True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (5 page)

This is such good advice. Approach your practice (and your life) with an earnest yet relaxed heart. You can make a dedicated effort without tension and striving. Whether you are new to practice or an experienced meditator, keep alert for judgment. Whenever it arises, give permission for your experience to be whatever it is. Judging is a habit, and when you remember to release it, you will reconnect with the inner ease and sincerity that naturally carry you to presence and freedom.

Creating Time and Space to Practice

The hallmark of our culture is that most of us speed through the day fitting whatever we can into already full schedules. Even when we're not plugged into our cell phones and computer screens, or rushing from obligation to obligation, our minds are still cooking away. Creating some time and space to be with our inner life is counter to the currents of the world around us.

New meditation students often mention the value of learning to focus and settle the mind, but they also name something more basic. As one person put it recently, “Just having those moments to be quiet is a gift to my soul.” It
is
a gift to the soul. Stepping out of the busyness, stopping our endless pursuit of getting somewhere else, is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit. And yet it is so simple. We are learning, as Rumi says, to make regular visits to ourselves.

Look for ways to create a rhythm of practice. Many contemplative traditions recommend setting a regular time of day to meditate—usually early in the morning, because the mind is calmer on waking than it is later in the day. However, the best time for you is the time you can realistically commit to on a regular basis. Some people choose to do two short mediations, one at the beginning of the day and one at the end.

How long should you practice? Between fifteen and forty-five minutes works for many people. If you are new to meditation, fifteen minutes may seem like an eternity, but that impression will change as your practice develops. If you meditate each day, you will experience noticeable benefits (less reactivity, more calm) and you will probably choose to increase your practice time. Whatever the length, it's best to decide
before
beginning and have a clock or timer nearby. Then, rather than getting entangled in thoughts about when to stop, you can fully give yourself to the meditation.

If possible, dedicate a space exclusively to your daily meditation. Choose a relatively protected and quiet place where you can leave your cushion (or chair) so that it is always there to return to. You may want to create an altar with a candle, inspiring photos, statues, flowers, stones, shells—whatever arouses your sense of beauty, wonder, and the sacred. This is certainly not necessary, but it can help create a mood and remind you of what you love.

Sustaining Your Practice

Sustaining a regular practice can be challenging. During the twelve years I lived in the ashram, I had others to practice with each day. With that kind of support, creating the time for daily meditation became a given in my life. It wasn't as easy after I left. Within a year I gave birth to my son, Narayan, and found myself with a new infant and an increasingly erratic schedule.

One morning I woke up feeling particularly ornery, and after I snapped at Narayan's father for forgetting something at the supermarket he recommended that I take some time to meditate. I handed the baby over, plunked down in front of my little altar, and immediately dissolved into tears. I missed the rhythm of my practice. I missed making regular visits to myself! In those moments, with the sun flooding through the windows, and the background sounds of my husband chatting away to Narayan, I made a vow. No matter what, I'd create time each day to come into stillness and pay attention to my experience. But there was a “back door”: How long I sat didn't matter.

Ever since, I have made the time. I usually meditate thirty to forty-five minutes in the morning, but there have been days, especially when Narayan was young, when it didn't happen. Instead, I'd sit on the edge of my bed right before going to sleep, and would intentionally relax my body, opening to the sensations and feelings that were present. Then, after a few minutes, I would say a prayer and climb under the covers. As my body has changed and long sittings have become more difficult, I'll often do a standing meditation. Still, the commitment to daily practice “no matter what” has been one of the great supports of my life.

For some people I know, my approach is a setup for self-punishment. Something happens—a bad cold, falling asleep early, simply forgetting—and the promise has been broken. The bottom line is to enjoy, not stress over, a meditation practice. As Julia Child famously said, “If you drop the lamb, just pick it up. Who's going to know?” If you miss practice for a day, a week, or a month, simply begin again. It's okay.

Unless you feel enriched by meditation, you will not continue. It's hard to feel enriched if you get mechanical, if you practice out of guilt, if you judge yourself for not progressing, or if you lock into the grim sense that “I'm on my own.” One of the best ways to avoid these traps is to practice with others. You might look for an existing meditation class with a teacher, or find a few friends who are interested in sharing the experience together. If you are able, attending a weekend or weeklong residential retreat will deepen your practice as well as your faith in your own capacity to become peaceful and mindful. This is a wonderful time to be practicing meditation! Meditators have a growing pool of resources—CDs, books, podcasts, teachers, and fellow meditators—to support and accompany them as they walk this path (see “Resources,” on page 000).

Off the Cushion: Meditation Training and Daily Life

Author and Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman jokes that the Buddhists are always talking about practice: “Practice, practice, practice,” he says. “What I want to know is, when is the performance?” There is no performance, but there is the possibility of being more awake in the moments of daily life that used to be lost to trance.

For Jeff and Arlene, the married couple from the beginning of the chapter, meditation practice was central to reclaiming their relationship. Their strategy (which is used by many couples I work with) was to take a meditative “time out” whenever they became caught in one of their reactive dances of anger and defensiveness. Either one of them could call for this intentional pause, and both agreed to honor such a request. They would sit quietly—separately or together (they experimented with both)—and draw on the skills they had been cultivating in formal practice: Recalling their aspiration (to choose presence, to decide on love); stepping out of stories of blame; relaxing and quieting with the breath; and bringing presence to their own hurts and fears. After ten or fifteen minutes of this mini meditation, they'd check in with each other to see if they felt ready to resume talking. Their guideline for being ready was feeling in touch with their own vulnerability rather than focused on blame. If either needed more time, they'd allow for that, and on several occasions they agreed to wait until the next day to talk. But for the most part, after a short period of meditation they were better able to identify their real feelings and communicate them openly. By learning to pause and choose presence, they discovered a level of understanding and care they had not dreamed possible.

