A Meditation on the New Year
We don't sit in meditation to become good mediators. We sit in meditation so that we'll be more awake in our lives.
— Pema Chödrön
I mentioned in my birthday post that I had started a meditation practice. I can appreciate why people refer to it as a practice rather than an activity. Sitting still, almost entirely quiet, with only your mind is hard. More challenging still is finding the time and the will to sit down in silence.
The goal of sitting daily has become something I am only doing three times a week. At first, I was on the floor and then a flat pillow. After a week of that, I bought myself a zafu, a meditation cushion, to help with my posture and back. That has definitely helped with how uncomfortable it was to sit at the beginning. But sitting is only one part of that challenge; sitting in silence is a greater challenge because of our monkey brain.
I read that phrase first in 10% Happier by Dan Harris and find it to be the perfect description of what happens to us when we sit alone without a distraction. Even while washing dishes by hand, our mind tends to waver—replaying the day, jumping ahead to what needs to be done, or fixating on something someone said. As a beginner at this, I have been trying hard to bring the meditation back to my breath to help ground me and not find myself going down the path of emotions rehashing that difficult conversation or stressing about everything I should be doing rather than sitting.
It’s not easy, but just like how working out builds muscles and exercises get easier in time, I am finding it easier to pull myself back to my breathing. I am also finding it more comfortable sitting there in the quiet with myself. So much so, that I am starting to actively think about when I am going to sit. I caught myself driving home recently and thinking about how good it would feel to sit later.
Meditation has been on my mind often since I wrote about it in November, and being reinforced by the reading I am doing lately. Dan Harris’ book, another short one by Chögyam Trungpa (Training the Mind), and cruising through Lodro Rinzler’s Buddha Walks Into the Office. What spurred me to write wasn’t those writings, but instead something Ryan Holiday wrote in his year-end newsletter, You Should Do Something Really, Really Hard This Year:
Doing hard things is good for you. Challenging yourself is good for you. Because life is hard and life is challenging.
Ryan references his achievement of running the original route of the marathon in Greece this past year in that piece. At first, I didn’t want to compare that singular athletic achievement to a meditation practice. The more I thought of it though, meditation is my own marathon spread out on a much larger timescale. It does take a lot of work to do, both mentally and physically, and will be rewarding throughout the marathon, not just at the end.
I feel good about building this practice up slowly and look forward to seeing where this journey takes me. I am being careful not to give myself a hard time if I miss a day or two. I am doing my best, I have made a lot of progress in two months, and I know if I continue I will be much better off than if I don’t do it at all.
This is the time of year that people start talking about the new year resolutions, and what they want to achieve this year. I think a lot of those fail because people are too hard on ourselves for missing a workout or spending too much. We catch ourselves slipping and increase the effort to make up for lost ground which leads to burning ourselves out.
The better approach is to stop treating each day as a pass or fail exercise. Meditation, for example, is not something to succeed at. It is something I need to return to. Each session reminds me that the reason to sit is not to quiet the mind, but to notice all the thoughts and emotions flying by. To recognize them for what they are and that they don’t last forever.
As the year begins, instead of setting a resolution, I am setting an intention. I am not trying to become a better meditator. I am trying to be more awake in my own life. If this practice helps me do that, even imperfectly, then it is already doing its job.
A few quick links for anyone interested in starting their own practice.
An online and print magazine with lots of free resources available to get started.
A free app with guided meditations, deep relaxations and other practices offered by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and his monastic community. Also has podcasts, videos, and tracks the meditation time (can sync with Apple Health).
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