How I Discovered True Meaning of Buddha-Nature One Yarn Roll at a Time
Knitting, Meditation & Connection
I discovered knitting as a young child; it was a kind of thing that sort of just happened. One year, as the dead of winter set in, the women in my extended family, namely my mother and grandmother and some of the neighborhood ladies, would get together to knit and share stories in the afternoon and sometimes after dinner too. It was where you found out all about the latest gossip, the inner secrets, and even us kids could pretend to be part of an exclusive grown-up club, so naturally, I was drawn to it.
I was initially put in charge of rolling the yarn into a ball — it doesn't sound very interesting, but all I remember was having so much fun sitting in the company of my favorite people, listening to stories, and slowly but surely rolling the yarn into a ball. For those new to knitting, yarn often comes in the form of a skein, also known as a hank. A skein (or a hank) is a loop of yarn twisted into a coil that needs to be rolled into a ball before you can knit with it; otherwise, it will end up in a very tangled mess!
Occasionally, one of the women would show me a stitch or two but mostly what I learned was that a good time could be had when people came together to create something — literally anything — a scarf, a sweater, or even just making yarn balls. So that was where I got started in my knitting apprenticeship — and I was hooked on the feeling of connection.
After spending an entire holiday season, following and watching the women knit, I was given my own set of needles and yarn, and as soon as I finished my first knit and purl row, I felt so proud, and grandma declared me to be an official part of this exclusive club — I was a knitter and by extension a creator!
Alas, my knitting career was short-lived, mostly because physics, chemistry, and biology provided a competing call, and before I knew it, I was spending my summers and winters in a lab and forgot all about knitting.
Years (ahem, decades!) later, I found myself exploring meditation/mindfulness practices — I have previously written about mindfulness, essentially as I understand it, mindfulness is about becoming aware of one’s experiences. It can involve developing an awareness of our body, our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions.
Briefly, our mind and body work together to help us adapt to our surroundings, and there’s a constant drive for our brain to connect the dots of our moment to moment experiences. It is undoubtedly beneficial to understand our present experiences as they connect with our past and to imagine their impact on our future. Similarly, we can learn from our past and plan for our future, and this internal drive to understand and make sense of the world can’t be overestimated.
In fact, it may be the most compelling sign of the adaptive and prosocial nature of our unconscious mind. It also explains our bursts of creative insight and our remarkable ability to feel, for example, our close friend’s unhappiness when she’s having a hard time.
However, this unconscious drive also keeps us from living in the present — The practice of mindfulness then can be seen as essentially a practice to live fully by separating moments — living in the present, learning from our past, and preparing for our future.
Before we continue, it is worth mentioning that there are several methods to get started in mindfulness or meditation, and you might have to try several ways to find the one that resonates with you. It is also worth noting that a wide range of experiences is possible when engaging in the meditative process and that it may not be the right approach for everyone.
As I became intrigued by mindfulness and wanted to explore what the hype was all about, I was apprehensive. I gave it an earnest try and explored various meditation/mindfulness practices and several attempts that at times left me wondering if indeed it was “working,” and I was unsure about how I was supposed to know.
And then, on a mild spring day, something shifted as I met an experienced teacher who later became a mentor. My teacher’s openness and invitation to explore meditation on my own was somehow freeing, and I realized that I wasn’t supposed to “do anything,” and there was not a “way to feel” but rather, meditation is a practice in learning to remain nonjudgmental, allowing an experience. Being completely present as an observer while being a practitioner at the same time felt good. Just like that, and at that moment, It felt possible to own a version of meditation practice — one that has deep roots in several Buddhist and Hindu traditions.
In a simple way, the goal of my meditation practice is in a way to regulate attention, a sort of “thinking about not thinking,” to expand the attentional scope and to incorporate the flow of perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and subjective awareness. As I have described elsewhere, I now envision mindfulness as an ongoing life construction with three core pillars: Awareness, Contemplation, and Enthusiasm. When I focus on each of the three components, it strengthens my mindfulness practice.
As I reflect on the beginning of my meditation practice, my mind sometimes rests on some of the early experiences of knitting. The early practices I learned knitting seem somehow relevant to my approach to meditation practice.
For instance, simple tools made with bamboo and wool, much like the humble meditation cushion, simultaneously grounds and open up a world of possibilities. With the space created and intention setting, one can remain open to what comes. And what comes is constantly changing — stitch by stitch, row by row. Like, meditation, in knitting, there is no past, no present, no future, only change.
There is rhythmicity to both noticing your breath and similarly, once the rhythm is created to stitches on the yarn — Insert needle, loop yarn, pull through and repeat — focused attention and then watching the mind wander, only to bring it back to the action — be it breath or yarn.
Be it alone or in a group, knitting like meditation requires becoming mindful of attention — When the mind quiets, and attention is on hands, needles, and yarn, the world opens, just noticing — the soft sound of needles clicking, the color, texture, light — to experience all things, to feel present and connected. In its essence, both knitting and meditation teach us that in learning to be present, there is no thinking of the outcome, a sense of wholeheartedness, felt and experienced.
There is also a kind of learning critical to both knitting and meditation, and that is learning to let go of expectation and revel in the interconnectedness of all things. In this era of hyper-efficiency and uber productivity, it’s easy to wonder — why knit when you can buy — choosing to knit then is choosing a kind and joyful practice, a slow craft that allows one to make mistakes, a setting of intention to slow down, find connection with oneself, the yarn and with each other. This is a kind of simple vow — a vow to let go of expectation and to work towards the betterment of all sentient beings — discovering our own Buddha-nature one stitch and breath at a time.
It is probably worth defining the prize involved — Irrespective of religious or spiritual beliefs, for the purposes of this quest, Buddha-nature here is referring to a core idea that the soul in its purest form is love energy — our “Buddha nature” — our place of unconditional love and compassion.
Perhaps my teachers' simple invitation to meditate allowed me to feel free and simultaneously a connection with a fellow meditator, I was invited to be a part of the fellowship of seekers. In an intriguing way, my grandmother, inviting me to become a creator, a knitter several years earlier, somehow made it possible for me to experience meditation and mindfulness. I hope to continue to learn and grow in both knitting and meditation, finding a connection with one breath and a ball of yarn at a time.
Thank you for reading!
What’s next: Perhaps Lynn E. O’Connor, PhD ‘s piece about:
Also, tagging ScienceDuuude and Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) as your recent pieces served as a sort of inspiration:
