REMEMBERING TO FORGET

“To manage your mind, know that there is nothing, and then relinquish all attachment to the nothingness.” Hua Hu Ching; Verse Seventy-Two


This morning, I remembered to do something that I haven’t done in quite a while. I’ve been getting up fairly early fairly often, usually around six in the morning. The Little One needs to eat around then, and I often just get up afterward, leaving her in bed with my partner until he awakens around nine.

It’s a wonderful time of the morning – one that I never really saw from this end of it until recently. To me, six in the morning was a time to go to bed, not a time to get out of it. And some days, that is still the case. Other days I get up even earlier than six, sometimes around three. Then there are the days that I nap on and off with my daughter for most of the day, waking when she does, feeding and sleeping again. Some people would call it “lazing around in bed all day” but we prefer to call it “bonding.”

The early morning hours, when one is well rested, really is a neat time of day – quiet, new, still… almost like “extra time” since it is not a time that I would expect myself to be awake. The time I spend then is totally my own – there are no requirements for what I do with it.

Usually, I’ve been spending the time catching up on household chores – laundry, dishes, sweeping the floor, scrubbing the sinks. Most of the rest of the day is spent caring for my daughter and working, prioritized in that order. It’s amazing how little time is left in between for anything, often including things like my own lunch. But in the wee morning hours, there is nothing in particular that has to be done.

This morning I had the novel thought… hey, I could meditate.

The novelty of the thought struck me because, once upon a time not all that long ago, the thought wouldn’t have been novel at all. For quite a while, meditating was what I did when I woke up, pretty much every day. I had gotten into the habit of doing a daily practice of some sort, and that practice always included meditation, for at least some period of time. I mean, for pete’s sake – I teach workshops entitled “Finding and Maintaining a Daily Practice” and “Sitting Upright – Introduction to Sitting Meditation,” as well as making meditation cushions for part of my living.

But with this past summer came the chaos of “ohmygodwhatdoyoumeanImpregnant” and all of the major life changes which went along with that. All of a sudden, my life, mind and body were all switched around and all surety and routine went fluttering out the window like a swarm of jacked up butterflies heading for the ten corners of the world.

Which was fine. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t visualize the future. All of my plans had turned into winged creatures and flown away and there was no point in pretending that I was totally in charge of where my life was going. I was on the boat and it was floating down a river which had not been on my map.

Sure, I could have panicked, but I love an adventure more than I love the need to have control. You don’t wave a happy hello to chaos and then get pissy when she doesn’t phone ahead to tell you she’s on her way over.

It wasn’t as though I completely stopped doing all activities which I had previously done, but many of them took on a different flavor than they had previously. For instance, I still did yoga (a usual part of my previous practice), but it was, by necessity, different when I was pregnant. What I could and couldn’t do was different, and my motivation altered as well. Yoga became, in a sense, training for labor. It was no longer “just yoga” for the sake of yoga, it was “pre-natal yoga” for the sake of being able to physically adjust to pregnancy and get ready for the job of giving birth.

I also meditated during this time, but it too was different. Again, much of it was in preparation for labor, working on guided meditations and visualizations which would enable me to give birth with as little discomfort as possible. Finding deep, relaxing landscapes in my mind, practicing riding the waves which would eventually course through my body, connecting with the little being jumping around in my abdomen and starting to get to know her.

All of this was very useful and completely appropriate for the stage that I was in at the time. The previous years had been great training for the place I found myself and I was very happy to have already acquired those skills. But now what?

This morning, laying in bed in the hazy silver-gray light of dawn, I debated whether I should stay in bed and sleep (technically, I’d been there for less than three hours) or get up and start enjoying the day (I could always take a nap later). I chose door number two and crawled out of bed, leaving my partner and daughter snuggled together, their sleeping positions mirror images of one another.

For the first time in months, I sat. I just sat. Eyes not open, eyes not closed. Breathing. No mind, no time. It was wonderful.

There are many types of meditation – more than I could list right now. But this basic sitting meditation is, to me, the most fundamental, clarifying and simple. It is also a great foundation to all the other types of meditation – if one can do this, one can more readily do the others.

When I say “simple” I do not mean “easy,” but rather unadorned and straight to the point. There are no bells or whistles, there is nothing to do. It is, however, far from easy to just sit in emptiness, though the practice (never, in my experience, perfect) is tremendously beneficial.

I once described it to somebody in this way…

Imagine that the mind is a desk with a whole bunch of stuff on it, all disorganized and messy. Meditation is walking away from the desk, forgetting about it completely. For a while, the desk doesn’t exist. Then, when you come back to the desk, it’s as though someone magically arranged and organized its contents while you were gone – the clutter is removed, the junk mail discarded and the garbage can emptied. Suddenly, the desk is manageable – it even makes sense – and works a whole lot more efficiently.

Another useful analogy I’ve found is to compare the mind to an ocean. Often, we are caught up in the waves – the ups and downs, the tossings and turnings of the mind. Meditation allows us to see the ocean in its entirety and to recognize these things as just moving parts of the whole. It enables us to see the ocean, to be the ocean, instead of being tossed willy nilly with the ups and downs of each and every wave. The waves are still there – we just don’t have to be drowned by them.

I have been meditating in some form or another for most of my life – since long before I even knew the word “meditation.” It is what I used to do instead of sleep when I was younger, since sleep was, for many years, something that happened to other people. When I was ten or eleven, I learned the word “meditation” and realized that it was what I had been doing all of those years.