Meditation students often ask me what will help them remember presence in the thick of things. My first response: “Just pause.” My second response: “Pause again, take a few conscious breaths, and relax.” Our lives are constantly tumbling into the future, and the only way back to here and now is to stop. Even a few moments of suspended activity, a mini meditation of just being still, can reconnect you with a sense of aliveness and caring. That connection will deepen if, during those moments, you intentionally establish contact with your body, breathe, and relax.

A game I play with myself is to see if I can spontaneously remember to pause in situations I usually charge right through. Washing the dishes. Walking from my office to the kitchen. Moving through e-mails. Eating popcorn. Pausing is a wonderful and radical way of plucking myself out of virtual reality and discovering myself once again at the hub, awake, open, and here.

A deliberate meditative pause helps us to savor the often-forgotten goodness and beauty that is within and around us. One client, Frances, felt crushed when her two daughters chose to spend a holiday with their father (her ex-husband) rather than going on a trip with her. “You're no fun, Mom, you don't know how to relax” one had said. When she protested, they pointed out that she was “all business” and was even grim about setting up vacation activities. Frances recognized herself in their words. The oldest of five, she had prematurely become the caretaker of her siblings when her own mother had grown ill. “I don't know how to play,” she confessed sadly. “I'm much more comfortable staying busy, getting things done.”

Shaken by what she felt to be her daughters' rejection, Frances began a daily practice of meditation to learn how to relax. But when she met with me for guidance, her stiff posture and tightly knitted brows let me know that her approach to meditation was as grim as her approach to the rest of life.

I suggested that she find a beautiful place to walk and do some of her meditation practice there. Her assignment was still to wake up from thoughts when she became aware of them; but rather than the breath, her home base was all of her senses. She would become aware of the pressure of her feet on the earth, the images and smells and sounds of the natural world. I asked her to pause anytime something struck her as beautiful or interesting and to offer that experience her full attention.

When we met several months later, Frances gave me a meditation report: “Tara,” she said, “my walks are one long linger!” She went on to tell me about the pleasure she was finding in other parts of life—eating a peach slowly and savoring its texture and flavor, taking long hot showers, and increasingly, during sitting meditation, simply relaxing with the movement of her breath. Most important, Frances was experiencing her daughters in a new way, appreciating one's infectious laugh, the other's grace. “I'm enjoying them,” she said smiling, “and they seem not to mind hanging out with me!” Frances was discovering the blessing of choosing presence—becoming intimate with the life that is right here, right now.

Trusting Your Heart and Awareness

At a conference in India with the Dalai Lama, a group of Western Buddhist teachers asked him for the most important message they could bring back home to their meditation students. After a few thoughtful moments, the Dalai Lama nodded and smiled broadly. “Tell them that they can trust their hearts and awareness to awaken in the midst of all circumstances.”

We long to trust our capacity to handle difficulties, to grow, to love well, and to be all that we can be. Often we start meditation as a way of connecting with our hearts and awareness, and of living with more confidence in ourselves. Yet I've seen how for many people, the single biggest challenge to sustaining a meditation practice is the sense of doubt: “I'm not doing this right. I'm not getting it. This isn't working.” Students tell me that they can't control their thinking, that they are not able to maintain any experience of openhearted presence. They wonder why meditating is so hard.

Training our attention
is
hard. We're going against the grain of countless hours lost in thought and unconsciously driven by wants and fears. It's as though we've spent our lives on a bicycle, pedaling hard to get away from the present moment. We pedal to resist what is happening, we pedal to try to make something happen, we pedal to try to get somewhere else. The more we feel like something is missing, or something is wrong, the faster we pedal. Even in the midst of a meditation we might realize we are pedaling—straining to be with the breath, chasing after a fantasy. Meditation is a setup for feeling deficient unless we respectfully acknowledge the strength of our conditioning to race away from presence. These tendencies toward false refuge are strongly grooved neuropathways:
It's not our fault!
Given this conditioning, how can we follow the Dali Lama's advice and trust our heart and awareness?

The purposeful “doings” in meditation (naming our experience, mindfully scanning through the body, or focusing on the breath) help us to pause and open ourselves to the life of the moment. Yet because we can get so hooked by the need to do something more, we help ourselves most deeply by our intention to
let go.
For Pam, whispering “I consent” opened her to loving presence during her husband's last days; for me, reflecting on entrusting myself to the waves relaxed my tendency to control life and connected me with a spacious awareness. More recently I sometimes remind myself of a line from poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “Let everything happen to you, the beauty, the terror …” Feel free to experiment with self-reminders. What word or phrase helps you to stop pedaling, to relax your habitual “doing” and simply be?

Hindu teacher Swami Satchidananda was once asked by a student if he needed to become a Hindu to go deeply into the practice of yoga. Satchidananda's response was, “I am not a Hindu, I am an undo.” Just so, when meditation frees us, it does not turn us into something better or different, nor does it get us somewhere. We are not pedaling toward some spiritual achievement. Rather meditation allows for an undoing of our controlling behavior, an undoing of limiting beliefs, an undoing of habitual physical tensing, an undoing of defensive armoring, and ultimately, an undoing of our identification with a small and threatened self. By undoing all the doings, we discover the vast heart and awareness that is beyond any small-self identity; the heart and awareness that gives us refuge in the face of any life situation. This is the gift of meditation practice—we find we can trust who we most deeply are.

Guided Meditation: Coming Back