Practice, practice

In my reading of Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever you go there you are this morning, I have come to the section with the specific instructions on meditation practice.

I got hung up here the last time I tried to read this book -- my form of meditation, Centering Prayer, is considerably less rule-based than the Buddhist meditation he describes -- but this time I'm going to try to plow through.

And there were a couple of things I read this morning that resonated with me. The first is that meditation is a way of practicing mindfulness. Well, duh... Isn't that rather stating the obvious?

But what he points out is that:

"Although it is tempting to do so, you can't just think that you understand how to be mindful, and save using it for only those moments when the big events hit. They contain so much power they will overwhelm you instantly, along with all your romantic ideas about equanimity and knowing how to be mindful."

Reading that was a bit of an epiphany, I confess. For me -- possibly because I do Centering Prayer -- my time sitting has been about getting to the still center within. I've heard Cynthia tell the story many times about the Centering Prayer practitioner who complained to Father Thomas Keating that she'd had a terrible sit, her mind going in 10,000 different different directions. Father Keating's response was apparently something like "Ah, how fortunate! 10,000 opportunities to practice letting go!"

I keep forgetting that the practice of letting go is every bit as important as the experience of the still center within. But somehow reading that same thought from this slightly different perspective helps me to realize that there really is a specific value in sitting even if I can't get to that quiet place of knowing.

It also helps to explain why, at times like last week, when I was on the retreat, I am so much more conscious of the strange (and occasionally disheartening) paths my mind wanders down in the course of a day. It isn't a bad thing, and it isn't that I am a terrible human being; it's that I am more mindful, more aware. That stuff was always there, and it's really SO much better to be aware of it than to be living unconsciously. If you don't know it's broke, it's not likely you can fix it -- even if the fixing just involves noticing, acknowledging, and accepting.

Yes, I get that this is all obvious. But the other aspect of meditating regularly is that with luck some of the stuff that seems obvious to your brain might actually plant itself in your heart...

Anyway, the other piece that struck me in my reading this morning was a little lecture on hand positions. Now, I understand -- and can see for myself if I look around the room at other meditators while on retreat -- that many people meditate with their hands resting, whether palms up or palms down, on their knees. I've tried that, and see it as a goal, but for whatever reason I begin to feel uncomfortable if I do that, so I allow myself to sit with fingers interlaced on my lap.

It turns out the Buddhists, who seem to have something to say about everything, have definitions for hand placements -- which he calls "hand mudras" -- as well. And Kabat-Zinn specifically invites you to explore the mental states that arise when you hold your hands in the various ways.

His observations reminded me of something I read in Malcolm Gladwell's amazing book, Blink, which I may have mentioned here before. A scientist who was categorizing the movements of facial muscles observed that when practicing the movements surrounding frowning he became angry and depressed, and he concluded that how we hold our bodies can actually affect our moods.

Apparently the Buddhists have known this for centuries. I was particularly struck by this passage from Kabat-Zinn's discussion of hand mudras, about the fist:

"Take the energy of the fist, for instance. When we get angry, our hands tend to close into fists. Some people unknowingly practice this mudra a lot in their lives. It waters the seeds of anger and violence within you every time you do it, and they respond by sprouting and growing stronger.

The next time you find yourself making fists out of anger, try to bring mindfulness to the inner attitude embodied in a fist. Feel the tension, the hatred, the anger, the aggression, and the fear which it contains...as an experiment...try opening your fists and placing the palms together over your heart in the prayer position... notice what happens to the anger and hurt as you hold this position for even a few moments."

This passage reminded me of this poster, which was plastered on walls everywhere in Naples. I don't know what it means, but it definitely contributed to the discomfort I felt in that town. Clearly fists --for me, at least -- serve as an expression or symbol of anger; which has never been a comfortable emotion for me, whether its my own anger or that of others.

The passage also reminded me of something my husband mentioned recently; that new tests are being devised that are apparently supposed to detect terrorists by measuring some of those facial muscle movements described in Blink. Though I get the universality of these notions, it's hard not to be concerned that such movements might not necessarily reflect the same emotions in all circumstances. Just as a fist might in some cases be more about fear than about anger, I could imagine that people accustomed to living in police states might exhibit more fear or anger (and how easy is it to distinguish between these two?) when being questioned than someone from whose idea of a policeman is Andy in Mayberry RFD.

Discussing this over dinner last night, we found ourselves (inevitable, of course, as the election draws near) discussing what impressions we take of our political candidates and whether those are conscious or unconscious responses. The subject of President Bush and his infamous smirk arose: does that smirk denote a sly attempt to get away with something, or just a lack of brainpower? And how can we ever really know?

Another reason to cultivate mindfulness, I suspect; it's terribly easy to let our unconscious minds make snap judgments that may just be completely off the mark. And now I understand that it's not enough to know that, any more than it's enough to know how a middle C sounds. If I am going to hit the note successfully, right on pitch -- and if I'm going to accurately assess what is going on around me -- I need to plant what I know in my brain in my heart, and I need to bring the things I unconsciously think or know in my heart up to awareness. And that will take practice, practice, practice.