The Real Purpose of Meditation
(Spoiler — it’s NOT a calm, blissful, quiet mind)
Have you ever said, “I can’t meditate” or “I’m not good at meditation?” Meditation is referenced a lot these days in various contexts and ways, and I appreciate that it is a term, a practice, and an idea that is becoming more and more mainstream and not just an esoteric, exotic thing that hippies or “spiritual” people do. But I continue to come across the overt and subtle notion that meditation is done to transcend — to get away from your thoughts and feelings or to find a persistent state of calm or ease or a blank, quiet, non-thinking, blissful mind. That is an erroneous view of what meditation is. It might be why you decide to try it, but it is not the purpose of meditation.
Many people think they can’t do meditation right if they do not experience these things when they sit down on the cushion — ease, calm, blissful, quiet mind. It’s true those things can happen when you meditate, but they are not the goal or purpose of meditation. As a long-time Tibetan Buddhist teacher of mine, Reggie Ray, says, “the purpose of meditation is to make room for our own chaos.”
The purpose of meditation is to make room for your own chaos.
Usually the first thing that happens when you stop what you are doing and sit down to meditate is that you become aware of the chaos of your own state of being — your racing mind, your beating heart, the tangle of tension in your back, the pit of unease in your stomach. You feel the whirling unending state of your own aliveness. That can be rather terrifying and uncomfortable, which is why it so hard to get yourself to the cushion to do it. Bliss is usually no where in sight and feels like an impossible notion. Then an extra layer of suffering can (and usually does) come in if you think the whole point is to be calm, at ease, and in a state of transcendent bliss and you are anything but. So of course you say, “I can’t meditate. I’m not good at it.” And once you get up, you likely don’t ever make it back.
Choosing to engage in the practice of meditation is choosing to bring your awareness to, and make room for, the chaos of your aliveness. In this way, it is a practice of choosing to accept yourself and your own life just as it is, not to change it, get away from it, or transcend it. The more you make room for that chaos, the more you actually do get to experience prolonged periods of ease and calm because you allow the chaos to be known. You accept the truth of its presence and make room for it, rather than keeping yourself stuck in an ongoing state of trying to maintain control or manage it by doing doing doing doing doing. The peace and calm and quiet come not just because you sit down on the cushion to meditate and expect that’s what’s supposed to happen. No, those things come from you making room for the chaos of your life without holding on so tight in order to change, maintain, or control it.
So if you can sit down in a chair or on a cushion, become aware of and stay for a time with the intense chaos of your whirling mind, your vibrating body, your roller coaster up and down ride of emotions, the vice-grip in your back and breathe, then you can meditate.
This is how you develop kindness and acceptance toward yourself. It doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. As another teacher of mine, Pema Chödrön, says,
“…We can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of [meditation] practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, thats what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.”
I don’t know about you, but when I truly understand meditation this way, I find it much easier to get to the cushion. I understand why I’m doing it — to go further into my chaotic aliveness, rather than further away from it. I also find it much easier to show up to the chaos of life that is always happening off the cushion and to be able to find some ease and keep breathing in the pandemonium of it all.
Samantha Wallen, MFA is a poet, writer, restorative writing mentor, book coach and the Founder of Write In Power. Her work focuses on restoring the human spirit one word at a time…
