NEW Books: Excerpt Come and Sit

Skylight Paths Publishing

Introduction: Come and Sit

James Finley, The Contemplative Heart

Where are you hurrying to?
Would you like to slow down? Can you find a little time to sit?

If you make that time, you can become aware of how much time you actually do have. As you sit, you may also discover more: more awareness, more serenity, and even more time.

Come and sit to meditate.

Meditation is exploring: sitting— but sometimes also chanting or dancing or walking—to explore the real nature of mind, body, spirit, world. Meditation is inner research.

Some say meditation is about exploring the mind and how it creates the conditions of our existence, including how we perceive time, stress, and everyday busyness in our lives. Some say it is exploring the way to God or the Absolute that forms our existence. Some say it is a glimpse of what is timeless and unchanging; others, a glimpse of change itself, of ceaseless passing and impermanence. All say that sitting to meditate is undertaking a journey that is important, even if that journey is differently understood.

As you begin this journey of meditation, consider yourself blessed with a great advantage: you have beginner’s mind.

Beginner’s Mind

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few. So Zen Buddhist Master Shunryu Suzuki wrote in the introduction to Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, a classic work on Zen meditation that helped educate the crop of Americans who now teach and practice Zen Buddhism, one branch of the 2,500-year-old, Eastern-born Buddhist religion.

The most skillful meditation practitioners retain and cultivate “beginner’s mind,” a mind that is clear of preconceptions, open and fresh. Over time, the practice of meditation enlarges awareness, and helps the diligent meditator to become, and remain, mindful of what contemporary Christian writer James Finley calls “the divinity of the ceaseless flow of the one, everlasting, present moment.”

Suzuki’s words not only offer a profound clue to the aim of meditation, but also help to dispel the preconception that meditation is an esoteric and challenging activity that only spiritually gifted and physically limber people can do after long years of solitary practice. Anyone can learn to meditate. But it takes honesty with yourself and patience. Distancing yourself from the quicksilver movement of thought requires patience, with both yourself and the process of learning to meditate.

What Is Meditation?

Virtually all the world’s major religions consider meditation to be a means of spiritual growth and a way of apprehending the Divine. Meditation is a process for deepening awareness; it is not itself a religion. Across religious traditions, meditation has common aims and some shared techniques. But it also differs in specifics according to religious tradition.

You can think of meditation as a kind of mental housecleaning, helping you to discipline thoughts in order to enhance your ability to pay attention to whatever you are doing, whether it be walking the dog or expressing devotion to the Divine. And just as there are many ways to clean house, there are many ways to meditate.

Cleaning is most effectively done when the cleaner is comfortable with and adept at the method through practice. So it is with meditation. Different ways suit different temperaments.

A lot has been written about meditation. To explore different methods and learn to meditate, you could begin with any one of the more than two thousand books available on the subject. If you chipped away at the pile, going through one book a week, you’d be ready to start in just under forty years.

Or would you prefer to have a look inside seven different meditation centers to see what’s going on and get some introductory information about what might suit you best?

This book offers you the second path. Come and sit. Come and experience. Meditation is learned through experience.

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What This Book Offers

This book opens the doors of seven different meditation centers that teach and use different meditation methods. You can take a look at what people are doing and find out what it means. You can also find out why they meditate, through stories shared by practitioners who are seasoned and committed, as well as by those who are new to meditation. In addition, you will get an introduction to the spiritual traditions that have used meditation for many hundreds of years as a tool for spiritual growth and understanding.

In this book, meditation is presented as a spiritual activity, but meditation is not necessarily spiritual for everybody who practices it. People meditate to reduce the stress of their lives and their work, improve their concentration, decrease their blood pressure, or increase their productivity. Eastern spiritual sages have long known what Western scientific sages are now measuring in controlled clinical studies: meditation has observable, beneficial effects.

