What is this meditation, then?
Pure fascination with this moment,
exactly as it is.
Allowing everything to be.
Drenching one’s present experience in curiosity.
Not adding anything.
Not taking anything away.
No goal. No seeking. No agenda.
No special state to attain.
No special experience to have.
Pure wonder.
The extraordinary ordinariness of what is.
Life being lived.
Ultimately it’s not something I’m doing.
Ultimately it’s who I truly am.
This wide open, child-like, innocent awareness, gently absorbing every sound, sight, smell, sensation, feeling, tenderly pulling in a ‘world’, yes, embracing a world as a mother embraces her young child.
I am the mother of my world, then.
I am the space that holds the ordinariness.
I am the silence at the heart of things.
I am the Capacity for joy and great sorrow.
I need never seek a more ‘alive’, a more ‘profound’ or ‘spiritual’ experience, for this ordinary moment is so profoundly holy. So beautiful. Awash with grace.
Complete. Always complete.
The cracked glass of a bus shelter.
The look on a stranger’s face, both concealing and betraying aeons of pain and longing.
The chill on my cheek as I walk to meet a good friend.
I used to meditate.
Meditation got into my very bones.
Now I am meditation.
The vastness that holds an entire world.
by Jeff Foster
Well here we have the paradox at the heart of mindfulness and meditation practice. Jeff Foster (a British meditation teacher and poet – find out more about him here), is speaking of the difference between as he puts it ‘I used to meditate’ and ‘I am meditation’. In the first line there is a certain doing, in the latter only being. So as beginners or even those with a good amount of experience behind us – how do we negotiate this paradox?
For a start, meditating is a bit like tuning the string of a lute – we don’t want it too tight (too much striving) or too loose (a lack of focus and clarity). Sometimes we’re tense and unable to let go of doing, sometimes we’re sleepy, dreamy or in a daze.
Many of us don’t know how not to try – is this so for you? This was certainly the case for me at first. I gradually learnt to see the striving and let it go. There is a delicate balance here of holding a clear intention for the practice, while at the same time releasing the habit to do the meditation or try to achieve the intention of the practice. On top of this if we go off duty completely we’ll just space out! So where is the happy medium?
We’re given lots of forms and structures to guide us in our practice – Settling, Grounding, Resting and Support (S.G.R.S.) being the core one taught by the Mindfulness Association, and we’re also encouraged to practice formally and regularly. It’s certainly been my experience that the more I practice ‘on the cushion’, the more benefit I experience naturally in daily life. But I also think it’s important not to sacrifice our journey towards finding what is essential, what is there when there’s nothing added. The forms and structures may be a means to journey in this direction, but they are not the destination. The metaphor which is sometimes used here is of a finger pointing at the moon. The moon is our basic aware nature, the finger is all the signposts we need to point ourselves in its direction and not get lost too much on the way. S.G.R.S. is not the destination, it is a skilful means to facilitate ourselves towards something which is beyond the word destination.
Jeff Foster seems to convey how it would be to already be ‘there’, where the finger is pointing to, to already have stabilised this as a way of being moment to moment. I think this poem can serve as inspiration to us about how this might feel and I’m sure we all have glimpses of the wonder of the ordinariness that he speaks of here and there, which can serve as inspiration from within too. I also think the poem can serve as a meditation instruction. Which line would you like to take away with you as a mantra for living mindfully in daily life?
Ps. Spend 6 weeks immersing yourself in how poetry can teach us universal wisdom and guide us in our meditation. We have the popular Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry course starting again in September. Find out more click here.
Photo by Melanie Magdalena on Unsplash