I’ll start by telling my story and you can decide whether you have had a similar experience.
I love reading and I am committed to meditation. I have a large library of books at home and those include many books on Buddhism and Buddhist meditation practices. I have books by Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joseph Goldstein, Sogyal Rinpoche, Culadasa, Stephen Batchelor, Osho and some other authors.
After deciding some time back that Vipassana (as taught by SN Goenka) was not suited for me I decided to meditate on my own without a meditation master or instructor. There are many books that give instructions on how to meditate and I thought that by reading them all I could make progress and meditate in a fruitful way. But my experience – from taking one instruction from one book and another from a different book – was that I only got confused and frustrated and did not make progress.
Progress in meditation requires that we stick to a given method and give it time to produce results. I used to follow one meditation practice, stick with it for some time and (as almost always happens) get discouraged that I was not making progress. I then used to take a concept from another book that I had read and try to apply it to my practice. As a result, I only ended up confusing myself and did not make progress.
What I should have done was to follow one method completely and not try to mix it up with teachings from other traditions. Be patient and give your practice time to mature and produce results. And that is what I am doing now.
Read books by other meditation masters by all means but read them for inspiration and not instruction. It is necessary to get inspired and stay inspired and reading can help you with that. But once you have decided on a particular method stick with it and with only it.
Another point I would like to make in this article is one that I got from reading the book – Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. The book is based on the latest research on how to learn and master a new skill. Quoting from the book –
Peak shows that success simply requires the right kind of practice and offers essential advice on setting goals, receiving guidance and motivating ourselves.
I highly recommend that you buy and read the book. Here is a link describing the main takeaways of the book.
https://www.nateliason.com/notes/peak-anders-ericsson-robert-pool
The whole book is excellent but what I found particularly useful was the concept of mental representations. You need to have as clear an idea as possible of what stage you have reached and what you need to do in order to make progress. If you have a competent meditation instructor, he should be able to help you describe and explain what stage you have reached and give you clear and definite instructions on how to make progress tailored to your specific needs.
It is like visiting a doctor when you are ill and getting from him a prescription that is uniquely tailored to you. Ideally that is what your instructor should be able to do for you and that is one of the main reasons why following an authentic meditation master is important.
I myself am not doing so but I am following the teachings of Culadasa. His book – The Mind Illuminated – gives clear descriptions (mental representations) of what you can expect to experience and what steps you should take in order to make progress. I am finding the book an adequate substitute to an instructor.
Find this handy. Buy me a coffee