Resource

Deconstructive meditation

Deconstructive meditation looks closely at how an ordinary moment is put together. Instead of calming the mind, you notice the parts. A sound and its ending. A touch and the gap after it. A thing and its name.

Six ways to look closely at one moment. One moment, at the centre, with six circles around it, each overlapping its neighbours: what ends, After the Sound. Faster than words, Between the Pulses. Names off, names back, Unlabelled. The half-second after, After the Strike. Let go, come back, Let Go, Come Back. Who is looking? Who Is Watching? Same moment. Different ways in. Settle. Look closely. Come back.

The idea is old. Many traditions found that experience feels less solid when it’s looked at closely. A modern group of teachers and researchers now talks about these practices plainly, as experiments anyone can try.

The practices

Each practice below has a meditation on this site. Four of them began as experiments we made for ourselves.

Practice	What you do	Try it
Noticing what ends	Notice a sound, a feeling or a thought as it finishes, and stay with what’s left	After the Sound
Noting, then the gaps	Note what changes at one point of touch, faster than words, then look between the touches	Between the Pulses
Taking the names off	See, hear and feel without naming, then put the names back on purpose	Unlabelled
The half-second after	After a sudden sound, watch the first thought form	After the Strike
Softening and coming back	Let go on a bell, come back on a gong, then hold both	Let Go, Come Back
Looking for the looker	Turn toward whoever is noticing	Who Is Watching?

All of it in one meditation

After the Sound brings most of these practices together in one sitting, in the order they’re often taught. Each part is one step:

Settling. Attention comes to rest in the room.
Noticing what ends. You notice sounds as they end, then the body’s small endings, then thoughts.
The look back. Once, you turn to look at what is noticing.
The noticing thins. You let even the noticing go, and rest in what’s left.
The names come back. The words for things return one at a time, and you come back to the room.

The last step matters as much as the others. Coming back on purpose is part of the practice.

The fast noting isn’t in it. Between the Pulses has that.

Where these practices come from

Noticing endings. Shinzen Young calls this practice Just Note Gone. When something disappears, you note it, with the word gone if you like. He has written that if he could teach only one technique, it would be this one. You don’t hunt for the exact instant. You notice an ending whenever one is clear.

Fast noting. In the Burmese tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw, meditators label each experience as it happens. Daniel Ingram describes speeding this up until labels can’t keep pace, and attention carries on without words. Bhikkhu Anālayo teaches that the labels are a help you can set down.

Dropping the names. You hear a sound before you call it a car. Michael Taft’s Deconstructing Yourself teaches ways to notice the raw sound, sight or touch under the label, and where it’s heard.

The startle. In Tibetan Dzogchen, a teacher may shout a sudden phat! to cut through thinking. The Vijñāna Bhairava, an old Indian text, names a sudden shock among its doorways to awareness. Michael Singer describes the moment a deer is startled, before it decides what to do.

Looking back. Turning attention around to look for the one looking is very old. It runs through Ramana Maharshi’s question Who am I? and Singer’s Who is looking? There’s more in Self-inquiry meditation.

What research shows so far

Research on advanced meditation is real, interesting and early. Most studies are small, and many describe one experienced meditator. Here are a few, without the hype that often surrounds them.

Absorption in the scanner. Matthew Sacchet’s lab at Harvard scanned one meditator with over 25 years of practice in a 7-tesla MRI, through 27 sessions of deep absorption (jhāna). Brain activity tracked what he reported, such as joy, ease and a looser sense of self. The authors call it exploratory, and they’re now scanning more people.
Moments when experience stops. Ruben Laukkonen and colleagues study cessations, moments when a meditator reports that experience briefly stops. Their brain recordings come mainly from one meditator with thousands of hours of practice.
Ultrasound and meditation. Shinzen Young and Jay Sanguinetti founded a lab at the University of Arizona. It tests whether gentle focused ultrasound can help meditation along. The university describes the work as early.
The brain as a prediction machine. A popular idea says the brain predicts what it will sense, and that meditation loosens those predictions. It’s a promising theory. Its own authors say it still needs testing.

Claims that these practices “switch off” parts of the brain, or “collapse” the self, go further than the studies do.

Going gently

Most people find these practices interesting and settling. Some find them unsettling, and it helps to know that’s possible.

Willoughby Britton’s team at Brown University interviewed 96 people after an eight-week mindfulness course. Most reported at least one side effect. Most were brief, and many people who had them still improved. A small number had effects that lasted more than a month. The authors note similar rates for other psychological treatments.

A few simple habits help:

Keep sessions short at first, and come back to the room at the end.
If you feel unreal, frightened or very wound up, stop. Open your eyes, name what you see, and feel your feet.
Go back to something plain, like mindful listening or the breath.
If difficult experiences keep coming, or you have a history of trauma, dissociation or panic, talk with a mental health professional or an experienced teacher.

In these meditations

After the Sound notices each thing as it ends, then looks back, rests and comes back: most of the practices in one.
Between the Pulses follows a pulse of clicks past words, then looks into the gaps.
Unlabelled takes the names off and puts them back.
After the Strike has four sudden, loud sounds. Read its notes before you listen.
Let Go, Come Back moves between softening and coming back, for after work.
Who Is Watching? asks the voice in your head four questions.
All of Awareness, in one playlist.