These are all good reasons to meditate, but they are separate from the scope of this book, which presents meditation in the original sense, the way it has been historically practiced: a process for spiritual growth and expression. Meditation takes the seeker inward, where mind and spirit interplay and where mystics know that Truth can be known.

This book is for you if you are spiritually curious and interested in a more disciplined spiritual exploration. It is directed to people who want to know a little more, who believe they are ready for the journey of quiet intensity that meditation will take them on.

To gather material for this book, I spoke to spiritual seekers whom I met in meditation centers and circles throughout the metropolitan Chicago area, which is blessed with a large and diverse spiritual community. Chicago is home to Sufis, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, and Jews—the five main religious traditions represented here. It contains meditation centers, temples, monasteries, retreat houses, and many living rooms where in different ways different people come together to meditate, to worship, to study, and to explore spirituality and the way to the Divine.

In some instances, the places I visited are local centers of national networks of schools of meditation. In other cases, people meditating in Chicago-area living rooms are doing the same things they would be doing in sitting groups in San Francisco or Boston. So while the settings are unique, the experiences illustrate typical and common things in each meditation tradition.

Not everyone will have ready access to established meditation settings. Some serious meditators practice on their own, traveling occasionally to major centers for retreats or conferences. Jewish meditators, for example, have very few major U.S. centers for instruction, but circles of meditators or meditation teachers can be located by using those central resources and other sources of information about Jewish spirituality.

For those who may be studying the Jewish Kabbalah in Alaska or the Buddhist Dhammapada in North Dakota, books and other media, such as instructional tapes and videos, are plentiful and accessible resources. Internet access is another valuable avenue as the presence of spiritual sites on the Web becomes more common. The Web is one way of furnishing resources and also a way of building a community. Chat groups and bulletin boards can link those with common interests but disparate locations.

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In this book, specialized resource lists at the end of each chapter, and a list of “multitradition” resources at the end of the entire text, include selected key works and periodicals, locations of major centers and other organizations that teach or promote meditation, and Internet-based information about meditation. None of these lists is comprehensive. They are intended only to get you started with major sources.

In observing, researching, and practicing meditation, I have tried to pay attention to the similarities and differences in who meditates, why they meditate, and what they do. Some of the similarities across paths, techniques, and experiences are striking. The meditators I met had some traits and desires in common. Perhaps as you begin this journey, you can recognize yourself among those already traveling.

Who Meditates?

Not everyone is drawn to meditation. Some people don’t want to sit still or don’t think they can. Many people are impatient, results oriented, or make decisions based on bottom-line or cost-benefit calculations. Meditation is slow and involves opening up, rather than closing in on a goal. Many meditative paths ask you to give up a goal and experience detachment. Meditation focuses on a receding horizon, and the question “When do we get there?” is better posed on a vacation trip than on a spiritual journey.

Many of the meditators I met told me that they consciously set themselves on a new spiritual path because of dissatisfaction with the religion—or in a few instances, the lack of religion—of their childhood. They were missing some important spiritual element in their lives. Some of them were put off by what they perceived as rigidity, punitiveness, or irrelevance of the beliefs and practices they were first taught. They found rote beliefs or “holiday religion” insubstantial and incapable of answering deeper questions.

Not everyone who meditates comes to it from spiritual rebellion, however. Some have stayed within the spiritual tradition in which they were raised. Yet they sought a renewed and deeper understanding of their tradition and a revitalized, more meaningful practice. Their religion met their spiritual needs in an enriched way because of what meditation added: a sense of quiet, immediate, and unmediated connection, and depth. Meditation made the tradition alive.

Many meditators also told me that meditation satisfied a longstanding inclination or penchant. “I’ve always had a deep calling or attraction for the contemplative life,” said one woman, who had spent six years in a Catholic convent. Another man dated his curiosity about Buddhism back to a high school history project about Buddhist sculpture, which fascinated him.

A number of people I met became acquainted with other religious and spiritual paths in the course of their education. Some of them studied world religions or comparative religions in college; a number of those drawn to Buddhism began their practice during that time of exposure, in very early adulthood, when people are often consciously constructing adult identities.

