Book: Sit Like a Buddha
A few weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to begin a habit of meditation. I’ve noticed that I have a pretty difficult time fully concentrating on anything for more than a minute or two; this may seem like an exaggeration, but I truly find it almost impossible to keep my mind set on a single thing for two minutes at the exclusion of all else. I saw meditation as a way to isolate the action of focusing and practice it deliberately.
I began by reading a few articles of unverified veracity and sitting in silence for 10 minutes every morning, attempting to focus on my breathing. Invariably, I’d find myself growing anxious around minute seven or eight about whether I’d actually started the timer, and when minute ten hit, I would realize that I had spent very little time actually focusing on the breath. I then went through the 10-day introductory guided sequence on Headspace, and found that I would manage to distract myself in those few seconds between the narrator’s reminders to focus on the breath. Having seen little improvement in my ability to either meditate effectively or focus during the day, I reached out to one of my friends, a more experienced meditator, for advice.
She recommended the book Sit Like a Buddha, by Lodro Rinzler. This book is fairly short; it covers the basic techniques for mindfulness-focused meditation and how to apply techniques from meditation to daily life. It turns out that there isn’t really a shortcut to improving (surprise), and that I wasn’t missing any significant pieces besides a long history of practice that I would have to build up. However, one of the life lessons from the book, orthogonal to the practice of meditation itself, stood out to me.
That lesson is the concept of gentleness, which is important to meditation, but not exclusively related to it. Meditation is difficult and sometimes frustrating, but its practice should not intensify any emotions that you might be feeling. (It also shouldn’t actively dampen any emotions, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Importantly, you should not become angry at yourself when meditating. So when, during your practice, you notice your mind wandering, you should gently (rather than forcefully) bring your attention back to its intended focus. It’s easy, however, to think that gentleness means more than it actually does (e.g. suppression of emotions, a lack of discipline, etc.) and discredit its practice as a result; I personally think it makes the most sense to define gentleness as restraint from indulgence in anger, and nothing more.
Note that the restraint from indulgence in anger is different from the absence of anger itself. A lack of emotion is depression, which should never be our goal. Feeling angry when a slow driver is delaying you on the road is just as unavoidable as feeling happy when you find $1000 in your pocket or feeling scared while going up the first hill on a roller coaster. The gentle response to the slow driver is not suppressing your anger or frustration; it is driving normally and calmly passing the sluggish motorist at the next opportunity instead of honking and roaring past them as loudly as possible. This may seem like anger suppression, but remember that regardless of what you feel, you are still ultimately at liberty to choose your response, and gentleness describes the choice, rather than the feeling.
Restraint from indulgence in anger is also distinct from leniency or a lack of conviction. Even though those with the most conviction in their beliefs are often the quickest to anger, conviction is not necessarily coupled to anger — it’s just that those people are the quickest to find objections against the statements of others. Gentleness doesn’t mean giving up when the customer service phone rep doesn’t immediately give you what you want; it means refraining from yelling and swearing, and politely providing more information, asking about the policy, or requesting an escalation.
Indulging in anger leads us to be impulsive, to forget our priorities, and ultimately to make poor decisions. It causes us to behave vengefully, dangerously, and ignorantly, and to do things that generate no value besides the extremely temporary high of catharsis. The practice of gentleness frees us from these patterns and reminds us that regardless of what we may feel, we can always choose our own actions and continue to make good, rational decisions.