Trails and meditation

My husband and I went on a trip to the Shenendoah Park recently. We did a lot of hiking. It was a fun trip w its sightings of many bears and a couple of close encounters with them. Once I was back, I was relating my adventures to my mother. As always our conversations take a turn toward Dhamma. So did this conversation. We were talking about meditation and how to cultivate a practice that can sustain itself for the most part. It was during this time that I came up with the following similie. 

Meditation is a practice like any other. To get a rhythm of any kind in anything we do, be it a sport, an art, getting in shape and meditation we need to practice over and over again. It has to come to a point that it feels kind of natural. It's the same with meditation. We need to feel comfortable with it. It has to feel like meeting an old friend. But getting to this point is not easy. A lot of time and effort has be expended. Even then we might make errors that takes us back to basics. So does meditation. 

As I said earlier, we did many hikes during out trip. They were long ones. Even though at times the hikes were through dense woods, we were clear as to where we were. There were sold train marks, postings at crossroad with direction and distances so that we could gauge where we were. We were never lost. The path were pretty neat and pretty clear. So we always knew where we were. When I was talking to my mother about meditation, I realized that just like having a clean trail with markings and postings, we can establish a sense of direction even in meditation. It's not marked with postings and distances. Instead your develop a strong sense of feeling in your mind. 

This is the reason why one must pick a suitable meditation object for oneself and use that over and over again to gain concentration. Sometimes I have heard meditation teachers talking about many types of objects for meditation such as loving-kindness, breath meditation, death, old age, Buddha...but to me personally, I have used two objects. The breath and metta. At the beginning I used metta for the most part when I sat on my own. With the teacher I used to do breath. After sometime I used to do them back to back. But now I almost always do breath. I find that my breath has become very familiar to me. It's comforting to sit with my breath. It's like meeting that old friend.

So going back to my trail simile, I was telling my mother to think of someone or a group of people clearing a trail in a park. In order to create a trail that others can go or for even your own self to travel, you need to start at t a point. ONce you start digging and clearing your way through the woods, you will have to stop at some point because the day ended. But again you have to come back to it the next day, so you can start from where you left off. Imagine if you suddenly felt that you ought to start at another point the next way. What will happen? Well your previous day's efforts would be in vain. Also you need to start a fresh, yet again. Also you have wasted your time and resources. Okay let's assume that you did start again. Well you have to finish off for the day won't you? Then imagine you coming back the next day to start from a new starting point?! Well it will never start, will it. But what if you went back to same point that you start off to begin with? Then you just keep digging and clearing. It might take months or even years but you are cutting your way through a forest, making a path that you can come back to and walk through again and again. Every day you dig through, it opens a few more yards, it gets longer and perhaps you will come to the end to a beautiful scenery. 

I feel the same about meditation. 

If we keep changing our meditation object, it would like coming back to start a new trail every single day. You get started with great enthusiasm but you don't get very far. I am sure you will get exhausted at some point and give up altogether. But instead what if you come back to the same meditation object, like coming back to where you left off from the previous day. Well then you walk a little bit forward and clear a little bit more. I feel it's the same way with meditation. Each sitting, give you an understanding about your mind and it's nature. Each sitting helps you to learn something. We need to take it back together next day so that there could be some more  progress. It might not feel like you are moving forward much but I know that it's okay. 

Hard to digest

Last Saturday we flew into Colorado for a week. It was for business and pleasure. We were going to do some trails in the mountains and I was going to keep to my health goals during the week. It sounded like a perfect plan. I had supported a lower back pain for a few weeks. But I was on the way to full recovery when we embarked on our trip. However, the bed was so soft that overnight my back pain came back with a vengence. It was so bad, that by the time I woke up Sunday morning I could barely move without pain in my lower back. It was so distressing. I was so looking forward to the few days with my husband since we've had a kind of a stressful few weeks. But now I was down with a back pain.

I am not new to pain. I suffer from many chroic pain issues. But this hit me hard. I was inconsolable. I was cried a lot. Just flet so beaten down. This was partly because I was kind of recovering from my neck pain and knee issues. I was able to get into my work out routine and golf and I was losing weight. Overall I felt so much better and then Wham! it hits me. I could not handle it. It made me wonder what on earth is going on with me...yet again. I started wondering when I will ever see the light of day for more than a few days or weeks. My health issues seem to always raise its head up and want to pin me down and keep me pinned down.

So on Sunday as we were touring Rocky Mountain Park, with me being very miserable, I started thinking. This was partly to wrap my head around what's going on and also to get out of the miserable mind state I was in. At some point on our way back the following thought came to my mind. I must say it did help me clam myself.

What I realized was that even when my body was giving up and falling apart, my mind continued to stay resilient and want to do things that my body was not able to do. My unhappiness was a direct cause of me wanting to do all these things and now because of my back pain, not being able to. I work with hospice patients. I see them on a weekly basis unble to do the things they once had done. Some fight and are unhappy and the others seem to have come to a resolve. I felt like one of my patients. I was the one disable and unhappy cause I could no longer do the things I wanted to do. I had these expectations of my body. Now I could not live up to it. So I was unhappy. Isn't that amazing!

