Inside Yoga 133 (27/4/2015)
When I was new to Buddhism there was one lesson I heard that stood out: it stated: “if you can concentrate, focussing on the breath, with the mind still for one minute you are probably already a Buddha”.
This statement highlights what most of us discover when meditating; that it is very hard to stay with the breath for very long. After a few moments a thought pops into our head and before we know it we have followed the trail laid by this thought. In just a few moments we might have planned the rest of our week, written the whole shopping list, or planned the rest of our career?
And if it is not the future, we are caught in thoughts about the past, replaying the past, rewriting the past; one tendency is to rewrite a past experience until it feels better, adding rose-tinted glasses to our past, changing an experience so that it was us who were right!
What the meditation teachings state is that whatever the thought, we return to the breathing; and we might feel we spend most of our meditation returning to the breath and less time actually focussed on the breath. Yet, as way of reassurance, this returning to the breath does not mean something has gone wrong – in fact, you are on the right track. The process of meditation is the important factor; that we maintain the discipline and persistently return to the breath, no matter what is on our mind.
And this is also what the statement about being a Buddha in one minute highlights: that it is the journey, the process of meditation, which produces the benefits. Those who practice meditation will notice that when practising, constantly returning to the point of focus – the breath – by the end of all this hard work, and striving to stay with the breathing that we feel clearer, better, less stressed and more free than we felt before the meditation. In other words, we might not have reached the minute to be a Buddha, but we are still benefiting from meditation.
It might be a well-used, or rather, over-used expression, but eh following statement is also true: it is not about the goal but the journey.
The hard part is our attachment to our thoughts, which we might feel identify ourselves as who we are, and are so important, we must not let go. Yet, here again, the instruction is the same, if while meditating you realise the answer to the universe and the meaning of life, you must drop the thought the moment you realise you are thinking! And equally, if stuck in a negative emotion or memory, drop the thought, and back to the breathing.
This includes not thinking “I am terrible at this”, because this is also a thought to be dropped, and back to the breath. It is not about being good or bad, it is simply about watching your breath as an exercise.
If this thought is so important, you will remember it afterwards, but as meditation shows us, most thoughts are not needed, we can throw them away, as we throw away yesterday’s newspaper – we don’t need them.
If it is an important thought we can acknowledge its importance while meditating and put the thought in an imaginary pigeon-hole for later, but it is straight back to the breathing.
Staying with our thoughts in meditation is an indulgence of our mind in terms of meditation. We seek the space between the thoughts in meditation, the silence between the chatter, and gradually through practice we find that those short spaces between thoughts become longer, as we become stronger willed, more focussed and better at meditating – thought perhaps still not up to the minute mark!
Whether we are sitting in meditation or in a yoga posture, the message is the same, watch your breath, and keep coming back to it.
There is another saying which sums up the relationship with our thoughts: if while meditating we think we are meditating, we are not!
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