There Were Flowers Along the Walk Here...

As an anthropologist I was trained to be most attentive to what people said after you

An old mill in Lebanon, Virginia

closed your notebook or turned off your recorder and stood up to leave. It was then that people often relaxed, dropped into themselves, or said what was most important of all. It makes sense. By then, it’s not anything; just an informal time—here’s your hat.  

I think the same thing happens at the end of meditation. When I meditate, I am still scarred from all the years that I was told meditation was a discipline. Gently “bring your mind back…” What’s gentle about it? Not me! “Stupid mind. Just stay put!” I still say unkindly to myself.  “Pay attention to the breath” is something I don’t do except when I’m out of it. Count it? How can I calm down when I am having to check what number I’m on? In breath or out breath? Both? What if I get so I can be counting my breaths like a champ and still be planning dinner?

You can see by my snarky tone that I believe discipline in meditation turns me against myself.  It keeps me in my mind rather than letting it drop: “Am I doing it right? Why do I always waltz off? This is a useless meditation session because my mind is all over the map, dammit!” and so on.

What this focus on discipline has prevented me from seeing is that as soon as my mind has recognized I have wandered, it is already back, and I needn’t fault it or drag it back to  anything. I’ve also been able to see that wandering off is where my mind is going, and if I am supposed to “watch my mind,” then I need to watch it go off, and follow it, as well. In fact, any sort of instruction to do anything differently than my mind wants to do can just trap me more. When I trust my mind to meditate, and let it just wander about as it wishes, it does better, I think. This is partly because when I am studying (why else did all those meditators write all those books?), I try to give my mind some ideas, and then to let those play out when I am still. It’s like reading about something confusing and then when you stop and do other things your mind suddenly makes sense of it without your help, really.    When I can get the body calmed down, which is also easier when I am not forcing it to stay in painful positions, and I just let matters bebop around, things somehow become clear and open without my pushing on them.

If you don’t know what you are likely to sense, you won’t know when you sense it. I know that one can also argue that this can just get you stuck in ideas and never let you experience what’s “really” there, or you can go off and just daydream, but I guess that’s why Buddhism is called the “Middle Way.” Meditation is not just about sitting down and shutting up; it’s about what happens when you do that. And without a clue of the latter, the former is just discipline and failure, or it is for me.

Now back to the anthropologist just leaving the house of a very nice person who has been explaining her family tree and what the land around here used to look like. Upon opening the door, she suddenly offers some touching memories of how flowers lined the walk there—her mother planted them every summer…and across the hill there were sheep…she drops into a kind and soft reverie as I stand there quietly and try to absorb in my imagination what she is describing. It is a lovely moment for us both. The tenor of the visit can change entirely, and now is when I might be invited back. And I will want to go back.

This is how it can happen in meditation. When you’re done with the formal meditation, when you move a bit on your cushion or in your chair and stretch out and just “come back,” as some people say, you can suddenly feel a quiet. Then, just stop there. Don’t go any farther. I love that quiet time of not doing meditation, and not doing anything else. It’s the spot where the loud, clanging train of my thoughts hasn’t quite roared into the station yet; my body has relaxed; I’m a bit aware of my surroundings but not fully, and it is all soothing. To me, just then I feel like I am finally doing what I was supposed to be doing all through the meditation; I’m getting close to the point of it all, the stillness, as the person telling me about the flowers on the walk was getting to the more intimate truth of her story once we had stopped trying to get there.

Sadly, instead of being able to stay in that spot, it usually happens in formal meditation that when the bell rings, people quickly stand and walk or chant, or stand and chant, or walk and chant, or walk and chant and stand, or something else that collapses that moment. It’s a form of whiplash. But that’s what we do everywhere any time we switch from one activity to another, so it’s habit.

Get up, shower, get out the door. Stay awake, go to sleep. Starve at work, go home and devour dinner. Get sick, be fine. A friend once said to me that we had lost the entire concept of convalescence. Now we must be reminded by our cell phones to begin a “wind-down” period before we try to sleep. “Rest and digest,”a little rhyme to get us to do what should be natural. What if we slowed down and just took a minute or two or three or four between each thing we do? I can tell you this; it is the best part of meditation.