I've been critical of normal "meditation", in which you sit still, focus on your breath, and attempt to empty your mind of thoughts. If I spend half an hour playing piano, not only do I have a good time, but I make clear progress in whatever little thing I'm working on. Not so with meditation, a tedious chore with no obvious benefit. But I've come to appreciate a subtle benefit, which is that I become nicer at correcting myself.
As a beginner, you're not going to go three seconds with a blank mind, before you slip back into thinking again. Maybe it takes another three seconds to notice and try again. Do the math: that's ten times a minute, or 300 times in half an hour, that you're correcting yourself. It's impossible to get mad at yourself that much. Inevitably, you're going to learn to re-center yourself without making such a fuss. And this is going to rub off on all kinds of other things, not only mistakes you make, but annoying things the world does, like pop-up windows and traffic lights.
From Ran Prieur’s 086.
This is very much my experience with meditation, except I never had this expectation to have a clear mind. I'm not sure why actually, but I just figured that simply being in silence was much better than whatever I was doing on the computer. But the practice of refocusing without making a fuss about it is very valuable in my experience. It helps you develop something that is infinitely more valuable than sitting in peace on a cushion, which is the patience to navigate the chaos of life.
There will always be things that don't go according to your plans, and that's just life. Honestly, in many ways that's probably a good thing, because plans have a way of becoming very tedious very quickly. But real peace comes from the ability to deal with any situation, not from the desperate hope that nothing problematic will occur. So letting go of the resistance is very valuable in my experience, because you can refocus without adding extra tension.
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2024-08-25