The practice of meditation, just like every other activity, can lend itself to dualistic thinking. After practicing for some time we may start to imagine that our life is divided between the ‘spiritual time’ that we spend sitting still in meditation and the ‘mundane time’ during which we accomplish the daily business of living.

This kind of thinking is misguided. Not only does it encourage us to value some moments over others, this kind of thinking suggests that a ‘spiritual’ quality like attentiveness is only available during meditation. This is incorrect. Attentiveness and other ‘spiritual’ qualities can permeate our lives.

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Yesterday about 20 students and I gathered in the chapel for a Paideia class: Mindfulness Meditation for Beginners. It was so wonderful to see so many and to spend time together! I had expected maybe five people to show up, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the room had been empty, so seeing 20 faces and listening to their questions and comments was a real treat.

Meditation, it must be said, is not a complicated skill, and it doesn’t require expert knowledge, so there wasn’t much for me to teach. But, like everything else one does, we start doing it, and then our minds get involved, and before we know it, we question whether we are doing it right or not. So, for anyone who missed our class, or who would like a quick review, here are some of the key points that were touched on:

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The nice people at Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center (Facebook) in Mountain View, California have made a short video about ‘zazen’ (literally, ‘seated meditation’) and placed it on YouTube. You can enjoy these 9 minutes of peaceful tranquility here.

Note: facing a blank wall during zazen is a very common practice, but some zen groups sit in other patterns.

Most of us come to meditation hoping that it will change our lives. In some cases, we’ve heard about some great contemplative and thought to ourselves, “I’d like to be like that: wise and compassionate.” Others, driven by unhappiness, hope that meditation will relieve them of stress, anxiety, anger, or what you will.

In fact, anyone who has stuck with meditation will say that it has changed their life, but they will usually admit that the changes didn’t appear on any predictable schedule, nor did they arrive in any predictable pattern. Here’s a recent story on the benefits of meditation reported in the Bloomberg Businessweek (“Harvard Yoga Scientists Find Proof of Meditation Benefit”, Nov 23, 2013).

Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years, across many cultures, and in every locale. It is only natural then that the principles that have defined meditation have varied with the time and place. Even with a narrowly defined tradition like Japanese zen meditation, large variations in practice have arisen ranging from “just sitting” to focused attention on mental themes (“koans”).

We don’t stipulate a particular meditation practice at Reed. Rather, we simply “sit as quietly as we can,” a description that encompasses stillness in the body and a quiet presence. The main idea here is that a room that is still and quiet is easier for all to share.

And yet we shouldn’t overlook the fact that simply trying to “sit as quietly as we can” creates opportunities for deep exploration. By establishing a preference for the still and quiet, we guarantee that we will come face-to-face with our desire to move, to be busy, to talk and reach out. These are deep-seated desires and we usually respond to them without thinking. However, by sitting as quietly as we can, we can start to examine these desires without having to act on them. By noticing them each time they arise, we can ask, “are these desires real, enduring, or just another mental projection that, given enough time, burns itself out?”

“Bring your awareness to your breath. Do not control your breath. Let it happen by itself. If you drift off into thought, bring your awareness back to your breath.”

Instructions like these are routinely offered to beginning meditators and they certainly seem innocent enough. But, oh, the unintended consequences …

Sit. Remember instruction, “place my awareness on my breath.” Breathe in. Ah, there it is! Breathe out. Found it again!

Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out.

Wait, I am ‘controlling’ my breath. I am making it happen. I’ve got to stop that. Oh no! I’m thinking. I’ve lost my breath. What a screwup I am. I’ve got to do better…

And so it goes for 10 or 30 minutes. A simple thing like breathing, something that can’t be done right or wrong (ask any baby), becomes the target of one judgment after another.

Is there any way to relax the judging mind when it comes to breath awareness? Must judging be a part of meditation? Is it possible to re-imagine the instructions so that judging plays a less intrusive role?

One way to reduce the number of judgments we make might be to say we don’t care how we breathe. How we breathe is something that doesn’t need to be judged. The original instructions said, “do not control the breath,” but we can take a different point of view and say that breathing can’t be done incorrectly. Sometimes it may feel like a little intent precedes the breath. Or it may feel like the breath happened by itself. Both are okay.

But what about my inevitable thoughts about the breath? Won’t I be thinking, “that’s intentional” or “that’s natural“? Probably I will. So let’s also try to find more neutral words than controlling, intentional, and natural. (Such words might also be useful for other types of experience where we begin to notice, and then judge, our efforts.)

If I find myself thinking about my breath and it feels like “I” somehow started the breath, I might say, “leading.” On the other hand, if my thoughts seem to arise after the physical experience, I might say “following.” Of course, I may not always think about the breath so I don’t have to seek these words out. They are just there for those times when I find myself connecting thoughts and experiences.

Leading. Following. Simple reminders that thoughts can be part of experience and not judgments of thoughts.

So, a revised set of instructions:

“Become aware of your breath. When you find yourself thinking about your breath, notice if your awareness is leading or following your breath. When your awareness leaves your breath, look for the breath again.”

“Spiritual quests are serious business.”

That, my friends, is just another thought. If we can’t laugh at our meditation efforts, then we are, in effect, taking the position that a genuine look at life requires us to cut ourselves off from life, at least the parts that contain laughter and ridicule.

Can this possibly be true? Life is laughter. Life is serious. And life is sublimely ridiculous.

See the full panel at Get Fuzzy (Nov 26, 2013) on GoComics.

Robin sent this comment, “Over the weekend I rediscovered a relaxation/meditation app on my phone and did a 10-minute session guided by the voice (with choice of nature sounds in the background!). It was pretty basic, but one turn of phrase that caught me was ‘Let go of any trying, simply be.'”

Beautiful.

(FYI Robin tells me that the app is called ‘Simply Being’ and is available on iTunes)

Tricycle magazine sends me a daily email. Today’s message contained this wonderful suggestion,

“One specific method for practicing mindfulness of body sensations is to focus your attention on sounds. Sounds, like everything else, arise and pass away. Just by listening, you can experience the insight of impermanence…”

The author of these words was Sylvia Boorstein, a longtime meditation teacher/author in the Bay area. Her instructions for being attentive to sounds, which first appeared in Tricycle, Fall 1999, go like this,

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