There’s a lot of misunderstanding about meditation. In fact, says Karen Maezen Miller, that’s pretty much all that meditation is — the process of seeing how very much you’ve misunderstood about it and everything else.
We might be drawn to meditation because we want more out of life and ourselves. We might want to be more centered, for example. More peaceful. More focused. More balanced. More patient. More mellow. More wise. More like my ex-boyfriend who liked to meditate.
These may be all the reasons we are drawn to meditation, but they are not the reasons we meditate. We meditate because there is a six-foot flame dancing on top of our heads. It has made us mighty uncomfortable for quite some time up there. We try to pretend otherwise, but have you noticed? We have a fire on our heads! It keeps crossing the containment lines! The temperature shoots up and we prance about, panicked, frantic, holding our breath lest we stoke the inferno, but it rages anyway. About the time our eyebrows singe, we might heed the call of rescue.
That’s how bad it has to get. If meditation is one of an array of self-improvement options you are considering, you probably won’t do it. By all means, try the ninety-minute massage first! Get the new wardrobe and the hair tint! Meditation is the option of having no other option, no higher goal, and no more righteous intention than saving your sorry ass from a living hell.
Everything happens when you meditate. Whole worlds are dismantled, innumerable scores are settled, grievous deeds are undone, and the entire universe settles at rest.
This is why I was so fortunate to have smacked headfirst into Zen meditation. Because in Zen, you see, we don’t meditate on anything. We don’t meditate on world peace, for instance, or loving-kindness, or forgiveness, or to acquire any of the lofty virtues that we or our dastardly neighbors so glaringly lack. Meditating on something else would just fuel the conflagration up top. We might be reminded — as if we needed reminding — of what we don’t have, how we don’t act, what we don’t like, who said what to whom and how lousy we feel because of it. We meditate instead to quench the flame on our heads, to quiet the torment and silence the roar. That alone brings salvation, peace, love, and forgiveness. How? By itself. We have a wellspring of all that within us, a deep and eternal aquifer of fire retardant, when we give ourselves the breathing room to find it.
That’s what we do in Zen meditation, or zazen. Breathe. Simply breathe, attending to our own breath as it rises and falls, fills and empties, counting it from one to ten and all over again just to give our brilliant brains something to do. We do this with our eyes open, looking at a wall or the floor in front of us. It’s easy to think we don’t know how to do it, and easy to think we’re not doing it right, but this is the way to see that thoughts like that are just — oh yeah, look at that — thoughts, and we start counting again.
“Imagine that your nose is two inches beneath your navel,” I read in one set of instructions. That may not be an appealing picture in your mind, so don’t picture it in your mind. Don’t picture it, and you’ll immediately learn something amazing about yourself. Just by hearing the words, you automatically release the cinch in your belly, and your breath instantly deepens and slows down. For all the wayward searching for truth and authenticity in our lives, breathing is the most original, authentic, and autonomous thing we do. You know how to breathe, and only you can do it.
In Zen, you see, we don’t meditate on anything. We don’t meditate on world peace, for instance, or loving-kindness, or forgiveness, or to acquire any of the lofty virtues that we or our dastardly neighbors so glaringly lack.
“I feel dignified,” I wrote after my first solo attempt at sitting still. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt a breeze waft over my head. The breeze was my own breath. The breath was my own life. The dignity was my birthright.
Meditation is misunderstood because it doesn’t look like anything happens in those torturous few minutes of motionlessness. But everything happens when you meditate. Whole worlds are dismantled, innumerable scores are settled, grievous deeds are undone, and the entire universe settles at rest.
Most of us say about ourselves: “I have a hard time letting go.” Exhalation is the most complete expression of letting go, and we do it without thinking thirty thousand times a day. You know how to let go, and only you can do it.
Meditation is misunderstood as something you envision in your head, when in fact it is something to be seen with your own eyes. What you begin to see is that the place where you thought your life occurred — the cave of rumination and memory, the cauldron of anxiety and fear — isn’t where your life takes place at all. Those mental recesses are where pain occurs, but life occurs elsewhere, in a place we are usually too preoccupied to notice, too distracted to see: right in front of our eyes. The point of meditation is to stop making things up and see things as they are.
When I give meditation instruction these days, I ask students to lift their arms up to eye level, wiggle their fingers, and see for themselves. That’s where your life is, that’s where your life has always been, in front of you, and now you know how I got mine back.
From Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, ©2010 by Karen Maezen Miller. Reproduced with permission of New World Library.
Thank you, Maezen, for the reminder of what I've heard from you many times but seem to keep forgetting.
