Here’s my model of how meditation works:

1. Nonreactivity reduces suffering.
2. You can gradually develop nonreactivity through practice.

This model is easy to understand, and it clarifies a lot of confusing philosophical stuff in other models.

For example, “non-self” is one of the Three Characteristics of experiential reality in Buddhism. What we call the “self” is just a pattern of sensations, including the sensations of intention, effort, attention, thinking, voluntary muscle movement, tension in the head and chest, etc. Those sensations are just like any other sensations, but we react to them more, and we call that increased reactivity "identification". In other words, by seeing non-self and ceasing to identify with sensations, we’re actually just decreasing reactivity.

Another example is “enlightenment”, or “levels of awakening”. In my model, you just gradually decrease reactivity, and your suffering is gradually reduced. There’s no need for any benchmarks of achievement. It’s just a continuous process of making your experiential life easier. Maybe at some point you reach a stable equilibrium of minimal unnecessary suffering, but you don’t really need a name for it.

My hope is that this model will let people get the benefits of meditation more easily, without having to navigate all the confusing and frustrating philosophical stuff.

I should say from the start that the goal is to find a balance of nonreactivity and engagement that works for you. Personally, I do a lot of fun and engaging stuff every day and I would encourage anyone interested in meditation to keep living an active and fulfilling life, including working on projects you find meaningful.

What I mean by “nonreactivity”

Nonreactivity is having less intense responses to things. It’s a property of your mind and nervous system.

Throughout life, we develop habitual reactivity to all sorts of things. For example, you might be reactive to interpersonal conflict, abandonment, loneliness, mortality, physical pain (meaning you have an unusually intense psychological response to pain), failure, status hierarchies, social interaction, money, rejection, intimacy, talent, physical attractiveness, intelligence, lust, gender, power, sex, emotional sincerity, the concept of hell, food, physical fitness, height, politics, your self-image, the feeling of missing out, family, etc.

But there are also more subtle forms of reactivity. For example, you might react to waking up in the morning by automatically restoring a pattern of muscular tension that you’ve been maintaining for years. You might react to mental activity by trying to silence it, rather than equanimously allowing it to do its thing. You might react to the natural discomforts in life by strenuously trying to transform your mind into one immune to negative valence, instead of developing a harmonious and permissive attitude towards them.

Not all reactions are unhelpful. It’s important to develop the ability to distinguish between helpful and unhelpful reactions, because that’s what allows you to reduce your suffering in a way that’s compatible with living an active and engaged life.

What I mean by “suffering”

I mean suffering in the ordinary sense of negative valence. Anything with a negative hedonic tone is suffering. Anything that feels unpleasant is suffering.

The important thing here is that, while we can reduce suffering through nonreactivity, we can’t eliminate it entirely. We’re still creatures with nervous systems and pain still hurts. But we can decrease the ways in which we’re unnecessarily adding to our suffering.

How to develop nonreactivity

Different things will work for different people, so I’ll describe three possible practices.

1: Inactivity in a secluded place

This is a practice that removes triggering stimuli so that your mind and nervous system can temporarily relax into a state of nonreactivity. Once you know how it feels, you can make little adjustments in daily life to decrease reactivity even while not meditating.

First, you isolate yourself from stimuli that trigger a reaction. Usually that means finding a quiet, secluded place where you can be inactive for a while. Then you find a comfortable position that won’t make you fall asleep (I like to sit with legs crossed and my back against the headboard of my bed, or on the floor with my back against a couch.) Then you don’t engage in any intentional activity for a while. Your mind and body will continue to do things on their own, like think, breathe, daydream, move around slightly, mentally narrate, notice uncomfortable sensations, etc. That’s all fine. The point is not to get rid of those automatic processes or sensations. The point is to take a break from voluntary, intentional activity.

Aside from the benefits I mentioned above, this practice also shows you that even when you’re not trying to do anything, intentions still arise on their own. You get little impulses to do things, and they appear just like little muscle twitches. Thoughts still arise on their own. Even when you’re not trying to think about anything in particular, strings of language still appear in your mind. This means you don’t have to react to every little thing that passes through your mind. You don’t have to try to stop the noise, because it’s automatic. The machine just operates on its own, and it’s a natural process like your heart beating. If you let it do its thing, then you’re in a state of harmony with your mind because you’re not tensing up and resisting the automatic process.

