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I’ve been struggling to establish some kind of regular meditation practice since my visit to Throssel Hole Abbey back in November. Since I’ve been managing some sort of regularity over the last six weeks, I thought that it might be interesting to have a look at exactly what it is I’m doing, what I hope to get out of it and what I actually am getting out of it.
First, the theory – and by theory, I don’t mean a lecture on Buddhist theology (kind of a contradiction in terms, anyway) and Soto Zen or detailed instructions on how to meditate (you’ll have to chase those down from someone at least faintly qualified). By theory, I mean the approximate goal of what I’m doing, right or wrong.
Quite simply, I’m trying to sit still for ten to twenty minutes with a quiet mind. The goal beyond that is to carry that still (or “original”) mind into everything else I’m doing. And it’s much trickier than anything else I’ve ever tried. Not in a brain-hammering, sweating-brow, purple-veined sort of way but in a catching-a-tiny-fly sort of way. Try and catch a really, really small fly. Every time you close your hand, the actual air you displace puffs the fly out of reach again. Close your hand too softly, though, and the fly can simply buzz (or whine) off before you get anywhere near to capturing it. The basis is the serene reflection tradition established by Master Dogen and the method is relatively unchanged in its approach from eight centuries back (link to Stanford’s Soto Zen Text Project). “We just sit,” as one monk said to me.
I tried to describe this to my my boss.
“Well, I sit, or rather, I kneel on a little meditation stool on my nice kapok filled meditation mat and wonder why the hard drive on the digital video recorder is humming so loudly. Then I remember that I shouldn’t be thinking about anything and try and return to the present, just what I’m experiencing in the current moment. I wonder how monks manage to keep this up for hours on end. Oops – I did it again! Return. Must bump my first meeting on ten minutes so I can get that…Return! Go away cat! Stop staring at me! Oh, is that twenty minutes already…?”
So what do I get out of this and why do I persist?
On one level, just the act of obliging someone as all over the place and mentally hyper-active as myself to sit still for a bit provides a number of benefits. I start the day (I generally sit at about 6:15 am to try and beat dudelet’s ever-earlier wake-up time) feeling more grounded somehow and it’s amazing how I can deal with crises or the unexpected at work just that little bit more calmly. I’m also more patient with dudelet which is very much its own reward (and dealing with a three year is the most-in-the-moment thing I know of).
The other aspect is the sense of working towards some kind of renewed or transformed perspective on life and by this I mean something explicitly spiritual and requiring a certain amount of commitment to a given pattern of ethical behavior. But given that we’re talking about six weeks of rather minimal experiential work on the back of twenty years of reading, dithering and fruitlessly thinking about trying this, I’m really not able to speculate about where that might be going. (So you might want to spend some time with Moving Mountains, the blog of a senior monk at Throssel.)
I’ll settle for sitting for my twenty minutes, most mornings of the week, trying to catch that fly and seeing where the act of trying takes me.
Filed under: personal | Tagged: meditation, Zen
I tried that after a course I went to last year – they called it “mindful meditation” and it probably wasn’t exactly the same, but similar – I lasted about two weeks. But I did actually feel different! My difficulty was finding a time that I could guarantee that I would (a) not be interrupted and (b) not fall asleep.
But I really think I should try it again. I’m feeling overstressed.
Well, it took (as I mentioned) a long time to get around to it with any degree of systemisation. In the end, it was exactly that – a sense of feeling utterly overstretched that drove me to set my alarm, struggle out of bed when dudelet was fairly certain to be asleep for another 20 minutes and try. It helps. Mindful meditation would definitely spring from the same source.
I applaud your dedication! Happy sitting!
Elizabeth Gilbert writes with great wit and honesty about her meditation practice while in India. (Eat, Pray, Love is the book.)
I have tried meditation but I am not committed enough to get past the performance anxiety it can cause me, at least at the workshops I’ve attended. I have used the techniques I’ve learned to handle stress, but it hasn’t been a spiritual path for me.
Is it terribly unhip to say that I think I get the same benefits by praying in a language I don’t really understand?
Not that I’ve even been managing that much nowadays. Recently I’ve taken a couple of stabs at davenning again (yiddish for prayer), and I was almost surprised that I still feel that familiar stirring and lightening. You’re so right that in order to have it ground me and calm me, I need to find a place in the rhythm of my life for it, actually re-establish a prayer practice.
Yogamum – thank you!
Sheila – commitment? It’s taken me 20 years to commit to twenty minutes most days of the week…And I think its utterly hip to get the benefits that work for you through prayer of any kind. As for the language issue – you think all those Western Tibetan buddhists actually understand a word of Tibetan? (OOPS SERIOUSLY unBuddhist thought there…)
Sorry – contemplating Monday and shuddering!!
I applaud you! Funny how sitting still and not thinking is so very, very hard. And you’re taking the extra step of getting up early to do it: extra points for exertion of will while you could be sleeping!
The few times I’ve tried meditation, I find myself becoming aware that I’m thinking of something when I should not be, then I’m aware of the thought itself that I’m aware that I’m thinking, and so on. When will it ever stop!
Any practice requires consistency – I am impressed that you’ve made time for this. I am not good at making time for this kind of thing, even when I can see the value to other parts of my life.
I am glad to read that others have the same difficulties as I have. I have started meditation six month ago. I practise at least four times a week for about 20 to 25 minutes. Sometimes I just sit without having any results except dreaming a daydream. But I think that is part of the “game”. I still can’t find those calmness as I expected. But I feel everyday that I’m getting more relaxed. Sometimes I think that’s all about – to know better ourselves.
You know, I’m going to stop wriggling, blush slightly, say thank you very much and accept all these testaments to my willpower (from people who’ve never experienced the unpleasant sight of me faced with a plate of plain chocolate digestives) with good grace and no further caveats or dubiously sincere protestations to the contrary. Apart from the one about the biscuits I sneaked in.
More seriously, the real motivation is that it’s genuinely necessary for my well-being at the moment. Nothing like that to give one a sense of urgency…
Who would have ever thought it so hard to do nothing? I would imagine everyone’s mind could use a rest…
good god, 10 minutes? i sometimes have problems making it through a five-minute savasana without my mind blowing into pieces from the silence.
well, ok, it’s really not that bad anymore. but still – 10 – 20 minutes? WOW. you may hve inspired me to try five.
Good for you. I do yoga everyday, and I use shavasana at the end for my daily meditation. And, truly the benefits are nothing short of miraculous. It does change your whole perspective, and yet, it is a very subtle change. Problems that you are searching for solutions to, do not appear, the problems shift within — so that you are no longer looking for a solution. But, there are days, when I’m sure I’m not doing it right, and I am not getting anything out of it. And then, later, I will be inspired, out of now where, and I know it’s the result of that meditation. And, sometimes, I fall asleep right in the middle of it.
So, good for you for doing this at such a trying time in your life right now. Keep us posted on your progression.
Well done, keep on going.
Thank you! Though it remains a kind of who-gets-up-earliest competition between me and our darling toddler…
I’ve been practicing for a couple of years, and I don’t think that the majority of the increased peace/reduced stress occurs while sitting, it occurs in daily life after sitting. The time sitting shows you how you are, and if you are very stressed and agitated, you will notice that. But taking the time to know that about yourself, you will be a tad more purposeful in daily life, and a tad more likely to notice all the interesting moments during the day.
Hi Chris – that would definitely align with my experience so far. On days I manage to sit I seem to have that little more of a reservoir of something that (at worst) keeps me a little better behaved.