Sitting

I began meditating a decade ago. Sometime after hearing of its beneficial effect on mental health. I had no idea where to start so I tried to use a guided meditation app, but I couldn’t stay with it. I found it relaxing but struggled to realize any of the purported benefits. Those benefits were admittedly nebulous to me then anyway, but I was unhappy and anxious and thought it could improve my mental state, my productivity, make me a better version of myself. The app said it would get me there, but it didn’t really work. I didn’t learn anything from it I didn’t already know, and beyond those nebulous goals it didn’t try to teach me anything. I didn’t stick with it, but the idea stuck with me, though I wasn’t practicing anything yet.

It would be a few years before I was exposed to a different approach. Those same unhappy and anxious thought patterns led me to Dr. K, a twitch streaming psychiatrist who promotes eastern medicine as part of his practice. He’d grown up around Hindu spiritual practices that include meditation, and returned to India as an adult to study under yogis and monks.

His background resonated with me, especially his talks about growing up as a ‘gifted kid’ that hit close to home, talking about how internalized expectations can lead to an aversion to difficult tasks, creating this deep-seated dissatisfaction that I felt in my own life.

So I watched his streams. I listened as he explained concepts using western medicine and psychotherapy concepts from his years in medical school, and stories from his practice in the US after. I followed along as he related things back to Hindu spiritual practices and ayurvedic medicine he’d learned from those monks. Some of it was a bit hokey. I won’t discount Ayurvedic medicine as a whole - I don’t doubt that there is wisdom there, but some aspects felt too mystical. Doshas feel like an ancient version of a BuzzFeed personality quiz used as the basis for medical treatment. What really stuck for me, though, were the guided meditations he would do at the end of the streams.

They weren’t like the apps I’d tried years before, those were 15-20 minutes almost exclusively centered around mindfulness, body awareness, and kept a constant stream of talk going over their relaxing background music. He allowed for silence and time, and used different techniques to target different goals. There was a similar sort of mindfulness at the base of it, but the sessions were split into two or three different phases, each incorporating a yoga technique.

Alternate nostril breathing to stimulate the vagus nerve and relax the body. Ohm chanting as a “grounding” meditation that centers the mind in the body. Staring into a flame to improve focus and clarity of thought. There was a myriad of others and I tried them all.

The accompanying physical acts were like lighting lamp posts in the mist. Clarity, comfort, direction. Chanting was particularly effective at calming the mind, the vibrations and repetition were hypnotic, the focus on vocalization used the same part of the brain that would normally be sending out stray thoughts so it was too busy to distract me. Many of the techniques worked and combining them provided a sort of novelty that kept my attention. So I started doing these things daily, or nearly anyway, and it truly helped. I bought a zafu to sit on, started using incense as an environmental cue, sometimes a chime from a singing bowl to mark the beginning of a meditation.

It was effective. I felt better, I was getting my life on a path that felt worth pursuing and had more capacity for compassion and attention than I could ever recall, but I never did any of it unless I knew I was alone. Watching the streams, following along with those guided meditations, chanting on the floor, striking the bowl. I found the techniques embarrassing and that sense of self-consciousness would eventually get in the way. I fell away from it and back into old patterns.

I would try to meditate again occasionally - read some books on meditation or Hinduism, then on Buddhism from practitioners of various schools, sit for a few minutes over a few days. I’d try again for a while, then drift away again. I couldn’t stick to this either. Dr. K was my first teacher, but I had stopped being his student. I felt like I knew everything he had to teach me and I was barely using any of it.

The cycle of starting and stopping continued for two years. All the while my wellbeing slowly deteriorating until a combination of stressors had me sinking, shutting down. I pulled myself out of the worst of it over months, then I went to see my own monk - or Kushok, more accurately.

I spent eight weeks this year attending meditation classes with a Tibetan Buddhist sangha. Our Kushok stressed daily practice but quality as the focus, not duration. The length of a meditation does not matter to start, only that it is done with your whole attention and effort. Take three breaths with perfect focus and move on, do it many times a day. He described the proper posture and said to always sit in it when practicing. He stressed setting intention at the onset of any meditation, to place the mind in its right frame. He explained the stages of the journey, Lamrim, with illustrations that showed the difficulties we would all have in reining in an untrained mind, but that with practice it would become easier. Natural. He told us to expect that thoughts will come unbidden and that the important thing is to notice that the thought has happened but not latch on to it.

Kushok helped me find the tools I already had and taught me to use them, in public, surrounded by other students all learning the same things. It’s much harder to be embarrassed when surrounded by people new to the same skill. Now I was truly practicing every day. I marked it on my calendar. Each week I went to a class to continue learning, and every day I sat at home. Sometimes only for a minute or two, other times for twenty or thirty. The community and the practice both did well for me. Getting out of my house, getting out of my self, focusing my mind on the moment.

It was a good eight weeks, then the community broke for summer, and I felt a bit like I was drifting again. I would skip days. Just one at first, then two or three. I went on a vacation to Japan and missed weeks of meditation practice while–ironically–visiting plenty of Buddhist temples. It felt less pressing, less important, and I was so busy. Too busy for five minutes of sitting.

It was happening again, and I felt it. First as shame for skipping the days, then as a hollowing out, a falling down. Stress built up. Thoughts turned dark. Isolation crept in. I feel it still, really, though I don’t feel trapped in it. It’s September now, the sangha rejoins in a month. In the meantime I’ve been studying Zen. It’s the same in the important ways, but simpler. Not easier, a bit harder to grasp really, but simpler.

Those rules I’d already learned are still there, but the reasons for some are clearer. I now know that I sit in the proper posture not for the “power” or “energy” it brings–which always felt like woo woo to me–but because the body and mind are one, neither exists without the other and each influence the other, so sitting correctly puts body and mind in the correct shape to meditate. Sitting zazen is practicing zazen

Zen is both more and less formal, it accepts complications to its own teachings, because the moment you are in dictates what the right actions are. If you are being generous and compassionate, if you are being and not doing, not acting or pretending, then you are in Zen. Even washing the dishes is a Zen act, so long as you are only washing the dishes. All things can be Zen, not only sitting, not only time spent at the temple or the dharma. All things can be Zen, because being alive is Zen if you are truly being. One day I hope to truly understand what that means.

Sometimes I think back to the app and can’t help but wonder whether that ‘works’ for anyone. An app is easy - just sit down with your headphones on and do what it tells you to do - but maybe it’s too easy. There’s nothing to learn or integrate, and it doesn’t teach you the why’s or the skills to go on without it. I know in theory that meditation is helpful on its own, but meditating alone is isolating. Meditating without a community, without a teacher, without learning to meditate is more like spiritual consumption than spiritual practice.

I sit again most days now and I’m dedicated to keeping my own practice. One that incorporates the skills Dr. K taught me, the community and tools Kushok helped me to find, and shoshin - the Zen beginner’s mind I cultivate every day. I have so much to learn that I can see now I know nothing. I’m a beginner and I hope I always will be.