Rest Now

Meditation is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and one of the few hard things I never gave up. I’m still doing it because it brings joy, awareness, wisdom, and insight. It has answered some of my biggest questions. It is a deeply mysterious art, confusing at the beginning, confusing in the middle. There are lots of different methods, systems, and goals. What’s really essential about meditation? Below I take you through my life’s journey to my answer.

Thinking meditation

One of my fondest childhood memories was staring out the bay window in our living room, day or night. During the day, you can see squirrels running through black walnut, oak, and maple trees. During the night, you can’t see anything. I would stare anyway, for hours. My mom tried valiantly to get me to bed. She would yell from her bedroom to the living room:

“Adit, what are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Well why don’t you drink your milk, brush your teeth, and think in bed?”
“Sure.” I promptly forgot this conversation. After ten minutes…
“Adit, what are you doing?!”
“Thinking.”
. . .

Even now I wonder, what was this “thinking?” I remember watching my thoughts come and go, like fish in an aquarium. My mind must have been wandering naturally, not linearly like they taught me at school, or anxiously like they taught me in the world. I remember having beautiful thoughts and making innovative connections, almost as if I was learning… from myself. I didn’t know what meditation was when I was ten, but I believe this was an early experience of it — “watching thoughts with detachment.” It took decades before my busy mind quieted down and I could experience this joy again.

Body meditation

Over the last decade, I discovered sensation and embodied meditation, and much of my previous blog is about it. I danced through difficult emotions, healed trauma from the past, and found my art. With sensory awareness, I learned to slow down and feel all the sensations of walking, sitting, or even pain. I learned to move my mind’s eye methodically through points in the body from head to toe, similar to Burmese body scanning practices taught by S.N. Goenka. I studied the long strokes of Esalen-style massage, described as a “moving meditation”. Doing various body-oriented practices along with mantra, mindfulness and seated meditation, I grew my idea of what meditation can be. Some talk about meditation as “absorption” — losing your “self” — and this was certainly possible in movement as well as stillness. Others likened meditation to optimal challenge and flow state. So I imagined that playing video games or making music or love could be meditation too.

Breathing meditation

Three years ago, I made a clean break. I had this unshakeable feeling that my life was corrupt to the core. I had tasted success as a businessman, as a healer, as an artist. And yet I felt stagnant and unfulfilled. Over a few weeks, only gradually learning myself how crazy my vision was, I gave up most of my stuff and said an uncertain goodbye to friends and family. I bought a one-way ticket. I was going to Asia and get serious about meditation. If there was a monastery I liked, I was going to join it, and spend 5 years, or 50, meditating. Giving up dancing and massage and work, I went on one silent meditation retreat after another, in Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka, following the austere form of Buddhism, called Theravada. I gave up all my other meditation techniques too, focusing entirely on the Buddha’s original, simple anapanasati, awareness of the sensations of breathing.

As my body gradually learned the practice of meditation, my mind leapt back and forth between the manic joys of “figuring it all out,” and the agony of disillusionment. In the mania, I promised myself to “stay aware” all the time. I tried the Buddha’s famous challenge to be totally mindful for a week. I even thought I had a cure for sciatica. In the disillusion, I was sadder than I ever was. Meditation was just too hard, enlightenment was humanly impossible, and I wasn’t getting anywhere in my practice. Sometimes in frustration I forced myself to sit for hours, in a sort of misguided, childish version of discipline that robbed me of any inspiration to practice.

In meditation, we are invited into a deeper relationship with our extremes, and we are forced to moderate between them. In time I found a “middle way” between joy and disillusion, between discipline and sloth. I discovered a practice that was enjoyable and thereby sustainable. I found a stillness in body, breath, and mind, that is still present with me. Given the insight of many meditations, I decided that my purpose was not to meditate in a cave for the rest of my life, but to work with people in some way.

Mindfulness meditation

Last year, I turned more to mindfulness practice, interested in bringing meditation to every moment. The Buddha’s instructions are as simple as this, “When you are walking, know that you are walking.” This doesn’t mean we should mindlessly repeat “I am walking” in our head, but that’s a start. Feeling the sensations of every part of both feet as they contact the ground might be more effective. With something so simple, so fundamental, it’s easy to bring awareness to almost any moment on the subway, at work, at home.

I developed a few body visualizations to use everyday to return to present-moment awareness. In one, I imagined my body expanding in all directions, growing to the size of the city, earth, solar system, and universe. In work conversations, I imagined light emanating from a point of energy between us, expanding backward and forward like an hourglass. When I felt stress, I scanned through the body, feeling for extraneous muscle tension in my back and neck. Sometimes I simply returned to my breath.

Find rest now

Amma, the “hugging saint”, has marathon satsangs where she hugs thousands of people and sings devotional songs. Considering her long days, a devotee once asked her, “When do you rest?” She responded, “I’m always resting.” I found this response telling. I think Amma has a sense that she is always resting in God. Even awake or working, she abides in a restful energy. What if we can have the same kind of rest during our active day? What if we could pause our busy mind, and relax into the present at will?

I found a place inside that is totally still, emanating a sensation of infinity. I found my still place by staring out the window, breathing, and dancing. You can find yours through faith and practice. Sometimes I can effortlessly abide in this stillness in a blissful or almost-thoughtless state. Other times, I’m enmeshed in the affairs of the world. While I cannot bypass thoughts, feelings, and self-identification, I can always add awareness of this stillness. With awareness returns the confidence that “this too shall pass.” There will be a moment when the anxiety of the present gives way again to nothing. When I remember this, I can meditate in any place, in any moment.

With your breath, body, or mind, I invite you to join me here, in the present. We can relax a bit, and take a load off. Finding rest in any one moment, we are peaceful. Finding rest in all moments, we are liberated.