Up Until Now

I’ve been trying to meditate.

Yeah, I know. I'm talking about it again. Another middle-aged western woman takes up eastern customs in a perhaps misguided attempt to soothe her flustered soul.

But I can’t help it.

In case you don’t already know this about me, I don’t handle stress. I was about to say “I don’t handle stress well” but then I backed up and deleted the “well” part. What I do with stress can’t even be called handling it, well or otherwise. My entire upper body, from the middle of my back to the base of my skull, becomes as rigid as petrified wood. I can’t breathe – literally, I can’t fill my lungs with air, I can only sort of gasp ineffectually. I can’t sleep. I get headaches that bear a resemblance to a drill boring endlessly into my left temple. I become snarky and bitchy and resentful and ugly and crabby and extremely judgmental (especially against happy, hassle-free people).

I do this Not Handling Stress Thing habitually. I’ve narrowed down the cause to pretty much the occurrence of anything unexpected. I teach elementary school. I’m thinking it’s not even necessary to mention how many unforeseen events happen there on a given day. You know?

I should interject “Up until now” – as in, up until now I didn’t handle stress. My friend Winnie taught me that. In order to train our minds so that we aren’t dooming ourselves to stay stuck in bad mental habits, we need to preface negative statements about ourselves with “Up until now.” It gives us permission to change. It gives us incentive to try a different way –maybe even (here’s a crazy idea) – stick with it.

So. Up until now I didn’t handle stress. Now I study Buddhism and practice meditation – five minutes, every day, whether I think I need it or not. I know it doesn’t sound like much. But after trying to meditate for the past 20 years without much (any) success, I’ve decided some is better than none. Last September when I took up this practice in earnest, I started out with one minute and I’ve worked my way up through five months of diligent effort. I’m telling you, five minutes is hard.

In Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, there’s a marvelously instructional section on meditation – the best and most helpful I’ve read yet. One of my favorite anecdotes is about a master named Jamyang Khyentse who answered a student’s question about exactly how to meditate with another question:

“When the past thought has ceased and the future thought has not yet risen, isn’t there a gap?”

“Yes,” the student replied.

“Well,” said Jamyang Khyentse, “Prolong it. That is meditation.”

It struck me as profound. For the first time in 20 years I could actually grasp what I was going for – what it would feel like. “The work of meditation is to allow thoughts to slow down, to make the gap become more and more apparent.” Breathing follows exactly the same rules. There’s a gap between the end of an exhalation and the next intake of breath. What I feel in that space, just before I inhale again, is a split second of utter harmony.

My goal, then, is to grow that feeling. That is now my whole point of concentrating on the breath during meditation. Grow that feeling. Nurture it. Expand it.

My long range vision is to feel that way every minute of every day. Do I expect to be successful before I die? Of course not. Up until now, that fact was so daunting I gave up before starting. I figured if you’re never going to reach the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, why even begin the trek? I don’t see it that way anymore. For the first time in my life I’m willing to attempt something without hope of ever achieving it. To buy into the old cliché about the journey, not the destination… and you know what? It’s very liberating. It’s like dancing in your own living room with no one around. The point is just to do it because it makes you feel good.

I’m up to five minutes a day. Plus, when something unexpected happens, sometimes I can actually remember what harmony feels like before I have some cranky negative reaction to it. And every once in a great while, I even breathe. (And smile!) For a split second, right smack dab in the middle of my day, I'm at peace. It’s a start.