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.
