Life is a little like floating on the face of the ocean. There can be beautiful, peaceful swells and you can keep your face out of the water and enjoy the sun and stars, or the storms can toss you around and try to drown you. At all times, the breakers or swells play only on the surface. Most of it is down underneath you, and it’s all connected anyway. It’s not as if you could go to the part of the ocean where the water is always calm. No, you’re always going to be treading water and sometimes that’s going to challenge you.
It’s so great when the conditions are right.
The first year(s) of teaching feel(s) a lot like trying to tread water in a tempest. You want so much to be out there splashing around with abandon and freedom, but instead you’re swallowing a lot of salt water and it’s making you sad, mad, and rarely ever glad.
Challenges.
Meditation can help. With meditation, we watch the waves instead of being out there struggling with them. We allow ourselves a little rest from the treading and swimming and striving to get somewhere and just observe the waves and get in touch with the reality of all the water underneath us, all the creatures living in that water, all the connectedness of all the everything, including us. We’re just part of a whole big connected thing.
We can do almost any daily ritual with a meditative spirit: eating, washing up, walking, making the bed. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Washing dishes, I know that I am washing dishes.” He washes the dishes to wash them, not to get them done so he can get on to the cup of tea he’s promised himself when they are finished.
Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Happy teachers will change the world.”
But in order to bring this level of presence to our daily activities, including teaching, it helps a lot to do some formal practice. I’ll talk more about what that looks like in another post, but first, there is the building it in, not fitting it in. Fitting it in won’t work. You’re already too busy with all the other things you have to do. Meditation is deliberately not doing anything so you can experience and practice being with each moment, not squeezing it for what you can get out of it. It’s a rest from striving. As long as your day is full of striving, meditation won’t look to you like something to do.
So. Find a place in the day. I do mine as a walking meditation on my way to school, where there is a labyrinth. When the cold weather comes and the snow covers the labyrinth, I’ll switch to eating meditation over breakfast or sitting meditation firs thing. I recommend early in the day, before the duties ramp up. Once the day gets going, I never do find a quiet moment. Fifteen or twenty minutes is a good amount of time to start. Don’t try to do more than a half hour.
Find a place in your house. For sitting meditation, you need a quiet spot where you can sit comfortably and at restful attention. The side of the bathtub works pretty well, or on the stairs, or you can buy a meditation bench or cushion. Where you meditate is important. You have to know you won’t be disturbed and interrupted. You won’t answer the phone or hear it. You don’t want to have to hear music or talking, which will suck your brain off the object of attention. Don’t try to meditate with a pet. They don’t get it.
Your meditation set-up can be flexible and movable.
Most people find that a dedicated meditation spot helps them. It shows respect for your practice and you will start to associate meditation with being in that spot. But if you don’t have a dedicated spot, that can work, too.
You need a timer. That’s so you won’t be checking the clock all the time and interrupting yourself. There are lots of apps you can download if you would like to hear someone narrate and guide your meditation, or if you would like bells at regular or random intervals to remind you to go back to the breath. Or you can just set a timer and watch the breath in silence.
And that’s all you need: a place in the day, a place in your house, a supported sitting spot, and a timer. When you have all those, you’re ready to start experiencing the ocean of life in all its imponderability.
Katherine Good 