Introduction

There is a kind of human development that has gone largely unnoticed in the West. Even as mindfulness meditation makes its way into hospitals, schools, and outpatient treatment facilities, our culture doesn’t yet have an over-arching concept of how meditation is relevant to our lives.

Meditation is much more than stress reduction. Meditation changes your brain. Do it enough and it will change your life.

In this book, I hope to present a conceptual framework in which to place meditation and related contemplative practices, and to show how this particular branch of human development is as essential to a human life well-lived as psychological health, emotional maturity, or physical fitness. In fact, the various kinds of mental and physical fitness work together such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; one step forward on any of the lines of human development makes it easier to access any of the others.

Just as we can speak of physical fitness and mental fitness, we can identify a branch of human development that we might call contemplative fitness. Contemplative fitness has to do with the kind of growth that comes from meditation and related contemplative practices. Its ultimate manifestation is a kind of persistent well-being that is independent of external circumstances. At its essence, contemplative fitness is the art of being OK. And from the platform of being OK, the stage is set for the very best of humanity to emerge. When you are OK, an enormous amount of energy is freed up to find out what it means to be truly human. When you don’t have to work so hard to protect yourself, you have, perhaps for the first time, the luxury of considering the needs of others. It is from this stable place of equanimity and self-acceptance that we can learn to access levels of sensitivity, creativity, spontaneity, and empathy that we didn’t know existed. One aspect of contemplative fitness has to do with what has often been called spiritual awakening or enlightenment. This phenomenon is real, and it happens to real people in our own time; it happened to me, and the first part of this book describes that process. But rather than thinking of this awakening as a panacea, a magical wand to wave away our difficulties, we can take a more nuanced view, a more realistic and balanced understanding that takes into account what we now know about psychology, physics, and neurobiology. In order to embrace the benefits of contemplative fitness, we don’t have to believe that at some point, if we meditate enough, we will behave impeccably, glow in the dark, or suddenly have access to the 90% of our brain that we imagine is now lying dormant.

Contemplative fitness, as I teach it, does not require the adoption of any philosophical or religious beliefs. I will not make claims about the structure of the universe or the ultimate nature of reality. I don’t teach how to be right, smart, perfect, sanitized, or holy. I don’t teach super-powers or extra-sensory perception. I don’t teach religion, guru-worship, dogma, or doctrine. I don’t teach people to uncritically accept what I say. I simply teach practical, hands-on techniques that, when practiced diligently, can be utterly transformative to a human life. To the extent that I offer concepts and ideas, they are intended not as doctrine, but as conceptual frameworks within which to understand your own experience. The second part of this book, Theory, will help you orient yourself as you practice.

Contemplative fitness is spiritual enlightenment for the 21st century. And although no less valuable than the mythologized notions of the past, the modern version does not require us to suspend common sense. Rather, it requires us to do some work; progress comes as a result of effective training. The third part of the book, Method, will give you the tools to find this out for yourself.

The physical fitness revolution

When I was a boy growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, the concept of physical fitness, as we know it today, did not yet exist. There had always been sports and athletics, of course, but those pursuits were for a special minority; most of us were not athletes and did not consider exercise to be particularly relevant to our lives except in our capacity as spectators.

And yet, change was in the air. A few visionaries had taken it upon themselves to bring exercise to the people. And it was from these early efforts that the modern concept of physical fitness emerged and began to penetrate the consciousness of everyday folks. One early pioneer was Jack Lalanne, who would eventually come to be seen as the “godfather of fitness.” I remember Jack Lalanne well. He had his own television show, was impressively muscular, charmingly energetic, and always dressed in his trademark black or navy blue jumpsuit. And he always seemed to be doing jumping jacks. The popular image of physical fitness in the 60s was Jack Lalanne doing jumping jacks. At a time when there were only a handful of television stations to choose from, Jack Lalanne was impossible to miss, and he soon became a fixture in every living room in America. Before long, we were all doing jumping jacks in front of the TV.

We can look back now and chuckle at how unsophisticated we were compared to our current understanding of physical fitness. There has been an explosion of sophistication in both the theory and application of exercise science. It is now possible to train with great precision to achieve virtually any kind of physique, always taking into account your own natural strengths and limitations. Whether you want to be a ballet dancer or a power lifter, a tennis player or a marathoner, you can find a fitness trainer who can help you do it. Most importantly, everyday folks who have no intention of ever playing a competitive sport understand the value of physical fitness and often make it a priority in their lives. Physical fitness is real, the concept is well established, and the benefits are well accepted, not just for athletes, but for everyone. And all of this has happened within a single human lifetime.

We are ready for a parallel revolution in contemplative fitness. Years from now, we will look back and chuckle at how unsophisticated we were in our understanding of meditation and its benefits way back in the opening years of the 21st century. Even for those of us who accept that such a thing as spiritual awakening is possible, the field tends to be shrouded in religion, superstition, hero-worship, and unrealistic expectations. We look for inspiration to the Buddha, the Zen Patriarchs, Ramana Maharshi, or some saintly figure from our own time, rarely allowing ourselves to consider that in order for awakening to become real, we must make the transition from spectators to participants. The physical fitness revolution exploded when we stopped watching Jack Lalanne on TV and started doing jumping jacks of our own. The contemplative fitness revolution will begin when we stop looking to our spiritual heroes and start meditating. In this book, I will tell my own story first. It is the story of a depressed and addicted young man who found his way in the world through a single-minded obsession with meditation. Next, I will present a theory of contemplative development based on my formal Buddhist training as well as my thirty-plus years of dedicated practice and my twenty-plus years of teaching meditation and awakening. Finally, I will offer a detailed method that has been successful for dozens of ordinary people as I have guided them through their own process of discovery. My hope is that twenty years from now, contemplative fitness will be as much a part of mainstream culture as physical fitness is today. I believe that a great deal of good will come from such a revolution.