Until a few years ago, no one had ever “taught” me how to meditate – it was just something that I did naturally. I was happy with it and got a lot out of it. Frankly, there are times in my life that I don’t know how I would have gotten through if not for the ability to meditate, clarify and come to an understanding of the interior and/or exterior state of my reality.

Then I spent some time at a Zen monastery and was actually instructed in sitting zazen. Taking what I already knew and had experienced combined with this new information totally changed the practice for me in very unexpected ways.

For one thing, I had rarely meditated sitting up. Probably because I had started meditating as a sleep substitute, I generally did it laying down. Sometimes I would be upright, but never in any particular posture. I also usually had my eyes closed, again for the reasons mentioned above. Sometimes they would be open, but that would almost always be after a period of time of having them shut.

Learning the techniques of traditional sitting meditation changed the way that I meditated. I was amazed at how sitting in a particular posture (there are reasons that they’ve been doing it that way for thousands of years) would make such a difference. Just as laying down allows one to “forget” about the body, sitting correctly allows one to forget about it, yet be totally aware of it, at the same time.

It also amazed me what a difference it made to keep my eyes open, though technically they are somewhere between open and shut. They are open enough to see, yet closed enough that blinking is unnecessary.

Both of these things allow the meditation to be more fully rooted and grounded, bringing whatever benefit is derived into concrete reality. I find it more powerful to “visualize” when I am actually seeing it with my own eyes, rather than in some blackened screen inside of my head. These techniques also keep the meditator more alert – sitting up with one’s eyes open does not usually lead to drowsiness and dozing off.

Then, there is the breathing, absolutely integral to this kind of meditation. It is, essentially, all that one is doing.

The breath is often used as the focus of this type of meditation, not because the breath “should” be focused upon, but because it should be the only activity and the mind (at least at first) often needs SOMETHING to focus upon. Physically, one is not moving AT ALL. (Another instruction from the Zen monk which I found very helpful. She assured me that no one has died from a terrible itch or legs that start to tingle.) Mentally, one tries to stop all movement as well.

Which is the point. To “still the mind” is no small feat. For a moment, yes – all is quiet. Then, there is a thought. Then another. Then another. Then another. On and on and on. It is the nature of the monkey.

To find the space behind the thoughts is truly sublime. To just sit there and watch the thoughts, to see the inside of the mind and how it works, to realize that there is no need to be terribly attached to those goings on “as reality” since here you sit looking at it, clearly somewhere else… Frankly, it just puts it All into perspective. And, once in perspective, it can All be let go.

However, as I say, letting go of thought is not as easy as it sounds. But the practice of it, the observation of it, is definitely beneficial in and of itself.

Over the years, it has allowed me to see how my mind works in vivid technicolor. It has allowed me to see how much time I can spend dwelling on negative events, either real or imagined, in the past or in the potential future. It has allowed me to recognize how much space in my head is taken up by Top Forty song lyrics from the 1970’s and how many television commercial jingles are stuck there whether I like it or not. It has shown me how much time I spend planning for the future, making mental lists in my head as to what I will do next, and next, and next. It has shown me how little time I spend actually living, now, in the present.

It’s amazing – most of the time the mind is NOT HERE. It is off, somewhere else, doing something which has very little to do with what is actually happening. In essence, it makes much of life either a memory or a fantasy, as opposed to something which is actually fully experienced as if there were no future or past to contextualize it within. The mind is all about analysis, labeling, listing, worrying, obsessing, etc., and very little about just being.

This is not to say “stop thinking altogether all the time,” but rather to just give it a rest once in a while. If a muscle is used ALL THE TIME, it gets worn out, tired, and doesn’t work as well. If it is allowed the chance to rest, it works all that more efficiently.

The mind can be one’s greatest ally or enemy, depending upon the way in which it is used. Most of the time, the workings of the mind aren’t even observed – they just sort of “happen” while we’re looking at something else. The mind does not often observe itself unless we decide to turn it to that purpose.

We also tend to identify ourselves with our minds as our minds… but if we are observing our mind, then who is doing the observing? All of these things lead to, I think, a deeper understanding of what the self is or is not, or whether it exists at all. We tend to think of self as something immutable, unchanging, forever existing in some sort of static state, substantial and “real.”

If it is looked at, though, many parts of it are a sort of detritus picked up throughout our short time here, in this body, in the past few years, not permanent at all. What is left after the debris is washed away is…well, you have to see it for yourself. There are some things even I don’t go chasing around with words.

The quiet of a still mind is one of the most rewarding, rejuvenating, peaceful experiences that I have ever had. Most of the time, though, it is not quite as still as all that.

Today, in fact, as I sat down to meditate in this manner for the first time in several months, my mind was not quiet for more than a few moments at a time. No, it was much too busy noting things like wow! everything is…um, er, was quiet in here. ( ) When I’m done meditating I think I’ll make a cup of tea. Oh – there I go again. ( ) At the Copa, Copa Cabana… ( ) I’m so glad I’m doing, um, er, was doing this. ( ) Is that a car door outside that I hear? ( ) After my tea, I think I’ll write about this. These are the words I’ll use…

And so on. It’s not about doing it perfectly, it’s about doing it. It is, in fact, a good exercise in non-perfection.

I had not intellectually forgotten the benefits of this type of meditation, though experientially I think that maybe I had. This morning I remembered and will be making an effort in the ongoing future to wander into the quiet room early in the morning to sit down and be with myself for a while before I start thinking about today, tomorrow, what needs to be done, what should have already been done, and what I already did. Now is pretty cool, and I’d like to be here for it. So now in my silent mornings, I’ll remember to sit and forget about remembering.