This 10-minute talk is titled,
Life as Meditation.
At some point in our spiritual practice or simply in the midst of daily life,
We may get the sense,
We may begin to realize that we are always here,
Even when it feels that we are not.
And when we do realize that we're always here,
Even when we think we are not,
We can begin to see our whole lives as meditation.
We can begin to see the distinction between meditation and non-meditation as arbitrary,
As empty.
And as we begin to do so,
We start to feel free to contemplate all aspects of our lives,
From dozing off while taking a bath to sitting in lotus position and chanting on,
As one continuous and unified engagement with the mysterious process of life.
It is difficult to overstate the power that this shift can have in our way of thinking about meditation,
Contemplative practice,
And life.
Before we manage to break down the line between meditation and non-meditation in the way that I'm suggesting here,
We hunger for living in the moment and for squeezing every second of mindfulness out of our finite lives.
Now while this quest for mindful living may seem exhilarating for the meditator at first pass,
After a while it begins to feel like a chore,
For our minds are like wild horses,
Always seeking greener pastures and often swept away by cascades of unwieldy thoughts.
Imposing order amidst the chaos of our busy minds is no easy task,
And the mind often rebels at it.
Still,
We try to beat our minds into submission with the latest mindfulness techniques and focus-enhancing apps.
And what do we get out of it?
Not as much as we wanted,
That's for sure.
Perhaps we might get a little less stress.
If we get really,
Really good return on investment,
We may even get 10% happier,
As Dan Harris says in his meditation book and podcast.
After a while,
However,
We often find ourselves struggling in much the same way as we did before we began our meditation practice.
In spite of many hours of meditation,
We still frequently find ourselves straining and failing to be present.
We lose our cool with loved ones and strangers alike.
We are still impatient and often get sad and upset for no apparent reason.
Life still seems complicated,
Difficult,
Sometimes cruel,
And often incomprehensible.
We find ourselves struggling to be with what is,
Failing to sustain continuous mindfulness throughout the day,
And eventually faulting ourselves for being bad meditators,
Or even worse,
For being fundamentally broken,
Flawed,
Or incomplete.
Then,
We may even begin to wonder if this is all there is to mindfulness and meditation.
And we may even conclude,
As many people do,
That meditation is not for us.
What we fail to notice when we are straining to meditate and be mindful,
However,
And this is so key,
Is that it is straining itself and not the lack of mindfulness that causes the greatest deal of suffering in our lives.
The problem,
My friends,
Is not that we are not often mindful.
No,
That's not the problem.
The problem is that we refuse to allow mindlessness to be here when it is here.
Instead,
We strain.
We strain to magically transform mindlessness to mindfulness through the alchemical process of meditation.
But this misconstrues the nature of the meditative project.
Meditation is not about changing the nature of experience.
It is about learning to be with it.
This is why the spiritual teacher Adyashanti says that you're meditating,
And I quote,
Whenever you aren't manipulating your experience and quote,
In contrast,
He says,
As soon as you meditate because you think you should,
You're controlling your experience and you've squeezed all of the value out of your meditation.
A similar sentiment is expressed by Alan Watts,
Who suggests that,
And I quote,
If you meditate for an ulterior motive,
That is to say,
To improve your mind,
To improve your character,
To be more efficient in life,
You've got your eye on the future and you're not meditating.
So then.
How to think about meditation.
Well,
In my view,
Meditation.
Is simply the process of being with life rather than standing apart from it.
It is the process of allowing life to manifest itself around and through you in whatever way it wishes to do so.
If what life is trying to manifest through you is tiredness,
Then to meditate is simply to be tired.
When sadness is here,
Meditation calls us to be with the sadness.
If what life brings is a refusal to be with what is here,
Then meditation asks only that we allow our refusal to be with what is here to reveal itself.
If we were focused and then got distracted,
Meditation simply involves bowing down to the fact that were there once was focus,
There is no distraction.
We can keep expanding this out so that meditation eventually becomes the act of bearing witness to the particularities of our own unfolding lives.
And when viewed in this manner,
Meditation becomes coextensive with life itself.
Meditation morphs from a way of changing our experience to a way of seeing our lives from something that we do in the world,
To a way of being in the world.
From this perspective,
We are always meditating.
For life itself becomes meditation.
No longer straining to empty the mind of thoughts or to be with things in a particular kind of way.
We finally let go of pre-existing notions of what meditation is and is not.
And we simply commit ourselves to being in this world without demands and without preconditions.
Whatever happens,
Happens.
And we let that be enough.
