Become the Student
“Nothing characterizes us as much as our field of attention.”
-Jose Ortega y Gasset
Because of how I am and what I do, I’m in conversation with people all the time, personally and professionally. And it’s very rarely smalltalk. In all these rich and vulnerable discussions, I pick up on patterns regarding the ways that we, as humans, tend to feel, behave, and think. One such pattern that’s been popping up lately has to do with how we tend to feel, behave, and think when it comes to meditation. Ubiquitous as a concept but not having gotten a solid cultural foothold quite yet, meditation is the thing everyone senses they “should” be doing but struggles with how, or when, or where…or, if they’re totally honest, exactly why.
One thing’s for sure, it’s often very challenging to make a meditation practice as consistent as we say we want it to be. I can relate. And I’ve done a lot of reflecting, listening, and chatting with people about this challenge so I figured I’d share a bit of what we’ve come up with in the hopes that there’s a resonant gem in the mix that gives you a boost towards the practice you want, need, and deserve.
For a start, let’s consider why we struggle with committing to this thing that we know (because of empirical data and our own anecdotal evidence) is so healing, so beneficial to our bodies and minds, so consequential in our relationships and our experience of every present moment. To meditate is really the simplest request we could make of ourselves, at first glance. Just sit. Sit down and close your eyes. Sit down, close your eyes, and breathe. And the truth is, meditation is simple. But simple is not synonymous with easy. Simple is the opposite of complicated not the opposite of hard.
If you’re like me, you read all the books, listen to the podcasts, attend the classes. You write, reflect, discuss. All in service of having a deeper and more useful understanding of meditation as philosophy and as practice. When we transition from the content to the surrender of sitting we are, theoretically, integrating all we’ve learned. This is a powerful process. I experience it regularly so I can attest to the realness of it. Something I read in a book or heard in a talk is suddenly, without any premeditated (no pun intended) aim or effort, present with me, as an instruction, a reminder, or a comforting sense of validation while I’m sitting in meditation, doing my best to practice non-attachment.
And yet, despite knowing, by way of lived experience, how powerful and irreplaceable the experience of sitting is, there are still too many days when I don’t make the time. I tell myself that I’m practicing mindfulness all day long, which is true even if it implies the convenient omission of one very specific form of mindfulness practice. Even Thich Nhat Hanh says: “Whatever you do mindfully is meditation.” And I do have to give myself credit for meditating on that idea and successfully bringing a slower, more present, more deliberate engagement into each passing moment of my daily life, from the most ordinary to those that pack a punch. But, in my experience, living mindfully is the product of, and companion to, daily seated practice not a substitute for it.
I prefer to practice in silence (occasionally with ambient sound or music) and I prefer to practice alone. I love studio classes and seek them out here and there, but they’re the exception for me, a nice way to punctuate a month or so of private, quiet time with myself. I have a space in my home where my meditation cushions live, never moving, always in sight. I keep a journal there, some prompting decks of lovely cards from Kim Krans, and other tokens like crushed flower petals and good-smelling candles that evoke, for me, a centerning energy. My space is beside a window and I consider the trees I see and the birds I hear and the sky I witness as part of my meditation corner too. As the seasons change and my trees go from brilliant green to bare and snow-caked, I remind myself of the seasons in my own life, the shifts from blooming outward to recoiling in as some kind of restorative hibernation. The birdsong gives me an almost indescribable sense of connection to a world beyond my comprehension. It is a good and warm and welcoming space. I come to it every day. I come to it sad and happy and hopeful and anxious and lonely and loved and whole and broken and healing and strong. It remains and adjusts no matter what I bring to it and in that equanimity I find my way onto the middle path, between the overwhelm of too much anything…too much feeling of one singular state. There is such a sense spaciousness in a place like this, not measurable by any human instruments but an expansion that happens when you create and return to a place that mostly exists in yourself; a meditation cushion is simply an entry point to the real destination: your own interiority, ever-changing and steadfast as it is.
And yet….we find solidarity in talking about the conundrum here but it’s of the agitating sort because it’s great to know you’re not the only one but there’s also the feeling of let’s all get it together already, shall we?! This beautiful connection to a space and the accompanying sense of attunement to self is incredible and I’m so grateful that I was inspired (and shown) to create and commit to the ritual of spending time in my own curated corner. But what I mean to draw attention towards is how entering such a space is not the same as sitting. When I come to my meditation corner I always spend at least a few minutes seated, eyes closed, breathing. But sometimes it’s just those few minutes. Sometimes I let the energy of other things steer me from that practice, that posture, and into something else like writing or reading or moving my body. What could be wrong with any of that, you ask? Nothing, of course. But two things can be true. There is a time and place for all our practices. There is an order to things.
Really what I’m trying to convey, so that it might motivate me and perhaps be of some use to you, is that during those periods of my life when my seated practice has been most consistent and most robust, I have noticed shifts and changes that literally nothing else has come close to producing. There’s an expansion in the space between stimulus and response, a slowness in the moments I want to drink up, a steadiness in the moments I want to eject from, a softening around the edges when I’m challenged, and an attentiveness in my heart when I’m out in the world experiencing all that’s beautiful and all that’s horrific. The seated meditation practice leads us somewhere so unique, along a path where — if we bring self-compassion and patience and some gentle, guiding technique — we begin to see ourselves moving through every passing moment with something quite like grace.
When we’ve dedicated to a daily practice we will inevitably see subtle, and sometimes more remarkable, improvements in the foundational elements of being well and alive: sleep, energy, outlook — all intersecting results of how our physiology creates our emotions, all proof that will-power has been oversold by a shaming, capitalist culture that wants us to be constantly working, neglecting sleep, diet, exercise, and pleasure but also always calm, composed, and upbeat. Medications can’t replicate meditation’s results and neither can any positive thinking. Something happens when we sit, and then keep sitting, when we outstay the urge to run or the impulse to excuse ourselves for something else. When we recognize the voice that says sitting isn’t a productive use of time and we spend the hours and discussions necessary to unlearn that harsh conditioning, we become reborn. We allow ourselves to be humans first, before we go about being all the lovely, and sometimes difficult, things for everyone else.
When we become the student we are wide awake. When we ask ourselves to replace certainty with curiosity we are like fertile soil ready for roots to take hold. When we let go of deciding or instructing and simply sit still and let the moments wash over and through us, we are rescued from the trap of rapid pacing and dropped into a stillness that, even when we’re most distractible, is a very different backdrop for our thoughts, sensations, and mind-shifts. The most frustrating meditation is a far kinder, more beneficial use of time than all the running around and ruminating we’ll ever do, always.
To become teachable is a deeply worthy objective. I think what I’m saying here, in the end, is that I am re-dedicating to my practice now, with you as my witness. As life picks up speed and we so gleefully soak up the joy of reconnecting while parsing our attention to ensure we’re still engaging with all that has to change, I am doubling down on this notion that meditation makes me a more significant part of it all. My silent alone time sets me up for interconnectedness in ways that nothing else can.
To become teachable, to become the student, is to be as wise as one can be.
I hope you’ll join me in committing to this simple, difficult, life-altering journey of sitting, eyes closed, and breathing. Who knows what we can do when we meet again, off our cushions, more awake, more slow, more soft, more curious, more fiercely compassionate towards ourselves and each other.
I can’t wait to find out…