“Meditation teaches you that you don’t necessarily have to follow the shitty suggestions offered by that little voice in your head.”---Dan Harris
What would we do without India? Who would answer the phone when we called for computer repairs, hotel reservations, television problems, international cricket results or those little snowglobes from the Taj Mahal? Where would all the new podiatrists come from? Who would man the convenience stores and operate those ramshackle roadside motels? How could we possibly have made it this far without Mahatma Gandhi, Ravi Shankar and Padma Lakshi? Who would have developed Darjeeling Tea, for crying out loud, or started up Tata Motors? Who would have invented Yoga? And even more important, who would have thought up that new international craze which is sweeping the Earth---Meditation?
Oh, I know what you’re going to say. Meditation has been around for centuries, Bill, it’s nothing new. Why the Beatles were doing it with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi back in 1967, enlightened hippies were practicing in Golden Gate Park even before that. What do you think those big mandala posters were for? Remember the big meditation invasion of the early seventies when the yogi-of-the-week came flouncing across the United States and thousands of devotees had their shoes stolen? It’s an institution, Bill, an idea whose time has come, and the world is better off for it.
Well, I’ve tried this meditation business and I don’t know. I was pretty good at thinking of nothing all by myself.
A Brief History Of Meditation
The earliest records of meditation practice date from approximately 1500 years BCE (Before Common Era) when it was an integral part of the earliest forms of the Vedic, or early Hindu, schools in India. In the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE, the Indian Buddhist traditions began to develop their own versions of meditation. Further west, early forms of meditation practice were developed by such notables as Philo of Alexandria, the Desert Fathers of the Middle East and Saint Augustine.
In modern times, the art of meditation has mainly been associated with Asian spiritual traditions such as Theravada, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. Western interest in Eastern religions and philosophies seems to have begun in earnest in the 19th century due to colonialism and improved means of transportation and communication. In those days, it was mainly the domain of scholars and missionaries.
Eastern philosophy caught the attention of Western “seekers” and artists as early as the late 19th century, but it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that meditation became popularized in the West. This period saw the arrival of meditation masters from the East who were invited to share their skills and knowledge with interested students. It also brought scoundrels and frauds like the famous “Baby-faced Bullshit Artist” Guru Marharaj Ji, who traveled to the United States (including Gainesville) at age 13, claiming that he could impart direct knowledge of God to his naive followers. The news media generally scoffed at his claims of divine status and he was criticized for a “lack of intellectual content” in his public discourses. This did not deter Ji’s legion of groupies, who faithfully attended his outdoor extravaganzas. Local agriculturalist Broward Hunter was one of those who left Ji’s Alachua County brouhaha without his sandals but nonetheless undiminished in bliss.
One of the most influential figures in the sphere of meditation today is Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who founded the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979. His program, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has been instrumental in bringing the benefits of meditation practice---without religious overtones---to the public attention and to scientific communities worldwide. Since its origins, MBSR has entered the public consciousness and meditation seems to be everywhere these days. Zinn famously claims, “Your thoughts are bubbles, waiting to be popped.” An examination of his ideas is a good place for any would-be meditator to begin.
“Bill, Are You Asleep?”
Siobhan Ellison likes new projects. She is a noted tamer of feral animals, an astounding number of which come knocking at her door. When she discovered that kale was a good thing, she began growing it in her little garden and now has enough of it to feed the entire population of Uttar Pradesh. Dissatisfied to merely attend lessons in town, she developed her own outdoor yoga theater, where lessons are available to random passersby at 4 p.m. each Tuesday. And now she’s discovered meditation, which she practices daily at twilight.
Not that any of this is a bad thing. Some wives have noisy quilting bees, others chug hard liquor and lust after drugstore-truck-driving men. Or, worse yet, shop at Tiffany’s. Most of Siobhan’s pursuits are positive, good for one’s health and wellbeing, boons to mankind. Trouble is, once they are her vital interests they will very soon become mine, like it or not. So I have now been introduced to meditation. The best thing I can say about it so far is that the meditator is allowed to sit down in a big puffy chair and close his eyes. Could be worse. After that, you are encouraged to think about nothing, which is a lot harder than you think. Tiny thoughts keep dripping in, like the one about the day Betsy Harper insisted I pull off on a side road in St. Augustine, or the time I delivered a waterbed to a lonely coed. The meditation instructor, speaking from somewhere in the dark in hallowed tones, assures me this is all quite normal and I will not get an “F” on the test. I will merely be required to drop the thought as quickly as possible and return to “GO” without collecting my $200. One of the better things about meditation is that being the poor duffer you are, you are allowed endless mulligans. So I return to contemplate my breathing again and again, hoping that sooner or later Froggie will plunk his Magic Twanger and I will finally receive enlightenment and a path to future glory. It is comforting at these times to remember the words of the great Thomas Edison, who assured us that “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” I’ll be there as soon as I can, Tom, but don’t hold the bus.