This I can do. Thank you.
Comments via Facebook:
Marc Hussein Matheson: Loved her recently article in the Sun!!
BigSky Friend: Wow, I love this, so very well put!
Pam Forsyth: Beautifully written. I've been struggling a little lately with the feeling that I've been getting meditation wrong. This explains it all simply and perfectly. I'll definitely be checking out Karen's book.
Kay Flatt: I'll be reading it too.. Great Stuff.
What we do wrong is think we do it wrong. Whatever we think, it only matters that we keep going. So let's all keep going.
Thanks for sharing! Can`t wait to read the whole book.
I purchased a copy just before leaving on a trip with some friends. Instead of plowing through six books in a week, I paused and savored Hand Wash Cold over six days, then handed it to a friend I knew would love it. Came home to purchase another copy either for my own rereads or to give away. I'll know what to do when the time comes.
Thanks Karen — it made my week.
"Exhalation is the most complete expression of letting go…" Indeed.
I exhale. And then I meet myself wherever I am.
zazen is hard. I hope that one day it does bring me peace. Right now ,it drives me insane. I count my breath and count my breath and try not counting my breath and my nose itches and my back hurts and where's that stupid bell, anyways?
Maybe one day it won't be like this. I don't do zazen for the expereince of doing zazen I do it for the clarity of mind and peace of body that comes when the bell rigns and I go back to my real Practice, Life.
without even looking, one thing leads to another
This seriously made my morning. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a six-foot flame to put out …
I do seriously struggle with acceptance and letting go so the exercise of putting your fingers out in front of you is fun and enlightening!
a six foot flame – now I'm remember that!
I cant wait to read this book.. I love how down to earth the thoughts are…
I think I'm at exactly that point where I have 'no other option, no higher goal' , I simply want to make it through each day without feeling as though the banshees are coming to get me. Thank you for this reminder that meditation really is the only way out, or back, or in, or through…
I never really realised until I read this that I do, after all, practice Zen meditation, even if I call it other things. I guess I don't have to change the name of my blog after all.
Wonderful metaphors! The flame is exactly why I meditate.
You have made such an impact on my daily life. There are countless times when I am doing something that I have previously considered mundane and now I experience as a prayerful meditation. Thank you so much.
Grace
I have to agree with Grace. Your blog is my entry to a day spent cooking, cleaning, folding lundry and breathing my way through it, instead of complaining. You have given me the gift of joy with your words and wisdom.
As for zazen…I just keep turning up and sitting on that cushion. Some days the whirlwind in my mind never seems to settle; other days its quieter in there.
Thanks for everything. I have ordered a copy of your new book and eagerly await its arrival. It takes longer on this side of the pond!! [Ireland]
Great advice. Concentrated breathing is the method I use to calm myself when I'm stressing over problems with my dogs or my 17 month old whose temper tantrums disturb me. I hope to teach her to breathe and calm herself as she matures, as a means for coping with frustrations she feels.
Rebecca, its interesting but you wont need to "teach" your daughter this capacity, she will download it from you, really, that's the word the neuropsychologists use. Her brain learns directly from yours. Check out Dan Siegel's The Developing Mind or any of his books for information on this.
… which is the same principle that KMM says in another post that we dont need to teach children meditation. they learn from how we be, with ourselves and with others, very naturally.
love this. love you. yes, the fire. first, i dance fire. then, i sit and let the flame dance me. with breath…life's dance. thank you from that soulful place for your continued poetic wisdom. my appreciation is roaring.
Hands stretched out before me, palms turned up. I'll meet you here.
Thank you for this. While I cannot often sit in formal meditation, tuning into my breath is something I cam always do. It is always with me.
Just breathe — the easiest things to do are sometimes the most difficult.
Thank you for sharing.
I have never heard the six-foot flame on my head phrase! i love it. that's what i feel like. i need to tame that flame. like. now.
Exhale.
thank you for making this so clear.
I love this perspective- there's something incredibly freeing in just the thought of your description of zen meditation
Thank you.
Sharp and gentle all at once… thank you!
“I feel dignified,” I wrote after my first solo attempt at sitting still. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt a breeze waft over my head. The breeze was my own breath. The breath was my own life. The dignity was my birthright.
Well said. Great post.
OH, and now I can't wait to read your book. I love your writing style, so glad a friend sent me your way.
It's hard to love what we don't like, but that's what love is. Love begins when judgment ends. Thank you.
still trying. daily. sigh (big breath out)
Of course that's all we do: still try, daily, breathing out and in, always coming home, a happy event.