Meditation has become pretty popular lately and I believe rightly so.

However, I also believe it’s important to recognize that most meditation rides on the back of a very simple and unsophisticated intent. For example, the calmness meditation strives for nothing other than a vision of pacification and the smoothing out of of experience. Most so-called “insight” meditation that’s being discussed on the Buddhist forums is not any kind of actual insight, but instead rides on a relatively passive observation of changes in experience with the intent being simply to observe and recognize what’s happening. Plus there is a conclusion that you’re expected to reach before you even start: that all phenomena are impermanent. Obediently falling in line with some expected conclusion is not how one develops insight.

If you believe you “observe” your experience, you generally cannot also believe you are shaping your experience. Observation generally implies a passive, non-meddling kind of presence. Of course there can be exceptions to this, but I am talking about a general case as I see it.

So most meditation I tend to run across, including all the jhanas described in the Pali Buddhist literature, are nothing more than simple scales. They are rudimentary. Which isn’t to say they’re always easy.

Nobody I am aware of becomes a musician with the idea of becoming awesome at playing scales. Scales are used as an exercise to make your fingers more limber and stronger and to enhance the mind-finger pathway. However, if playing scales is all you do, you’re not a musician. Generally nobody goes to a concert to hear an expert rendition of the scales (some moron will prove me wrong, no doubt, just wait for it). Playing scales is not what anyone wants to actually be doing. It’s a means to an end.

Similarly meditation of a widely taught variety is exactly like playing scales. At best it’s a means to an end. At its worst it’s a trap that makes you believe you’re playing music whereas you’re just playing 4 dumb notes in succession, over and over, like a robot.

So I never use simple meditation with the idea that such meditation is enlightenment or the final goal in life or anything like that. I only view it as a rudimentary exercise that isn’t equally necessary for all people. Some people are naturally good at controlling their minds. Such people would waste their precious time were they to do simple meditation and I believe should consider instead doing something more creative, more imaginative, and more expressive with their minds. I’m not going to judge who is or isn’t such a person. You have to decide this for yourselves.

I will also say that you can begin playing some pretty decent and pretty enjoyable music long, long before you attain a complete mastery of the scales. So even if you intend to get better at the scales, you can also play some good music too.

I meditate sometimes, but I mostly concern myself with magick. I don’t want to be like a misguided “musician” who only keeps getting better and better and better at playing scales. I wasn’t born to do the mental equivalent of the scales in music. At the same time I can see how practicing scales can be of use. How about you?