“When the mind wanders, come back to the breath. Feel the sensation at the entrance of the nostrils.”
Have you ever tried to feel your breath coming out of your nose? Go ahead. Try it. Maybe it’s because I smoked for 30 years, but unless I’m panting I’m not feeling anything.
“The object of meditation should not be an imaginary object. This is does not work. Deep inside one keeps reacting, keeps suffering. Meditation should face reality as it is, the now reality. Do not force the breath. Natural breath.”
I gave up listening. Or trying to be still. Have I mentioned the daggers of pain shooting through my body?
My neck crunched as I rolled my head back then tucked my chin. This is the perfect move for sizing up my fellow meditators, I thought. And maybe I’ll spot some more cushions. Just a little crank to the neck and I’ll feel better and, holy God. Look at that.
Two rows ahead of me was a Western woman sporting a yoga top with fisherman’s pants, and a pair of those chunky wooden pegs poking through her ears, pretty standard gear for Westerners in India. But this chick sat in full yogic lotus. Oh bitch, please, I thought, shifting again. My face hurts. Course, she was something like 19. What could possibly be so wrong with her life?
I need to get the fuck out of here. I thought, disappointed that I was the worst meditator on the floor. Until I noticed the sounds emanating from the boys’ side of the room.
There was burping, Loud burping. Farting! Lengthy farts. And then, knuckles cracking? Ugh, I thought. Then, Ha! I am not the worst! At least I’m not moving… the most. The noisiest?
“We react because we do not know what we are doing. The mind gets lost, reliving pleasant or unpleasant experiences or anticipating the future with eagerness or fear. While lost in such cravings or aversions, we are unaware of what we are doing now. Our suffering stems from our ignorance.”
I’d recently been given a recording of Pema Chodron, a Buddhist monk, where she compared people beginning meditation practice to children with scabies—old enough to scratch the itch, but not old enough to know that scratching makes the scabies worse.
Because I’d quit drinking and using drugs, I knew that symptom relief didn’t address the root of a problem. “Your drinking isn’t your problem,” an early mentor in recovery told me. “You’re not drinking anymore. Your problem is your thinking.” believing I’d internalized this lesson, I was actually thinking this retreat would be some kind of fine tuning.
But even as I was getting this same wisdom from another source, I wasn’t getting it. In truth I’d mostly disregarded Chodron’s lesson thinking I wasn’t really new to this meditation business anyway.
A change in the tape disrupted my thoughts.
He’s chanting. Ugh. Are we going to have to listen to a lot of this?
But it wasn’t long before the robed man shut off the tape player, then rang a bell. It must be bedtime. After a grueling ten minutes, I’d spent the better part of an hour lost in thought. Maybe, I dared think. Maybe I can make it.
And this may have been my fatal mistake.
I so desperately needed to believe I could figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, it made total sense to spend the next ten days in meditation sorting my life out. First I’d get to the bottom of how I’d wrecked my marriage so that wouldn’t happen again, then determine where to live, and also decide how to earn a living that would sustain me for the rest of my life. That was going to take a lot of thinking. Glorious thinking! Hurrah! Now to bed!
If only I could get up.
After all that sitting, I found it hard to stand. My legs were numb and I couldn’t feel my feet. I rolled onto my right hip, extending my left leg. Then I tucked the toes of my left leg into the ground and flipped into a kind of bent-kneed down dog. Pushing into my palms, I hoisted my right foot forward, awkwardly getting into a standing position from there. Yet as the ground took shape beneath me, it felt like stakes were being driven into my feet. I was proud I managed not to gasp. Not that it would have mattered, I was the only one still in the room.
***
Back in the dorm I noticed that ol’ Lotus Pose was directly across from me, doing crunches. That’s cheating, I thought, as I headed for the latrine with my graham crackers, notepad, and pen. All of which were illicit materials.
I was brushing my teeth at the long sink out front; when I bent over to spit out the toothpaste, I spotted Lotus Pose out of the left corner of my eye. I turned just in time to see her joined by one of the men.
That woman came to a silent meditation retreat with her boyfriend?
Rage — my fulltime lover — spiked within me.
They're probably going to talk and have sex right now. Loser! That is totally against the rules.
I shoved my toothbrush and toothpaste into my pocket, practically breaking my graham crackers. The irony was not lost on me. Still I rationalized. I have a diagnosis! I'm hypoglycemic! And then: Maybe we’re both breaking the rules, but she’s obviously in an insanely co-dependent, doomed relationship.
Stop.
Even I could not ignore this hypocrisy, the reason I was here. I did not want my failed marriage to dictate my future, to slip mindlessly into hating men. I wanted to live in an abundant world where there was enough for everyone. To know that one person's gain was not my loss. Besides, I could sure as hell outlast this chick.
See? I thought. Anger can be a good thing.
It would take years, but this opening would beget a revolution.
This article appears in Apr 20-27, 2017.