Zen: Check

What the timer does and doesn't count

I didn’t meditate perfectly.

This morning, I neglected my well-worn meditation cushion. I shuffled to my office, ready to start my work day. I swiveled into my chair, firing up my computer.

Then, in a flash second, I decided to ignore it all for a moment.

I swiveled away from the computer. I placed my bare feet on the cold tile floor. I set a timer to ensure I wouldn’t be late to a meeting. I closed my eyes.

Things proceeded as usual. Racing thoughts. To do lists. Checking things done and undone. But, for one exquisite nanosecond, I felt something else. In one tiny micro-moment: peace, joy, belonging, and the thrill of recognizing that I felt it in the first place.

The moment was interrupted by the realization of the moment. Then, as any bad meditator would do, I checked my timer. I still had five minutes left.

Last year, I meditated my ass off. Like years past, I set my annual goal to meditate for 108 hours. A nearly daily regimen of 20-minute meditation sessions and a 10-day silent meditation retreat skyrocketed me to 158 hours (9,480 minutes to be exact). I really nailed it. Zen: check.

This year, as I’ve sought to unwind my obsession with goals, I’ve stopped counting. And, I’ve meditated far less.

In fact, I’ve just done a lot less in general.

I told myself that setting down goals was an invitation towards curiosity. An invitation towards openness. An invitation towards play. But, in practice, I’ve met my own invitation with paralysis and, sometimes, boredom.

Turns out, well-worn habits are hard to change.

After checking my timer, I padded across the cold tile floor, compelled to pick up a book I hadn’t touched in more than fifteen years: Meditation for the Love of It, by Sally Kempton.

Sixteen years ago, I bought Kempton’s book on the heels of my full-tilt revolt against a corporate career. A newly-minted certified yoga teacher, I had quit my New York ad agency job and moved to Colorado to teach yoga full-time. I met Kempton, and her book, on an extended yoga retreat in Estes Park.

I opened the book to the first, dusty dog-ear with no knowledge of what to expect.

Despite twenty years of deep meditation experience, Kempton opened with her own reckoning with her practice. She realized she was “using [her] spiritual practice as Band-Aids or perhaps as tonics—nourishing techniques that [she] employed to keep [herself] in good working order.”

Seeing myself in her words, I read on.

As she sought to reinvigorate and evolve her practice, Kempton admitted that she wanted meditation to retain the joy and dynamism it held in her early practice. But, as an experienced meditator, she knew that “meditation can’t always be fun.” She decided to reengage her practice from a beginner’s mindset, approaching each session as an experiment and as play:

“ I would give myself permission to bring an element of lightness and spontaneity to my meditation. I would let myself play. In fact, each time I sat to meditate, I would consciously remind myself, ‘It’s okay to be playful.’”

A faint, fifteen-year-old highlighter mark streaked across this passage. I closed the book. I went to work.

I began my Substack with no goal in mind. I just felt like writing. I lightly set an intention to write on a weekly basis. In “The Artist’s Way,” Julia Cameron advocated for this style of creative discipline. Setting aside time or intention on a daily or weekly basis to explore and create. Unwittingly, I carved a similar discipline into this Substack. By committing to writing something each week, I committed to having something to say. A small “c” commitment, built on the spirit of creativity and expression, not expectation.

But this week, I had nothing to say. I told myself I’d forgo the writing, and in doing so, I’d further break a relentless pattern of setting big “C” commitments in small “c” practices—goal wolves in sheep’s clothing. Goalless enlightenment: check.

Then, this morning happened. The cool tile under closed eyes and grounded feet. The serendipitously dog-eared page. The faint highlighter mark of Kats gone by.

And as I wrapped my workday, taking an evening stroll around the park, I felt inspired to write.

Which came first? The commitment? Or its surrender?

In Zen Buddhism, koans are paradoxes upon which to meditate:

“Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?”

When logic fails, practitioners must sit with the question versus seeking immediate solutions. In some traditions, a practitioner ruminates on a single koan for an entire lifetime. A well-considered answer matters; but, reflection matters more.

I don’t have the answers to my own riddles. But my relationship to the riddle itself changes. In one moment: softness. Cold tile, calm breaths, serendipity. In another: rigidity. The timer, the schedule, the discipline.

Both are always true. And maybe always will be.