Member-only story
Meditation Isn’t An Escape From Life, It’s An Encounter With It.
Meditation is often described as the art of doing nothing. I’ve even described it that way myself. But thinking about it this way can be misleading. It’s tempting to think of doing nothing as collapsing into a catatonic heap. As zoning out. Or switching off. Or relaxing. Meditation isn’t any of these things.
The reason it’s tempting to think in this way is that it’s hard to imagine a state where we’re not busy thinking and worrying and judging ourselves which isn’t sleep. In normal life, sleep is the only reprieve we get from all of that mental chatter, so it’s natural to associate meditation with a kind of disengagement from ourselves.
But when this happens, meditation becomes lifeless and serious. It becomes solemn and self-conscious. It becomes something totally separate from everyday life. Or worse, the practitioner tries to maintain this new, solemn attitude in their everyday life. They take on a character which is slow and detached and inflexible because that’s what they’ve been practising when they sit in meditation.
Meditation is a meeting with yourself. It’s a few minutes with an old, dear friend who most of us don’t spend nearly enough time with. The joy of that meeting can then permeate…
