What is meditation?

Why meditate

What is meditation?

I have always been curious about things and habits in my life. I want to understand and know why we do certain things, I can't just read about it. I want to know it myself. By trying.

I can be jealous of people who accept things as they are, or if they read about them. I can't. I want to know myself, by trying.

Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is bad.

But I get a lot of experience though.

When I started to meditate 40 years ago, it had, in my mind, a mythical and mysterious shimmer. The reason I started was that I had problems with concentration and focusing on any goal I had.

And also a huge portion of anxiety.

I wanted to find a way to feel that I had landed in my body, that I had a grounded feeling in myself.

So I began to read all I could about zen meditation, I didn't practice it, I read about it for several years.

I thought it was a bit scary, and to tell the truth a bit stupid to sit in a certain position for a long time. But I was curious and tried to, intellectually, understand what meditation was.

Zen meditation is filled with rituals and rules and has a mysterious aura around it. Even though I read about the essence of meditation, and intellectually understood it, I didn't understand it. For me, it was something bigger than me, something higher.

If you read about zen meditation, you always hear the word "satori". And, that is the goal you have to reach.

Satori is the point where you erase your ego and become one with everything, the experience of awakening, enlightenment, or apprehension of the true nature of reality.

Says the book.

After a couple of years, I stepped over the threshold and started practicing meditation. I wanted to reach satori and awake. For a year or two, I was practicing hard and with motivation to achieve satori. I meditated a couple of hours a day sometimes, focusing on "mu".

Zen meditation has a method that you should focus on something, a word, a sentence, where there is no answer. Without explaining it further, "mu" is such a word.

Your desperate try, to find an answer where there is no answer will push you to the limit where you will reach satori.

I never reached satori, as far as I know. I never reached the push over the threshold. Not in the way people are telling how it could be. I never felt the great happiness you can feel reaching satori.

But I slowly got something, I slowly felt more "grounded" and more comprehend myself and the people around me.

It was not an awakening, it slowly came and I realized who I was and felt more relaxed in my body. I felt more comfortable with how things are, and I felt I was part of something bigger.

Someone would probably call it God.

I don't.

For me, it was a feeling, not a belief.

When I started my journey in meditation I thought the way of sitting, and all the rules every meditation teaches were important.

Now I know they're not, it can be a help at the beginning, but they are not important for meditation. Sometimes they can overturn the essence of meditation.

Focusing on how to follow the rules can also be an obstacle to meditation.

You put too much effort into the rules rather than finding the point where you can find a meditation that works for you.

This is Meditation for me now

After a couple of years or rather many years, focusing too much on breathing, sitting in the right position, staring at the wall, and concentrating on "mu", I realized I would never reach the point where I entered "satori".

And I didn't care, I felt more "inside" myself, and more understanding of myself and others.

I found a way where I could "relax" and that was enough.

I realized that the way I sit, the way I breathe and focus on "mu", wasn't necessary. I realized that I could meditate anywhere and in any situation.

I realized that dropping all thoughts that were disturbing my mind during meditation was the best method for me.

A lot of thoughts are trying to disturb our mind during meditation, knowing that they exist but dropping them as fast as they reach my mind, or rather letting them pass through, is my meditation.

Meditating for me, now, is when I am kayaking, laying on the beach, walking in the forest, carpentry, when I travel to work with the subway, cooking, all those things you do, without focusing on something else.

Things you do, where you can't do anything else when you are there at the moment.

I have realized that I can't solve a problem at work when I am kayaking, I can't do anything about it unless I am at work. But I am not. I am kayaking. So why worry. Why think of it.

Often when I am back to work, I see it in a new way, sometimes with a solution.

Not always.

But I often see it in a new way.

We need pauses in our life, living is sometimes a problem, and pausing problems are important. Resting from it makes the problem often smaller than it was at the beginning.

Meditation is one way to take that pause.

I don't say that you should meditate, but finding the space where you can take that pause, for the rest of your life, is important, I think.

Perhaps that journey through zen was important for me to realize that.

Or not.

Or perhaps that I am older now.

But I am an experience richer and that is worth something.