In the beginning of my practice,
I was very idealistically minded,
Both with regard to the demands that I put on myself and with my surroundings.
I wanted to achieve deep states of meditation that I had read about,
So I tried to escape from all distractions.
I thought that if I could prevent the world from pulling my attention away from the breath,
Then I'd get there.
I was silly like that.
Of course I was,
That was my conditioning.
I sat in my room and would get irritated by the thermostat in the heater that would go click every ten minutes or so.
If it wasn't for the thermostat,
I'd be at peace now.
Then I'd forget it for a couple of minutes before I started dreading it again.
That fucker is gonna go click again soon,
And then I lose it.
In fact,
I had already lost it,
But I didn't notice,
Because my awareness was mostly concerned with the outside.
Many new meditators can relate to this.
Usually people do feel quite distracted when they first start meditating.
Surrounded by sounds,
By thoughts,
By memories of earlier conversations,
By aches and pains,
By all kinds of things.
We can define distraction in the following way.
Some part of reality that doesn't fit with our idea of how things should be.
However,
Meditation is about being with the present,
Allowing it to be the way it is.
So in a sense,
There is no such thing as a distraction,
Because they are all part of that very reality we're trying to be aware of.
So the culprit wasn't the thermostat,
It was my own sense of right and wrong.
My sense of it shouldn't be this way.
I sat there,
Thinking,
I can't wait to get to Thailand.
There,
In the jungle,
It'll be quiet.
I was like a man with shit in his pocket,
Trying to run away from the foul smell.
I had never been to Asia before,
I was ignorant.
When I got there,
I realized that the jungle is a really noisy place.
I wouldn't even have been able to hear my stomach up there.
I was infections,
Said I could sense of terror.
So,
Instead of trying to manage all the displacement,
And distractions around you,
See if you instead can be aware.
Just noticing the sounds,
The thoughts,
The aches,
The tendency for your mind to forget itself.
Stop fighting against reality,
And join it instead.
Meditation isn't about getting it right,
Or retaining some ideal state.
It's about being able to stay present with ourselves.
I went all over looking for places to meditate.
I didn't realize it was already there,
In my heart.
All the meditation is right there inside you.
Birth,
Old age,
Sickness and death are right there within you.
I traveled all over until I was ready to drop dead from exhaustion.
Only then,
When I stopped,
Did I find what I was looking for inside me.
I was able to get up and sleep.
I was able to get up and sleep.
I was able to get up and sleep.
One of the virtues my teacher in Thailand extolled,
Was patient endurance.
It's not a very sublime,
Special or superhuman quality.
In fact,
It's quite ordinary.
Something we all can do to an extent.
But this ability to stay with the difficult,
With the unwanted,
With our pains and problems is crucial.
There's no way to circumvent suffering.
We have to understand it to find freedom from it.
And we have to face it to understand.
Sometimes we can even use the so-called distractions to our advantage.
The click from the thermostat,
For example,
Would have been used as a cue to remind myself of the task at hand.
Wisdom is like that.
It's easy to say in hindsight though.
I had to make mistakes and eventually learn from them.
And that's OK.
You will have your path to walk.
And it'll be slightly different from mine.
You too will misunderstand and make mistakes.
Sometimes a thousand times over.
And that's OK too.
There is really no other way of doing this beautiful work.
