Yet Another One On Meditation
“We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.”
—Li Bai
A lot of people these days start meditating to run away from the daily stresses of life. Not that it’s wrong or anything, it’s just your plat du jour, everyone’s into meditation. Corporations do this. Individuals do this. It’s a hack to be more mindful, to gain back the ability to focus — long lost by many, myself included.
I was 14 when I started zazen. Today, I sometimes remind myself that I’d been meditating before it became trendy. I’ve been on and off. At a certain point, my early teenage dreams of escaping into a zen monastery drifted away like a vague dream. At times, the vicissitudes of adolescence long gone, I find myself thinking, “I need to get back to daily meditation practice”, like everyone else, to run away from the pressures of online and offline social life. Mostly online, I think — since a lot of work communication and pressure happens in email and other work-related digital tools.
The reason I started meditating was to reach something. Satori, I don’t know. Not to escape. In a while, with practice, you start to realize that zazen is not about achieving, it’s about… just being. It’s the time when all you do is nothing.
I’ve been on and off the practice for the past few years. In 2013 and 2014, I meditated on average about every third day. 2012 and 2015 were meh. Then, this year, I decided it was time to get back on the meditation train. I was pregnant, just past my first trimester, losing any ability to focus on about anything. The longing for this essential me-time (much more important than any pampering and spa-time recommended by multiple beauty and wellness blogs) got me. So, on the 1st of June, I started meditating, with the ambition to “not break the chain” — that is, meditate every day for as long I can.
I’m past my 150th day in a row now.
As much as I love Headspace, this time I decided to go without any support or guidance. Simply sit and do nothing, and be nothing. Count breaths. Watch the thoughts as they come and go, like little fluffy clouds. Get bored. Get annoyed when the thoughts would come but wouldn’t go. Sit still through all of it.
Additional challenges that came with my, ehm, condition:
- Hard to impossible to sit cross-legged for any meaningful period of time. In pregnancy, it’s not good to interfere with blood flow in your legs. Lying down proved to be not the best option, so eventually I sat either in a chair, or with my back against the wall. Supporting your back is not recommended in meditation, but for now this is my choice.
- Baby pushing inside you. This makes it more difficult to concentrate, and at the same time, it’s a good practice in mindfulness. Something that’s intrinsically yours, and that you can’t control, only accept.
- “Pregnancy brain”. The mere lack of ability to find your mental center anymore. Yet, it, too, proved to be a blessing in disguise. You let go easier. You stop fighting the feeling, just going with the flow. You let it be.
The biggest current question for me is: what do I do when and especially after the baby is born? Will I be able to not break the chain? With labor, I’m guessing, some part of it (initial stage) is going to be meditative, with all the need to relax and breathe and let go. So I’m planning to count this as meditation practice (unless it’s not). After than, everything is covered in haze. I have no idea how exactly my life is going to change emotionally, and part of it, I don’t know what will happen to my zazen practice.
I sometimes have “cheat days”. When it so happens that I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to afford even a quarter of an hour to sit and do nothing, I fire up the Pause app for three minutes and doze off to its calming sounds and a silly-looking but very satisfying moving the growing colorful blob across iPhone screen. I guess I’ll resort to that — even the busiest baby day I think can allow for a brief meditation snack.
On another note, when I mention meditation, I sometimes get asked: what changed. And when I say, nothing, the question is: why do you do it then? I’m not waiting for any special effects. Not that I need this as a hack to achieve more, better, stronger. For me, meditation is reminding myself about the vicious cycle of repeating thoughts, anxieties and worries. To cool off and remember that it doesn’t have to be this way. To slow down. To avoid duality and thinking in black and white. Not to run away or escape. Rather, to stay the same, but in a slightly different perspective, like your feet stop touching the ground.
This is enough.