What’s It All About, Tammy?
Senior citizens, on the whole, are not too excited about meditation. Old folks like things they can see, hear, touch. In a casual poll of my fellow gym members, not one of them practiced mindfulness. I asked them what they thought meditation was and got a fairly universal answer: “You sit down, close your eyes and wait for something to happen. Nothing ever does. Big waste of time.” They would rather watch David Letterman drop watermelons from a 20-story building, which may also be a big waste of time but is at least very funny.
Amateurs like me eventually figure out that the first purpose of meditation is to get a grip on your mind, which is a very busy place. Envision a clown car, which pulls up and disgorges 25 red-nosed troublemakers who rush off in every direction causing chaos. That’s what’s going on in your mind, a disorganized circus of contending thoughts vying for consideration, arriving with machine-gun-like celerity all the live-long day. Some of these thoughts are not too productive but may possess powers of seduction when not carefully assayed. That’s why some people take up curling or try to rob the neighborhood liquor store. Meditation gives us the means to rein in these unruly critters, to show the voices in our head that there’s a new sheriff in town. As a new thought arrives, we examine it briefly, put it aside and wait for the next one. Thoughts must take a number, like visitors at the Social Security office, and wait their turns.
The idea is that eventually all this meditation will reduce stress, control anxiety, enhance self-awareness and promote emotional health. Mindfulness can often lengthen attention span and in some cases reduce age-related memory loss. In 2011, a Harvard research group found that mindfulness meditation can actually change the structure of the brain; a mere eight weeks of MBSR was found to increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory. A 2015 UCLA study found that long-term meditators had better-preserved brains than non-meditators as they aged. Participants who’d been meditating for an average of 20 years had more grey matter volume throughout the brain. And almost none of them made fools of themselves on Karaoke Night.
 |
| The Dalai Lama, adapting to change. |
He Said, She Said
“Meditation is a long journey, not a single insight or even several insights. It gets more and more profound as the days, months and years pass. Keep reading, thinking and meditating.” (the Dalai Lama)
“The purpose of meditation is to make our mind calm and peaceful. If our mind is peaceful, we will be free from worries and mental discomfort, and so we will experience true happiness. But if our mind is not peaceful, we will find it very difficult to be happy, even if we are living in the very best of conditions.” (Kelsang Gyatso)
“Meditation is to dive all the way within, beyond thought, to the source of thought and pure consciousness. It enlarges the container every time you transcend. When you come out, you come out refreshed, filled with energy and enthusiasm for life.” (David Lynch)
“Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep, to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace is wrong.” Thich Nhat Hanh
“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and love are in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” T. S. Eliot
“Touch your inner space, which is nothingness, as silent and empty as the sky. Once you settle down in your inner sky, you have come home, and a great maturity arises in your actions, in your behavior. Then, whatever you do has grace in it. Then, whatever you do is a poetry in itself. You live poetry; your walking becomes dancing, your silence becomes music.” (Osho)
“Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.” (Pema Chodron)
“At the end of the day, I can end up just totally wacky, because I’ve made mountains out of molehills. With meditation, I can keep them molehills.” (Ringo Starr)
“Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening. Stories get in the way of direct experience.” Sharon Salzberg
“Clarity is part of the mind from the beginning, a natural awareness. Just acknowledge it, simply notice that you’re aware. At any given moment, you can choose to follow the chain of thoughts, emotions, and sensations that reinforce a perception of yourself as vulnerable and limited or to remember that your true nature is pure, unconditioned and incapable of being harmed.” (Mingyur Rinpoche)
“Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.” (Alan Watts)
“Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are.” (Pema Chodron)
“Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there---buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day.” (Deepak Chopra)
“Mere physical sitting is not enough. You have to sit carefully and attentively. Let your body and breathing sit. Let your mind and emotions sit. Let your blood circulation sit. Let everything sit. Then your sitting becomes indestructible, immovable.” (Maezumi Roshi)
“In the beginning, you will fall into the gaps in between thoughts. After practicing for years, you become the gap.” (J. Kleykamp)
“Meditation is a deliberate attempt to pierce into the higher states of consciousness and finally go beyond it. The art of meditation is the art of shifting the focus of attention to ever subtler levels left behind. Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind has built around you. Believe me, you will not regret it.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Not only that, but it’s comfortable, inexpensive and you don’t even have to leave the house.” Bill Killeen
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