Even more common was the phenomenon of “shopping” among traditions for the best spiritual fit. I heard often of people’s shift from one form to another: Tibetan to Zen, Sufism to Buddhism, Eastern spirituality to Christian centering prayer. Similarly, even after finding a form that satisfies their needs, many meditators remain open to learning from other approaches or combinations of approaches, in such varied forms as Zen-Christian retreats, acknowledgment of universalism within spiritual seeking, and varied interfaith activities. This kind of openness and accumulated experience and familiarity with other paths gives meditators spiritual literacy. It also makes for a high degree of tolerance of other paths. Many espoused the “perennial wisdom” philosophy: the great spiritual figures of different religious traditions all preached similar truths.

So many seekers and people interested in spirituality are both curious and open; they question, search, try. This pattern, as Kwan Um Zen Master Seung Sahn might say, is not good, not bad. It is certainly a way to develop a personally meaningful practice; but it may detract from the commitment that is necessary in any and all practices. In a recorded conversation, journalist Bill Moyers and world religions scholar Huston Smith put the question this way: Is it better to dig one ninety-foot well, or nine ten-foot ones? Each meditator unearths his or her own answer.

The Hard Way

None of the meditative paths is easy; all of them take time and effort. All of them bring dry times, dark nights of the soul, distractions, hasty judgments—the squirreled-away regrets of the soul or mistakes of the past coming to the surface of awareness as the process of meditation turns on inner lights. These are so many illusions and temptations, most teachers would say; there are even special terms in a number of traditions for these kinds of compelling mental confusions. Don’t let them stop you.

So many meditators I met as I researched this book had tried a variety of approaches before finding the right fit. If at first you don’t succeed at finding what feels right, try, try again. Anything is possible, but nothing is easy. Meditation is a way, but not a shortcut. Over and over I heard this from students whose practice was long-term and steady: you have to do the work. “The path we are discussing,” writes Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa in Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, “is called the hard way.”

So if you think that meditation is a way to get someplace fast, chances are you won’t get to that place, or anywhere else, by meditating. If, on the other hand, meditation strikes you as a path for slowing down, then you are heading in the right direction.

The awakening that meditation brings is gradual. “Awakening” is a term commonly used to describe what meditation does; Buddha means “awakened one.” Awakening is comprehensive and experiential. We awaken our capacities, awaken to meaning, awaken to the ubiquitous presence of the Divine, awaken to every day, awaken to the reality that is right in front of our noses, that is in our very noses with each breath we inhale and exhale.

Meditation Techniques: “Aiming for One or Zero”

Just as meditators have common characteristics, so do their paths, even while following different spiritual traditions. In The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience, Daniel Goleman cites insight meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein: “All meditation systems either aim for One or Zero—union with God or emptiness.”

Sometimes, meditation involves concentration on a single focal point. In the Hindu tradition, a mantra—a sacred sound—is used; some Jewish meditation practices focus on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in an attempt to penetrate a deeper level of meaning. Buddhists meditate on certain utterances to develop compassion. Christian centering prayer uses a “sacred word,” not as a focus but as a kind of anchor to which the meditator returns when distracted by passing thoughts.

Meditation can also open the mind up to a greater awareness of impermanence or change, to the motion of thoughts arising and passing away. The meditator practices not clinging to any mental construction; insight meditation teaches this, as does centering prayer. This kind of practice teaches the meditator a lot about the mind and its workings, and about the mind’s interaction with the world.

Breath awareness is important in any meditation. Some traditions offer an education about the breath and its role in our well-being. One common meditation technique is to bring the attention to the point between the nostrils, where breath enters and exits the body, as a focal point. In the Hindu tradition, different exercises for manipulating the breath can change the flow of energy—prana—through the body. Sufis teach purification by breath. Beginners in Zen are taught to count their breath to help stabilize the wandering mind.