2: Resting in an emotionally neutral state

This practice gives you a sense of the emotional aspect of nonreactivity.

First, recognize that both positive and negative emotions are stimulating. They both involve sensations and feelings that grab your attention, and they both have noticeable effects that are different from your default state.

The most restful, comfortable state for the body is actually a neutral emotional state, where neither positive nor negative emotional tone is prominent. I don’t mean a mixed, confused state where you’re happy and sad at the same time. I mean a state where no emotional sensations are particularly attention-grabbing. The emotional system is at rest. It’s a deactivated state where the emotions are quiet and relatively still.

You don’t have to aim for some kind of total absence of emotional tone here. Just a low level of emotion is fine.

When you recognize that emotional neutrality is restful, it reduces the need to constantly chase positive emotions. You don’t need stimulation and pleasure all the time. You can just relax your emotional system if there’s no immediate need for it. Also, if your default is neutral, you’ll be less worn out by life because your nervous system will spend more time in a restful state.

When I’m in between activities, I’ll often remember that emotional neutrality is restful and relax whatever emotional posture I’ve been holding onto. It’s a bit like physical posture, where you straighten out your back and lift your head whenever you remember to do so. In the same way, when I’m not actively engaged in something, I’ll remember to let my nervous system relax back into its default state.

3: Observing sensations

The purpose of this practice is to give you some intuitive insights that decrease reactivity. By understanding how your experience works, you’ll feel less of a need to react to every sensation that arises.

You can start by watching the sensations in your body. There might be sensations of tension in your muscles, little discomforts here and there, textures on your skin, air currents, pressure in your head, the feeling of your tongue touching the inside of your mouth, the feeling of your toes touching each other, pressure around your eardrums, an urge to blink your eyes, soreness in your joints, a general feeling of the pull of gravity, or anything that jumps out at you.

Next you can move on to sights, sounds, smells, or tastes.

At some point, you can try noticing the subtle sensations involved in linguistic thinking, conceptual thinking, imagination, and memory. For example, if you remember the sound of somebody’s voice, you can almost hear a kind of ghost of an auditory sensation. You wouldn’t confuse it with an actual sound, but there are subtle sensations there.

Then you can notice that intention, effort, voluntary action, and the movement of attention are all made of subtle sensations. The feeling of “I am controlling this part of experience” is made of sensations.

Then you can notice that knowledge, understanding, and intuition are made of sensations. In fact, after a sensation arises, the conceptual representation of the sensation arises a little later in a different place. The sensation itself is experienced exactly where it is, but the conceptual representation appears somewhere else.

Eventually you can notice that everything you consciously experience is made of sensations. In the experiential world, that’s all there is. There’s nothing but sensations arising on their own.

Experientially, reactivity is just a relationship between different patterns of sensations. When one pattern arises, the other pattern arises a little later. As your mind and nervous system relax, the reactivity in the system that maintains that relationship diminishes. So when the first pattern arises, the second pattern arises with less intensity, and because of that there’s less suffering.

Potential risks

Unfortunately, if you sit and relax for a while every day, or investigate your phenomenal experience, there’s a chance that you’ll develop destabilizing physical and psychological symptoms. Some people end up in mental hospitals, or change their name, or quit their job, or break up with their romantic partner, or get depressed, or get weird bodily symptoms, etc.

I’m basing this warning off of reports from other people. Personally, I never experienced any of that. I only had two types of negative experiences:

1. Frustration due to confusing explanations
2. Disappointment at failing to meet an unrealistic ideal

But it would be unethical for me to recommend something without warning people about the potential risks.

If you want to minimize your risk, I recommend the following:

1. Don’t meditate for more than a few hours a day.
2. Get enough sleep.
3. Don’t do drugs.
4. Keep doing all the ordinary life stuff you usually do to stay grounded.
5. Interact with friends and family.

I personally follow all five of these recommendations. I think a moderate and wholesome approach is more effective than an extreme and disruptive approach. But there’s enough variation among people that there’s still some risk even if you take it easy and keep it light.