| Most people who avoid meditation do so because | | | | Buddha's native language, and means "inward |
| they think it is too hard. Too tedious. Too boring. | | | | vision." I figured if it worked for the Buddha, it |
| Sitting silently, doing nothing, watching the grass | | | | might work for me. I was relatively new to |
| grow by itself? Forget it. Let's watch TV! Let us | | | | meditation. This sounded like a piece of cake: 10 |
| meditate on something important, like "American | | | | days of sitting silently, doing nothing. |
| Idol." | | | | Oh yes, we were blindfolded for each one-hour |
| The first problem is one of definition. The English | | | | sitting. Nine hours a day of sitting, one hour of the |
| language says that meditation means to think | | | | awareness walk. Spartan meals: veggies, beans, |
| about something, to meditation "on" a subject; to | | | | brown rice, tea. All this in total silence, without |
| reflect; to contemplate. To get at the real | | | | even eye contact with the 30 or 40 other |
| meaning of meditation, we have to look at the | | | | meditators. Except every three days we could |
| word Zen, which is derived from Japanese and | | | | talk for a few minutes with one of the two |
| Chinese roots and means emptying your mind of | | | | retreat facilitators. |
| all thinking. | | | | At the end of the first day -- no, make that the |
| So from the get-go, the idea that thinking about | | | | first couple of hours -- I thought I was going to |
| things is meditation is going off in the opposite | | | | go mad. My mind, freed from all distractions and |
| direction of where we want to be. Meditation is a | | | | allowed to turn in on itself, went on a wild |
| state of absolute silence, of profound inner peace. | | | | rampage that I had never experienced before. |
| It is about not thinking, but about being aware. | | | | Thoughts tumbled and crashed into each other; I |
| How to achieve that state is what this series is all | | | | took crazy fantasy trips and wrote magazine |
| about. | | | | articles and a whole book about the experience -- |
| In the late Seventies I journeyed to an ashram in | | | | in my mind. Soon I learned to peek around my |
| India to learn to meditate, to find out who I was, | | | | blindfold so I would have some frame of |
| and to clear the cobwebs from my mind. The | | | | reference. The sight of birds outside kept me |
| whole trip verged on cliché: I was trying | | | | sane for three days. |
| to get off the substance abuse joyride, at the | | | | Finally, on the seventh day, I got IT: It is all about |
| same time suffering from an advanced case of | | | | watching the mind. Watching those crazy thoughts |
| existential angst. | | | | and fantasies and ideas, like they belong to |
| The ashram offered an assortment of | | | | someone else, some other guy's movie, a bunch |
| meditations and therapy groups. I signed up for a | | | | of images strung together in random order. |
| 10-day retreat called Vipassana, which is the | | | | When watched, the mind tends to calm down. |
| ancient Buddhist insight meditation. It is how the | | | | The object: Letting go of all that mind turmoil, and |
| Buddha became enlightened, though it took him | | | | just becoming silent and peaceful. Real meditation |
| nearly seven years. | | | | means to relax into doing nothing, being nothing, |
| The word Vipassana comes from Pali, Gautama | | | | utterly relaxed and resting in one's own being. |