multi-step process that indigenous communities use to prepare cassava for eating. You have to peel the roots, grate them, soak them and rinse them repeatedly, then ferment the resulting soggy mess, before squeezing out the water, drying them in the sun, and then - finally! - cooking them to eat (being careful to discard the cooking water). All this takes several days, and a lot of effort. If you’re a visitor and this seems a bit convoluted, and try skipping a few steps, then you’re going to turn a nutritious food into something that will slowly poison you!

So the general advice is: when we’re looking at trying something new, look to other people’s experiences to see if it’s a good idea. We’re social creatures, after all - and it extends our resources enormously when we check in with others.

It’s tricky, though! Take broad beans (which some of you may know as fava beans): if you have a particular genetic condition, you can get something called “favism” after consuming the beans, which can lead to jaundice and even death. To other people, they’re delicious!

This highlights that what’s beneficial for many can still be problematic for a few due to unseen individual factors. So, when it comes to practices for the mind, like meditation, whose ‘universal’ recommendation should we trust?

If you’re trying to decide whether to take up meditation, whose advice should we take? Sometimes we look to successful people, or famous people. But just because a successful person meditates, that may not be what made them successful. George Harrison was in (arguably) the most sucessful music band of all time, and is a big fan of meditation - but he only started meditating after he was famous.

Maybe you’ve heard of a number of successful people who meditate, though, not just one? Well it could just be that they’re all looking at each other, and in an effort to maintain their edge or explore common trends among high-achievers, they adopt similar practices, and meditation is one of those.

Ultimately, there’s only one person that counts: yourself. There’s a famous passage in the Buddhist teachings, where the Buddha is addressing a group of townspeople who were confused by all the different advice they’re getting from different monks. They ask the Buddha how they could know which teachings were true. He said:

“Do not go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of scriptures, by logical conjecture, by inferential reasoning, by reasoned cogitation, by the acceptance of a view after pondering it, by the seeming competence of a speaker, or because you think, ‘The monk is our teacher.’”

Instead, he advised them to try it for themselves. This “knowing for yourselves” directly implies testing and experiencing the teachings. Meditation, as a central practice taught by the Buddha for developing insight, calming the mind, and understanding reality, falls squarely under this principle. He encouraged his followers to:

1. Practice the techniques: This includes various forms of meditation like mindfulness of breathing (Anapanasati) and insight meditation (Vipassana).
2. Observe the results: Pay attention to how these practices affect your mind, your understanding, and your suffering.
3. Verify the teachings: See if your own experience aligns with what the Buddha described regarding the nature of mind, suffering, and the path to liberation.

The Buddha’s path is often described as “ehipassiko,” an Pali adjective meaning “inviting one to come and see for oneself,” “to be experienced directly,” or “testable.” This quality underscores the empirical and experiential nature of his teachings, including meditation. He presented a path to be walked and verified, not a dogma to be blindly accepted. While skipping steps in cassava preparation has physical consequences, blindly following meditation advice without personal testing might lead to unfulfilled expectations or pursuing a path that isn’t truly yours. The wisest approach may involve respecting tradition, while courageously discovering the truth for yourself.