Keeping It Simple!! Meditation!

bertarajayogini
2 days ago
5 min read

We have a peculiar habit of waiting until the house is on fire before we go looking for water. Meditation can be like that. We hear about its benefits and tuck the idea away somewhere for later. Later, when we have more time. Later, when the children are grown or the work settles down or the house is quiet. Later, when life becomes more cooperative.

And then something happens.

We get sick. Someone we love gets sick. A relationship falls apart. A diagnosis arrives. Someone dies. Money becomes uncertain. Fear takes up residence in the chest and refuses to leave.

And suddenly we want to meditate.

We sit down, close our eyes, and ask the mind to become peaceful at precisely the moment it has the most compelling reasons not to be.

This is a little like deciding to learn to swim after falling overboard.

It can be done, perhaps. But it is certainly the harder way.

When we are frightened or suffering, what we call meditation can very easily become begging. We negotiate with God, with life, with the universe, with whatever invisible hand we hope might rearrange things on our behalf.

Please let this be all right.

Please make this go away.

Please don’t let this happen.

I promise I will change.

There is nothing wrong with prayer born of desperation. Human beings have probably been doing that since we first looked up at a threatening sky. But it is different from cultivating the quiet interior place that allows us to remain present even when life refuses to give us what we want.

That place takes practice.

And perhaps this is where we have made meditation seem much more dramatic than it needs to be.

People tell me they don’t have time to meditate.

Or they don’t know how.

They imagine a special room, a cushion, incense, crossed legs, an empty mind, forty uninterrupted minutes and possibly a personality far calmer than the one they currently possess.

But what if we looked at it differently?

What if we considered our entire life preparation for meditation?

Then suddenly we have plenty of time.

The practice begins in traffic.

It begins when someone interrupts us.

It begins with the barking dog, the crying child, the loud restaurant, the person talking too loudly on the telephone, the neighbor’s lawn mower, the opinion we don’t agree with, the line that isn’t moving fast enough.

These small disturbances are everywhere.

And we generally believe the disturbance is out there.

That noise is bothering me.

That person is irritating me.

This shouldn’t be happening.

But there is another possibility.

Notice where the disturbance actually lives.

A sound is simply a sound until something inside us rises up to meet it. Irritation tightens the chest. Judgment begins its little speech. The mind reaches outward and attaches itself to the offending person or circumstance.

And there we are, lost in it.

This is where meditation can begin without ever closing our eyes.

Instead of following the disturbance outward, follow it inward.

Someone is loud.

You feel yourself becoming irritated.

Rather than immediately making the other person responsible for your inner state, notice what has happened inside you.

There is irritation.

Just that.

You don’t have to scold yourself for feeling it. You don’t have to pretend you suddenly adore loud people. You don’t even have to make the irritation disappear.

Simply notice it.

Bring your attention inward and set the feeling down for a moment, as you might set down a heavy bag you’ve been carrying without realizing it.

There you are.

For one small moment, you have stepped away from the reaction and become the one who is noticing the reaction.

That small distance changes everything.

At first it may last only a second.

Then perhaps two.

Over time, something remarkable begins to happen. The things outside you may remain exactly as they are, but they stop having quite so much authority over what happens inside you.

The noise is still noisy.

The difficult person may remain difficult.

Traffic still refuses to consult your schedule.

Life, apparently, has no intention of arranging itself according to our preferences.

But we begin to discover that peace does not require it to.

This is the practice.

Not escaping the world, but learning how to live in it without being dragged behind every passing irritation like a tin can tied to the back of a car.

And when we eventually sit down to meditate—when we actually close our eyes and withdraw from the constant invitation of sight and sound—we are not beginning something entirely new.

We have been practicing all day.

Every time we noticed ourselves becoming angry and chose not to feed the anger, we practiced.

Every time we felt impatient and simply watched impatience move through us, we practiced.

Every time we resisted the need to answer, correct, defend, judge or control, we practiced.

Every time we allowed something uncomfortable to exist without immediately demanding that it change, we practiced.

Perhaps even our disappointments are part of the preparation.

Life continually asks us to loosen our grip on the way we thought things were supposed to be. We make plans. We form expectations. We become attached to people, places, identities, outcomes. Then life comes along with its great indifference to our arrangements and moves the furniture.

We suffer not only because something changed, but because some part of us insists that it shouldn’t have.

Meditation slowly teaches another way.

We learn to watch things come.

We learn to watch things go.

Thoughts. Feelings. Anger. Pleasure. Fear. Desire. Grief. Even joy.

We stop trying to grab hold of every beautiful thing and stop trying to shove away every painful one.

And underneath all that coming and going, we begin to sense something quieter.

Something that was there before the irritation.

Something that remains after the fear passes.

Something within us that does not need the world to become silent before it can know silence.

That is why we practice when things are good.

We practice on ordinary Tuesday mornings when nobody is sick and nothing terrible has happened. We practice when the greatest problem of the day is a barking dog or a slow driver or somebody chewing too loudly beside us.

Those moments may seem insignificant.

They aren’t.

They are preparation.

Because one day life will ask more of us.

It always does.

There will be loss. There will be uncertainty. Bodies will change. People will leave. Things we love will end. No amount of meditation exempts us from being human.

But perhaps the purpose was never to escape any of that.

Perhaps the purpose is to discover a place within ourselves spacious enough to hold all of it.

So if you tell me you don’t have time to meditate, I might tell you that you have been given twenty opportunities already today.

You simply didn’t recognize them.

The next one may be coming toward you right now disguised as an inconvenience.

Notice it.

Notice yourself.

And instead of reaching outward toward the thing disturbing your peace, travel the shorter distance inward.