A regular column exploring the benefits of meditation
I will never forget one of the first meetings I had with my meditation teacher, with whom I ended up studying for 10 years. I had been trained in a University and suddenly, in the middle of our conversation, he said, ‘You’ve read too many books’. I was astounded. I knew I hadn’t read enough! It took some time for the penny to drop.
This happened at the first retreat I ever went to. I had been studying in Paris and over summer joined a fellow student in a retreat my teacher was conducting in Crete. My life as a music student in Paris was intense, serious and busy – so I was very surprised when he seemed to be so casual and relaxed. In fact, I was expecting to be given work to do, as I was used to, but he was very off-hand and it wasn’t until I been there for three days that he said, quite casually, ‘By the way, the people from Paris, go and have a swim’. I was quite insulted!
Anyway, I eventually settled down and decided to do it. As I got into the water, which was beautifully warm, a whole new world opened up. I realized that not only had I not been near the sea for over two years, but that I had never given myself the time to actually feel the sea. It was a revelation. It was as though my skin opened up and the sea soaked in. My eyes opened and I really saw the light on the sea and land and the incredible colours of the sea, the sky and the rocks. I smelt and tasted the air and the sea. And even though I was trained as a musician I had never had the experience of the sound of the sea going right through my body. And so the world of meditation opened up. I had to admire the timing of the instruction!
Over the years of teaching I have seen what a big issue this is for people. We get so lost in our plans, hopes and fears, ideas about what should, shouldn’t, could and couldn’t be happening that we are never there when it is happening. We mistake the menu for the meal.
Have you ever noticed how, when at a restaurant, the menu can be so descriptive that everyone at the table spends quite a lot of time choosing what to eat? By the time the food comes the conversation has really got under way and everyone just keeps talking while eating, without really taking much notice of what they are eating. We can get so caught up in the menu – in the idea about the meal – that we completely miss the experience of tasting, smelling and feeling the food in our mouths. The conversation just goes on.
Interestingly enough, the same thing can happen when we are faced with the experience of death. I have found that perhaps it’s not the reality of death that can frighten people so much as having to face the fact that they never fully lived their life in their bodies. Suddenly all the plans of what was going to be done once they got the chance turn to dust. The one thing which was taken for granted – their body – is not going to be there to let the plans happen. In many ways we have a strange relationship with our bodies – even saying that is strange when you consider it implies that we are separate from our bodies. Where are we? Where do we live? If you take a look, you might notice that more often than not, you are watching yourself, as though you are outside your body watching what is happening and what you are doing. This can be so normal that it can take a lot to even feel that we are in our bodies. Drugs, loud music and flashing lights are used to block out the world of thought we live in so that we can at least feel something.
I personally find it sad that so many people distrust their bodies. This, of course is very understandable when something goes terribly wrong. But trying to control our bodies by either pampering or punishing them can become so normal that we don’t realise that it means we actually distrust our bodies. And yet, the basis of all meditation is the understanding that our bodies are essentially wise. They know how to grow, how to protect themselves and the senses respond totally to the world around them.
Opening up to the direct sense experience of our bodies, directly, immediately and consciously is what meditation enables you to do. Here is the basis of the tradition of meditation in a nutshell – moving the mind from thinking to our inner sensing; to the direct experience of our bodies. This is the world of the senses without thought.
Instead of looking at the world, working it out, seeing it as ‘out there’, you are suddenly in it, and it is in you. It is the difference between looking at life and jumping in. The experience is so direct that there is only the seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling. It is so close, there isn’t any ‘you’ to experience it. You are alive, in your body, and realize that you can’t be anywhere else. You are home, living in your body.
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