This reflection grew out of a conversation with a practice friend. She was struck by the distinction Ken makes between the methods and results of practice, and she wondered whether confusing the two might be strengthening self-absorption. The question felt precise and unsettling, and it held up a mirror I couldn’t easily look away from.
In this passage from a class on the Eightfold Path, Ken talks about mistaking effects for method. This confusion happens easily and often goes unnoticed. Experiences such as relaxation, clarity, or compassion are taken as things to produce, rather than as effects that arise when attention is brought to what is actually happening. Practice quietly turns into self-monitoring: Am I relaxed yet? Am I compassionate yet? Am I doing this right?
Ken’s example makes the mistake unmistakable. Telling someone to relax doesn’t relax them; it tightens them. Relaxation is an effect, not a method. The method is what we do to cultivate attention. When that distinction blurs, effort goes into trying to reproduce experiences instead of meeting experience.
This is where self-absorption can strengthen itself without being noticed. Trying to generate compassionate effects keeps “me” at the centre of the frame—how I’m doing, how I’m coming across, whether I’m getting it right. Being present with pain—my own or someone else’s—removes that reference point. There’s no control there, no performance, just attention and relationship. That’s why it’s unsettling, and why it matters.
From Eightfold Path 1 and Purpose, Methods, Effects, and Results in Meditation
Ken: I came to the conclusion, and I learned this from a number of different sources, that what is presented as the eightfold path, what constitutes right view, what constitutes right intention, are descriptions of the results when you really practice them. They’re what you evolve to or what you end up at.
And one of the problems in practice that I’ve encountered over and over again in teaching is that people try to use the results as the method of practice. Just to give you a very simple example of that, which several of you have heard me talk about before. If you say to somebody, “Relax,” what’s the first thing they do? [Laughter] They tense up. Because relaxation is the result of a certain effort. If, on the other hand, you say to somebody, “Take a deep breath; [breathes in deeply] now let it out slowly, [breathes out slowly] and do that again." And you do it once more for good luck. How do you feel? More relaxed.
And many, many of the instructions for meditation, or what are presented as instructions for meditation and instructions for practice, are actually descriptions of the results. And yet we tend to interpret them as prescriptions for action. And that just gets us into a big mess.