I started being aware how much of a drive I had in myself to want to do things. It was excruciating. I wanted to hike, I wanted clime and be free like I usually am when I go on trips. But my body could not handle it. It was giving me pain. But for some reason I could not come to terms with it. I felt that I was young and these are things people like me would do without batting an eye lid and here I am being pathetic. It was a hard reality to swallow.

I realized how much I needed to change in my expectaions of myself alone. From my body. It's a hard thing to come to terms to because its your body for cyring out loud. But yet there is something uncontrollable about it. You cannot make your body behave and do things the way you want all of the time. Sometimes, you need to allow it to be, rest and recover. That might include doing less, wanting to do less or whatever maybe. The only expectations are those that I have put on myself. I mean I began to think of people who had cancer who were young, who were disabled and young, dead and young. So considering all that I was not having a bad experience. But for me it felt as if I was dying. I felt such a sense of loss.

But I realized that I did not need to. There is no guarantee that we will be healthy, strong and capable, that our senses and limbs will be intact or for that matter I would live tomorrow but yet there is an expectation somewhere in my mind. I realized that I needed to clam down much more, let go much more and expect much less. It was a good eye opener. I also realised that if I continued on the same path how hard it would be for me to die. I will always have some sort of unfinished business. So if I have to die tomorrow what am I going to do. Be sad, angry, miserable and mess up my last moments on this earth?

These were wonderful points for me to contemplate on. I think just this expericence alone brought to my mind how fragile our lives are. How fragile our bodies are. That at somepoint I needed to clam down so I didn't add to an already worse situation. The hard part was it was internal. Where could I go? Where could I hide? Nowhere. I had to be with myself no matter how unpleasant the experience was..not matter how hard the situation was...I was there. I could not excape myself. That's hard. When things are unplesant and external to you, you at least have the choice to run away, but when it's you, there is no place to run to. I realized how much more kindness and compassion I had to develop just deal with myself.

I feel much better now. But I have calmed down....partly because I am not constantly in pain. But also I learnt a lesson. That I needed to expect less of myself and be kind as my body gives up from time to time. I must learn to remind myself that there will be that time, when my body gives up completely and that I will have no choice at that time. I don't want to fight when that time comes. I don't want to be angry or sad. I don't want to feel that there is much to be done and if only I could live....I don't want that struggle. I want to be in a place where I can let my body die because that's how it's going to be. Just because...I want to be able to let it go just becasue it's time to do so.

How we see things makes our reality

I was in a terrible mood today. It was on from yesterday evening. Like clouds gathering in the horizon, getting ready for a storm. I could feel the negativity gathering inside waiting to explode and it did. It was still around when I woke up. The confusion, miserable feeling, felling of being down and feeling like I wanted to pick on something or someone. It's like having an itch that I didn't know where to scratch to get rid of it. So I felt frustrated, restless and moody.

But I did sit down for meditation. I know it was going to be a challenge. I could not focus on anything cause I was feeling unhappy, angry and simply felt like I waned to scream. As I sat on the chair skimming through the emotions there were moments of happiness and light that kept coming in and going out. It was interesting. I like it just as much as I didn't like my negative emotions, dark miserable pain spots.

I tried to look at why. Then I realized that my dark spots made me out of control as if things were falling apart around me, while I sat not being able to exert any control. Anything I did, if I did, was only aggravating the mood I was already in. Things get pulled in from all directions only to fuel the raging fire.

But when I felt even remotely okay I felt happy and in control. Everything seem to be smooth. There was no fighting. No need to feel like I wanted to scream out or scratch our my eyes. Things were clam. I didn't have to or needed to change anything. I kept looking at what was happening. Was it my ego crashing? Was it my ego wanting exert control?

Then suddenly it hit me out of nowhere, that it was simply the nature of things. The impermanence of it all. I cannot always be happy, it too ends. Then unhappiness arrives. But that too does not last long. It changes back to happiness. What causes my problem is my own views, reactions and thoughts on each one of them.

I think I should be happy. Its good for me and everyone else. I don't want to be unhappy. I don't think its good. But no matter what I think, its not true. Both these states are part of me. Its like the seasons. No matter how much I like or don't like winter, it's going to come. Its part of nature. If I dislike winter, then I can have a miserable time during that season. If I like it then I will be happy. But how happy or now happy I am is not dictated by the seasons. Its dictated by my view of it.

Its the same with my emotions. I view my happy moods as good and unhappy moods as bad.  But irrespective of how I feel about them, they are going to come. But I can change my view of them. I don't have to be so repulsed by one and so taken up by the other. What determines how I go through them is my views and my likes and dislikes. If I could simply let go of my views then neither type of emotions and moods can have a controlling effect on me. So my emotional world will be in harmony not in turmoil.