Meditation

My response to "What is meditation?" on the Krishnamurti Network today.

I’ve never had any formal training in meditation but I’ve read a little bit about it and have downloaded some short “meditation starters” so to speak – guides that help you to begin to clear your mind. That’s what I practiced meditation for originally – to clear my mind. A problem would have a hold on me and I couldn’t let go; thoughts about it would keep going round and round, endlessly, in my mind and no conclusions would present themselves, just round and round with the thoughts and me just completely unable to make the thoughts stop. Especially at night when trying to get to sleep; I would suffer hours of insomnia.

This is when I find my form of meditation to be healing. Being able to wipe the slate clean so to speak, get ALL thoughts out of my mind, especially this one that has a hold on me and won’t let me go. If I can achieve total shutdown for just a few moments even, then everything becomes clear. I’ve managed to break my mind out of that thought loop and often can see the answer clearly, or at least see that it isn’t the problem that I had imagined. When I meditate in this way, I do have a goal in mind so maybe this is something else, not really meditation. As I said, I’ve never had any formal meditation teacher or training but being a fairly pragmatic person, I’ve found this practice – whatever it may be called – helpful on many occasions.

There’s another type of “meditation” I like to practice, especially in my current location – my rather primitive camp on a marsh/stream here in Maine. Sitting comfortably by the stream, I’ll just close my eyes and try to become completely present, listening to the multitude of sounds emanating from my surroundings: the pair of loons sitting out front that continually give a short hoot back and forth to each other with the occasional long melancholy howl, the dozen or so bird calls that I don’t try to identify but just hear, the bullfrogs talking back and forth to each other, the red squirrels chattering away, and even the faint sound of a distant plane overhead. Sitting here with my eyes shut this morning and meditating (if that’s what it is) and absorbing the sounds and smells of the marsh, when I opened my eyes, there sat before me about 20 feet away, a little muskrat. I often see him as dusk swimming busily around the marsh doing his work, but I’ve never seen him in the morning, nor that close to me. But it didn’t surprise me to see him there when I opened my eyes. I was so in tune with the marsh that it seemed completely natural that he would be there. We sat there looking at each other for a moment, I smiled in the pure delight of the moment and I guess he decided his break was over and turned and slipped back into the water and glided off. That’s kind of what meditation is to me, the practice of connecting with the moment. The result sometimes is greater clarity and great creativity. After meditating, I grabbed my djembe and starting a light rhythmic drumming, feeling one with the marsh and wanting to offer a contribution. The drumming didn’t scare any of the critters away; in fact I felt it actually drew them toward me. The little red squirrels chattered at me, the osprey whistled overhead and the loons whooped their lovely calls. There was a downy woodpecker, 3 goldfinch, and a nuthatch, all sharing the same birdfeeder.

The moment reminds me of my Facebook update I wrote last week: “I delight in the complex beauty of the marsh as I bend to light a stick of incense in my altar to the universe.”

Was that moment meditation as well? Or is none of this meditation?