Meditation – a wider perspective

Zeno

So much can be found on the internet on the subject of meditation, and so little of it has any value.

For better or worse, meditation has become a buzz word and all too often it is used by the “wellness” and “new age” industries to sell less than useful products to the desperate or the foolish and vulnerable.

Meditation should not be sold. It should be communicated and taught for free.  We would have a better world if this ancient and invaluable spiritual practice was absorbed and above all used by a wider audience.

How few truly understand the practice. How little I grasped of it when I first started reading the Buddhist scriptures over three decades ago.

Over the years it slowly dawned on me that meditation was used not just by Buddhists and Hindus but by all other religions worthy of the name.

To this day however, many remain only vaguely aware of what is involved and there are those who so badly misunderstand the practice that they believe it to be dangerous.

It will let in evil spirits say some. It is worthless say others. It is the Philosopher’s Stone. A great benefit, a great evil, pointless, life saving. Take your pick.

But only ever listen to someone who has nothing to sell, no axe to grind. And who has experience culled over some years of practice.

I can of course only relate my own thoughts, my own experiences but for me this arcane ritual has become ever more essential to my happiness and wellbeing.

One must not imagine that the practice of sitting quietly for some period of the day and going within is all that is entailed.

It is an experience which can slowly change your life but without making other far reaching changes to how you think and act and live, it will get you nowhere. In my experience.

Entwined with the rest of your life, a feedback loop is formed to the extent that cause and effect become indistinguishable.  What is it that has changed your outlook on life, your behaviour? Is it the meditation, or did you make some conscious decision to change your habits, your patterns of thought and follow through on that decision?

It becomes impossible to tell, since in effect your whole life has become a meditation. Not just those moments when you sit and release your consciousness to wander where it will.

For some, no doubt their practice will be an attempt at a quick fix, squeezed into their busy schedule of work and play. For others there may be no spiritual element at all – just another spoke to their busy lives, something to tell their friends, something to fit alongside an evening glass of wine. A fashion accessory almost, much in the way that wellness tourists trek to Peru for an Ayahuasca retreat.

And good luck to such folk. If that is the way they see fit to use meditation, they do no harm to others but equally they gain little benefit for themselves.

For a few, a life of meditation represents a true retreat from the world.  An all important feature of their very existence. Meditation is much the same as the beauty of endless repetition of psalms in a monastery. Or rosary beads and their accompanying prayer. The whirling of dervishes, ecstatic Kabbala, wailing at the wall in Jerusalem.

Standing on a mountain in the wild Himalayas playing the solemn dungchen, climbing the Alps and  letting the alpenhorn cast its spell over the glory of the sunlit pastures.

Of course those who prefer to define their faith within the narrow confines of their own particular dogma would be affronted by such comparisons.  The beauty of Eastern Orthodox prayer is an address to the Christian god only, the rhythmic repetition of the Koran a call to Allah and not a plaything to be enjoyed by an infidel like myself.

But once you have escaped from the manacles of man made gods and creeds you are free to see the glory of meditative practice as it is.  A release into reality and beauty, a casting off of narrow prejudice and divisive cult.

A breaking of chains to soar above the dull concerns of man, a window into the mystery at the centre of our reality (however you wish to describe it).

And from that distance, how small mankind’s concerns seem. How sad the endless struggle for more, how demeaning and foolish the attempt to “own”, to dominate, to control.

It seems important not to grasp, but to let the process work of it’s own accord.  To let meditation seep into your life, and your life flow into meditation.

Once you are a little way along the path, it begins to seem unnecessary to travel to Mecca (or anywhere else) to see the face of your “god”. 

That face seems suddenly to be all around you whether sitting in quiet meditation….Or mending your old bicycle on a summer’s afternoon in the garden.

It is quiet, it is slow, it is gentle and so becomes your life. An end to speed, to rash judgements, to self importance. No desire to change the world, or its people and a recognition that if it comes at all peace will only appear at its own sedate pace. If the world is ever to change for the better it will not be at the behest of a politician, it will not be swift or dramatic. If it does occur it will be by the slow uptake of kinder thoughts, a recognition that none of us are so very different, let alone better or of greater value.

Peaceful thoughts, tranquil habits. An abnegation of the ego.

Perhaps such a transformation will silently occur, perhaps harmony will descend. Or perhaps like most other species, we ourselves will end before we have had a chance at perfection.

Does it matter so very much? Somehow once you are on an untroubled path, none of it seems quite so urgent or important. The river of life meanders along in its own way, with us or without us.

20 Comments

  1. Yes, oh yes. Just be, just engage fully in a task in which the body is employed, behold a great tree for no-time, etc. Many ways to ‘meditate’ which have no words…

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    1. Yes, we are all so different and in a sense, understanding your (perfectly understandable) beliefs in physicalism and so forth, it comes as no surprise to me at all that such techniques did little for you. As you know, I am far more woolly minded and know people who have used similar techniques to undergo surgical operations without the use of anaesthetic. But of course in my case it goes a great deal further – I’m just whimsical and seem to have had, always, a strong belief in something “else”. God knows what! Those who believed in Valhalla would hardly have shared my own views on peace – and so there is little chance that the Vikings of today (Putin, Trump, Pol Pot and so forth) would give a s**t about my liberal and wishy washy nonsense.

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      1. Ha! You and me both.

        I should note that I wasn’t always a physicalist. And there are stone cold naturalists who promote it. The last time I tried meditation was purely as a psychological tool.

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  3. A,

    I genuinely thought that as I got older, the pace of life would slow down.

    I genuinely thought that with no debts against my name and no financial commitments, the pace of life would slow down.

