During a conversation the other day, a friend confessed that the quality of her meditation is somewhat pathetic. She sits down on the cushion, she told me, and tries to direct her attention, but pretty much the whole time she’s sitting there her attention is going all over the place and she doesn’t have much influence over it. Sometimes she wonders what the point is and why she’s putting so much effort into something that doesn’t seem to be working and perhaps is a waste of time.
Sound familiar? I’ll bet we’ve all had thoughts like this at one time or another. In response I told her about another friend of mine and something that he said.
He described much the same thing: very little capacity to do anything that anyone would call ‘meditation’, and a very large capacity to indulge in distractions and dissipations of all kinds. This friend had been meditating for quite a number of years, and he did admit that over time his ability to focus and direct his attention had improved, but by and large, he said, his attention still had a tendency to go here and then go there, and he had little say in the matter. And yet, he said–this was the thing that moved me and caused me to remember the conversation, which happened years ago–the practice of sitting down every day to meditate had completely transformed his life. As far as he could tell he wasn’t doing it very well, he said, but it had made profound changes, even so, and he couldn’t say why. Something about it had caused him to live more happily, with more contentment, and more at peace.
That has very much been my experience, too. Meditation is hard! Really hard! I often think that the hardest thing there is for human being to do is to direct their attention, moment by moment, as life goes by. We all struggle to master our attention, including myself, and we all fall short of the ideal. And yet it makes a difference. In my own case it has made a tremendous difference, and has given me the sort of life and inner experience that never would have been possible otherwise. It’s hard, in other words, but it works.
Keep on meditating, friends! Don’t quit! Don’t let the conditioned voices tell you that it does no good, or that you’re not good enough at it, or any thing else that might direct you away from your practice. Just sit, as often as much as you’re willing, and don’t worry about the results. The results will take care of themselves. Just sit, and gradually, very gradually, over time, the transformation will happen.
In peace,
David