I have long flirted with the idea of meditation. The more I read about the brain and about meditation and meditative states, the more I believe that meditation can affect profound change in body and mind. And I love to read about meditating because it’s so much easier than actually doing it! But reading about meditation is often discouraging because authors say things like, “Close your eyes and clear your mind. Visualize breathing in love and compassion…” Screeching tires, smell of burning rubber – you lost me at “clear your mind.”
I had a hesitant conversation about this with my fellow teachers-in-training at a weekend yoga workshop last spring. We were talking about meditation and breathwork, which is a specific form of meditation emphasized in yogic practice. Me: “So when you’re focusing on your breath, how do you clean out some of the clutter?” Them: “You clear your mind.” Me, trying a slightly different angle: “But how do you do that? My mind is so full of words that clearing one thought just makes room for another which reminds me of the first word, and so on.” Them: Silence. Me, one last hurrah: “So when you focus on your breath, your mind stays there?” Them: “Yes.” Either they are blank freaks of nature, very advanced meditation practitioners, or liars. I simply cannot believe that I was the only person in that room dealing with a mind mess. (This is obviously an oversimplification. I’m sure if I had been braver and kept digging at this topic with my classmates, we would have discovered common ground. I do not truly believe they are blank freaks or liars, I promise.)
Over the summer, Chris and I went to an Intro to Meditation session at a center that practices vipassana meditation. Vipassana meditation uses the breath as a way to get past the breath, if that makes any sense. You start off “noticing” the breath, and then you just find that you stop noticing it and voila! you’re meditating! If this description sounds unsatisfactory, believe me, I agree. Here were the instructions from our instructor: “If thoughts arise, label them thoughts and let them go. Think, ‘Thought,’ and release.” (I envisioned a sort of humane, spiritual fishing expedition with thoughts caught like fish and set free.) After 10 minutes, we stopped to check in with each other. Chris reported, “I found myself thinking and labeled it ‘thought.’ Then I wanted to label that act of thinking ‘thought’ as another ‘thought,’ and so I was repeating ‘thought’ ‘thought’ ‘thought.’” He asked, “Is it like a mantra?” Instructor: “Oh. Well. Now, I’m not judging you, but that’s really not how it’s done.” Chris: “OK, but how?” Instructor: Silence.
This overactive mind is referred to in many traditions as “the monkey mind,” a grasping, hooting beast of a brain. Before I learned about monkey mind, I thought of my mind as a puppy – eager and full of energy, but still peeing on the carpet. “Sniff, sniff. That smells great! I wonder what it is? Hey! Who’s that? What are they doing? There’s my dad! I’d better go see – What? That smells great!...” Unfortunately, my first reaction to my puppy mind was training of the choke collar variety: yank and yelp. If my mind wandered once, zing!, “What is wrong with me? Focus on the exhale, dammit, the exhale!” If it wandered twice, ZING!, I was in tears: “I can’t do this. Why even try? What’s the point?” Third time, kick the dog and walk away. It’s no wonder I never progressed further than the yanking and yelping. All I learned was to avoid the stimulus.
What a relief – reading about monkey mind – to find I wasn’t crazy! Ancient yogis and Buddhist monks, far along in their meditation practices (much farther than me or my puzzled yoga classmates), knew exactly what I was going through. But still, after the initial relief of learning I was not alone with my monkey-puppy mind, I had trouble finding a satisfactory answer as to how best to restrain or re-train it. There is a very good reason for this: there is not a satisfactory answer out there, if by satisfactory you mean – as I do – clearly defined. There are no directions to Destination Mind-At-Rest. There is no map to tell you, “Turn right where your sadness dead-ends into depression and then keep going until you see the sun rising over your new thought patterns.” All of this reading and all of this putting-off-meditating-until-I-know-what-I’m-supposed-to-be-doing, and on comes the lightbulb: I have to stop thinking about this and just do it. Nothing can happen until then.
So here is my advice – not as an accomplished meditator or as someone who has lived in a cave and found the meaning of life, but as a novice, clumsy and often discouraged – on one way to begin a meditation practice.
- Find something – anything! – to help you focus your mind. Maybe the catch-and-release model works for you: think “thought” and release. Maybe you can focus on the sensation of breathing in and out. Maybe you can stare at a blank wall or piece of paper. Maybe a mantra would be helpful in replacing some of the mind chatter. Some practices believe you should just sit without using the “props” of mantra or breath to focus on. Again, I’m no expert, but in my brief experience, you’re more likely to stick with it if you’re not maddeningly frustrated the whole time. Ultimately, yes, you want to meditate “prop-free” and experience a quiet space without mantra or external focus, but whatever it takes to get you there is OK, in my oh-so-humble opinion.
- Be comfortable. You don’t have to sit in lotus, or even sit at all, to meditate. Ancient yogic texts advise that you should be comfortable enough that you can (someday!) forget about your body, but not so comfortable that you fall asleep. I sometimes practice lying down if the prospect of sitting up straight seems overwhelming. Or I’ll sit in a chair if I don’t want to creak down to the floor on a stiff day. Whether you’re sitting up or lying down, take care that your spine is straight and your head balanced atop your spine. Sitting, reclining, it doesn’t matter so much how you do it as that you do it.
- Do it, already. Tell yourself that you will sit for x minutes daily, and then sit for x minutes daily. If you miss a day, don’t throw in the towel or label yourself a failure, just come back the next day. Choose a small amount of time for starters. Believe me, 5 minutes seems an eternity when you’re used to always doing. So if it’s 5 minutes a day, great! If it’s 2 minutes, fantastic! Just pick something you know you can stick with for awhile. (21 days to a new habit, as Ashley swears.)
- Keep doing it!! This is the hard part. For the last month, I have committed to 10 minutes of meditation every day. I’ve refused to expect myself to clear my mind or label thoughts “thoughts” or transcend anything. I call this “My 10 Minutes,” as in, “Chris, I’m doing my 10 minutes, so don’t call me for a bit.” And I sit, or I lie down, whatever my body wants. Some days the 10 minutes fly by and I wish I had 10 more. More often, I find myself waiting for the 10 minutes to be over. That’s OK. My mind isn’t used to this rigorous practice of quiet, and it will take awhile to relax into a period of time when nothing is expected. This week I noticed that, even on the days when I’m waiting to be released from my “sit/stay,” I’m a little sad when the alarm goes off. “Good girl!,” I tell myself, "What a good puppy! Let’s do this again tomorrow!”
One last word of encouragement from the Bhagavad Gita: “On this path, effort never goes to waste and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear” (Ch.2, v.40). Whatever you have to give, give it. Whatever there is to invest, invest it. There is no failure, here.