    I genuinely thought that with no children to ferry around and no parental commitments, the pace of life would slow down.

    It has not, and for another 1062 days remaining of my corporate prison sentence (I’m too invested in it to give it up as the finishing line approaches – even though I’ve turned into Pall Mall, the Timex sign appears to be on the back of a truck speeding towards Marble Arch), I fear it will not let up.

    I find myself experiencing the dark “afternoon” of the soul all too often, relistening and replaying the contents of the BG, doing my weekly yoga session or walking out in the woods or with the puppy on the beach, doesn’t help.

    As for meditation, mindfulness and breath work, they never stand a chance to be squeezed into such a busy schedule, any attempt to do so is futile, and like you say, band aid meditation only serves to frustrate and has no real chance of long term success amongst the distraction, chaos and noise of daily life for some (through choose or otherwise).

    I spoke to my “creative kids” this weekend who likely won’t make mega bucks (compared to their engineering sibling) and told them that if they needed it, they had a free house for life, here with their mum and dad, and also took the chance to remind both themselves and me, the dying words of Steve Jobs (even though there is debate that he didn’t say this at the time and this has an element of Mandela effect to it):

    “Do not educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy, so when they grow up they will know the value of things, not the price”.

    I hope they follow their dreams and not the dollar signs like I have.

    I sure that when I hand back the laptop on my last day, my life will pleasingly and permanently pivot to pondering and procrastinating in a picturesque, parlour of peace.

    It better do!

    M

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    1. I hope also that life will be transformed for you when corporate life ends. It may well do, and then it’s time to go and build that little wooden house in the Welsh wilderness you talked of a while back.
      Bear in mind that I might just be sitting in the eye of the storm, about to plunge back into the darke night, the horror of serious depression.
      I have up corporate life in 1992 but still followed the dollar sign. And have only just given up really.
      I spent many years trading stocks from my snowboard in Switzerland but I remember only too well that I still felt dreadful, even when I was pottering up to the top of the mountain for the next descent.
      I think my problem until very recently has been trying to be something I am not. Busy, successful, ebullient, wildly happy.
      Many, many times over so many years I have pondered the “final solution” as life continued to be unbearable, even though in conventional terms I had achieved reasonable success.
      I put it down to shitty genes and an unfortunate upbringing in the midst of a disfunctional family.
      The odd thing is I seem to have managed to let it all go recently. Exactly as described in these posts.
      And I very much hope you will find the same after the next 1000 days.
      I do feel that I have changed, and as I say above it is difficult to pin point how or why. Have I managed to let go through sheer willpower? Has the meditation facilitated it? Or is it a combination? God knows but I am only too grateful to be “out of the swell of the sea” as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it.
      I don’t seem to have had to push it, it just seems to have happened.
      But as I say perhaps Hades awaits me and Cerberus will bite my head off some day soon.
      Not easy, life, is it? But I admire your perseverance and your efforts to guide your children.
      I did much the same with our 30 year old son, but despite endless (rather one way!) discussions on Buddhism and the like, he has ended up very happily in a hedge fund. Weird, innit!
      Don’t despair Michael. I’m sure it will happen for you.
      But of course you are quite right about your current constraints on time. I fear that will have to wait another 1000 days.
      Because at my end, my entire life is now devoted to staying out of the gloom and trying to be a better person.
      I will unswervingly do an hour’s meditation first thing in the day and very often another hour later in the day.

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    2. Oops..fat fingered before I’d finished.

      Also, I have stuck by a very firm commitment to say “fuk it” and mean it.

      I’ll do at least two hours exercise a day and spend much, much time just “being”.

      I’m still trading (I have created a highly leveraged synthetic dollar bond using crypto derivatives) but perhaps this is just for diversion and to keep my brain ticking over.

      I no longer plan to rival Bill Gates or become a Russian Oligarch.

      There again, perhaps as I said earlier, perhaps I’m just a weird old fuk.

      I dunno…but keep plugging in Michael!

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      1. Bad genes and a dysfunctional family – I have that t-shirt too!

        Just come back from a bimble in the Scouse sun with my long-suffering wife who by profession is a holistic therapist, who said there is an epidemic (pandemic?) of corporate stress just now, especially with her male clients, and my present predicament is shared far too often by fellow Wirraliens (we’re aliens).

        And it was during this discussion that I realised for the first time I have corporate Stockholm Syndrome.

        I know I am but a number, I know I would be replaced in a heartbeat, I know the needs of shareholders outweighs the basics needs of the staff who contribute blood, sweat and literal tears to up the dividend, yet I prioritise the demands of this machine over my own physical and mental health, I prioritise my precious time working long hours, going the extra mile, doing too much when I could better spend that time with friends, family, community and of course my own inner space and meditative practice.

        Even though this seems to be a revelation and surely penny drop moment for change, I’m not sure it will. Maybe it’s because I’m a people pleaser, a perfectionist, a patsy, a PTSDer, I’m sure Freud could confirm and track it all back to childhood traumas.

        Like I said to a colleague in work this week, it sure was a bad time to give up drinking!

        As I look around the more aged folks in work, it’s a reminder that actually it is a good time, many folks gravitating towards food, sugar, alcohol to make their existence in times of stress more bearable, when of course it is having a huge impact on their mental health.

        I applaud those that do manage to find that balance between the corporation and the calm, it seems my monkey brain ain’t wired in the same way.

        I am seriously contemplating a return to “plant medicine in moderation” to get me through the next 1061 days, and look to those who could assist there. To quote Brian Molko from the rock band Placebo “A friend in need is a friend indeed, a friend with weed is better” 🙂

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  7. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

    I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first within one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I
    have to say has more lasting value.

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