Sudden ease
Every Sunday I go for a prolonged meditation session as opposed to my daily 10 minute morning one. I remember meditation being so hard a year ago. I started with just five minutes every morning and it was a sincere challenge to just… meditate.
Then there was this journey to try and go to 10 minutes. At that time every Sunday I meditated for 20 minutes. I failed so many times, I opened my eyes at around 15 minutes because I just couldn’t bear to continue.
Over time I was able to get to 20 minutes but holy crap was it hard. I slowly crept up to 30 minutes and eventually got to 40 minutes or so, but at the end of every meditation session I was gasping because I was that exhausted. I needed to collect myself and I almost wanted to cry many times.
Before I realized it I was able to meditate in peace for a prolonged amount of time. What happened? I want to recollect what happened today because I missed it as it was happening.
When I listen to my Buddhist teacher give dharma talks, many people respond: “I’ll try my hardest to follow what you said”. Then my teacher responds, “Why do you need to ‘try’ instead of just doing? Why do you need to try your ‘hardest’? Don’t do that, just do it”.
Some people understand the deeper meaning at this point, but others ask: “Then do I have to force myself to do it?” and the response is, “No, you shouldn’t force yourself to do anything”. Then the questioner makes a dumbfounded face. This is interesting because it reveals that for you to do something you don’t want to do naturally, you HAVE to try and do it force yourself to do it.
Is that really the only choice?
Watching other struggle with this question is one thing. I’ve watched so many dharma talks I can predict what my teacher will say. “Ah, this person’s got it all wrong; they’re trying, and that’s why they’re suffering”. But when it comes to me, am I meditating or am I trying to meditate? Am I meditating or am forcing myself to meditate?
One aspect of it is definitely mental. But I think I’d be doing everyone a great disservice if I didn’t mention the physical side of things. My wife and I, when we got married you couldn’t pay us to exercise. We hated moving more than necessary and after some time it really started to show. Since individually we wouldn’t work out for ever, we decided to do something together: we got a groupon for a pilates class.
Since then I became a jiujitsu fanatic and my wife became a pilates instructor. But we both agree on what is the hardest of them all: Ballet. Ballet is just on another level of physical difficulty. Then we think it’s a tie between yoga and judo. Based on all the things we tried, anyway. Yoga is so, so hard and it kicks our asses every time but since I started meditating I started to grow a different perspective of yoga.
Why do meditators do yoga and why do yogis meditate? I started experiencing that link. The same kind of concentration I use to not drift my attention away in meditation was used in yoga to breathe one more time in that pose without breaking it. This started to give me an idea about intentionally practicing yoga.
Then I did my Buddhist training temple stay. During the temple stay we lived 5 days without chairs. We just sat on the floor and the amount of pain I accrued in my hips and lower back was near unbearable; I think I would have been bedridden if I stayed for a week with a little bit of exaggeration.
After I came back I found the need to do something about this. I remembered in NYC’s Jo-Gei Korean Temple there is a yoga class offered for zen practitioners. Hmm, there must be a zen yoga, and I searched it on YouTube and boom! There it was. Yoga specifically designed for zen practitioners.
It was extremely hard and I still can’t do about 3 of the moves. But over time I got a lot better at it and the hip mobility I gained from that practice is one of the most significant factors in me not “trying” meditation anymore.
Another thing I learned in the temple stay was half lotus, instead of the full lotus. I insisted on the full lotus and while it was painful I think there was a lot of value in going full lotus from the get go. It significantly aided the ability to move past physical pain. But now that I was so used to feeling pain during meditation, when I learned half lotus I found a new sense of tranquility I never experienced before.
That came with a side effect of more distractions. With pain the distractions are channeled into one stream: pain. Without pain the distraction became a bit more dispersed and I found myself drifting off more often than before.
All of the above things happened and on one Sunday I was meditating and I realized that I had meditated for a complete 70 minutes and I didn’t feel like dying. It was so effortless I realized it the next day. What happened?
First, I developed the mental ability to stay focused in big and small distractions. Then I developed the physical ability to be relaxed in a certain position for a prolonged amount of time. The mixture of this passively granted the ability to not try. And this is how I integrated Buddha’s middle way.
Withstanding pain is noble. However, insisting on withstanding is an attachment of its own. Comfort to the point of relaxation is important. However, lingering in the comfort can be an obstacle in your path.
I was able to get here by trying. Trying is not somewhere we want to be as a destination but it makes for a fine stepping stone. So much knowledge and external help got me to this state. You get to your destination by going, not learning about things but it makes for a fine walking stick.
Wherever you are in your life and whatever your goal is, this kind of sudden ease is available to you to as long as you go down the path. Yes, sometimes you’ll encounter obstacles. But those obstacles have nothing to do with your ability to get to your path and today I’d even argue that the obstacles are part of the path.
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