Meditations on Meditation 3

There is a myth out there that meditation is serious stuff: that there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. In the same way that there is no right or wrong way to feel the wind on your face there is no right or wrong way to meditate. We might all feel it differently, we might do it at different times, some may even do it more often than others but no one person is better or worse at feeling the wind. Similarly, no one is better or worse at meditating.

Even for those of us who have a hard time sitting still and clearing our mind. We too can meditate! This is because meditation can be as simple as smelling the roses, feeling the wind on your face, experiencing compasion, or simply being.

When a cat sits in a window sill, it isn't thinking about what is in the futur or in the past, where it aught to be, if it is enjoying the sun enough, or if it is doing it right. When the cat leaves the window sill the cat doesn't feel guilty because it hasn't returned in a while. The cat doesn't think to itself, "I really owe it to myself to enjoy the sunlight today." A cat sits on the window sill and enjoys the sunlight simply because the sun is there. Meditation is like this: it is returning to a natural way of enjoying life's simplicity.

This way of thinking about meditation was ellegantly explained by Allen watts when he stated that "you can make any human action into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just for doing it." Meditation is being whole: it is you and it is the universe! Meditation is complete and for the sake of nothing at all except of itself.

When you are "completely with it" you aren't distracted, instead you are saturated in what you are doing. When you do things for the sake of doing it, it is pure enjoyment. You do it not for the sake of others even if it may benifit them, nor for the sake of yourself even if it may benifit you. You do it because, for what ever reason, you feel inclined to do so and you allow this inclination to direct you. Weather this is feeling the wind on your face or sitting, legs crossed, repeating "om,": both are meditation, neither are good not bad, better nor worse; they are simply ways of being at peace.

Meditation is the here and now. We all experience here and now all of the time and everywhere because this is all that ever exists. Sometimes we just need to remind ourselves of this point. Meditation is the reminder, both when we meditation with intention and when we meditation by feeling the wind on our face.