Breath is the bridge between body and mind, the way to open the mind anew and refresh the body with what it needs to do its work. It is a powerful symbol—ruach in Judaism, prana in the Hindu tradition, the breath of life celebrated in poetry and sacred story—that is immediate proof of a reality we cannot see. We cannot see our breath and are usually not conscious of it, yet our lives depend on it and we breathe without ceasing. This basic insight provided by breath is readily available and profound, a beginner’s clue to the unorthodox ways of perception that meditation cultivates. It is an accessible first step toward greater awareness.

Meditation is invariably pictured as silent and seated, but this is not always so. Sufi dhikr (remembrance of God) may include vocal repetition of God’s name. Sufi dancing is meditation, a means of fixing the mind on the beloved and the qualities of the Divine Beloved. Some Jewish meditation may involve chanting, dancing, or other body movements. Chanting is important in Buddhism and may open or close a meditation session. Hindu mantras may be said silently or uttered aloud. Certain sounds are considered sacred; they can be felt in the body and are associated with energy centers.

Given differences in techniques and in spiritual frames of reference, different people will find some kinds of meditation more congenial than others, as I did. Familiarity with a spiritual tradition can be an advantage because it answers basic questions and minimizes the distractions bred by unfamiliarity. But beginner’s mind is always an advantage, as long as the meditator is comfortable, unintimidated, and receptive.

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Common Questions among Beginners

Beginning meditators encounter many questions and opportunities. One frequent area of concern is the role of a teacher. What does the teacher do? Do I need one? How can I find a good one?

While it is possible to begin without a teacher, as many of the meditators I spoke with did, it’s not possible to make serious progress without one. Teachers are guides with different specific functions and meanings in different traditions. Teachers provide occasions to learn deeply about meditation, about the self, about the big questions that nag at people who are drawn to meditation.

In many traditions, the teacher-student pairing can itself be a vehicle for teaching and for self-exploration. Or the teacher may function as the representation of a spiritual master. In a chapter on choosing a teacher in A Path with Heart: A Guide through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, well-known insight meditation teacher Jack Kornfield writes, “Like choosing a partner in marriage, choosing a teacher also asks for a deep respect of our own inner knowing, and a willingness to commit when the circumstances seem right.”

Clarity in this relationship is important because the student becomes vulnerable. As a path of self-exploration, meditation encourages openness and increases our willingness to encounter new possibilities. The disciplined meditator may pierce through ordinary psychological self-defenses. Spiritual traditions talk about the discomfort—at times, acute spiritual distress—that often accompanies increased awareness, leaving an individual more raw or susceptible. Profound meditation alters consciousness; that is one reason why people do it. A dependable and knowledgeable guide can give information and reassurance. Some traditions also talk about “spiritual friends” as useful support.

Someone wisely said to me in the course of preparing this book that the teacher in front of you is the one you fall in love with. In fact, I “fell in love” repeatedly with many skillful teachers in a number of different traditions. It is important for practical, emotional, and spiritual reasons to trust the teacher. Yet it’s understandably easy to idealize a teacher, who at first blush appears to be an embodiment of accomplishment, however ostensibly humble. A teacher’s authority should set a measure of distance between master and student without lessening the depth of the relationship.

Spiritual mastery aside, teachers are still on their own paths, albeit often farther down the road to self-realization. And so like everything else involving humans, the teacher-student relationship has occasionally been abused. Teachers have violated ethics in common human ways: sexual misconduct, alcoholism, deceit. As a result, some centers have had to deal with the consequences of such abuse of authority. Some have developed codes of conduct and ethics for teachers. Insight meditation teachers, for example, follow a set of guidelines.

The beginning student can and should be prudent without being rigidly defensive. One reassurance can be found in the tradition or lineage of a teacher. Lineage shows you a teacher’s teachers, in a chain that stretches back into a spiritual tradition. In addition to defining a unique spiritual approach, lineage provides a spiritual reference for a center or teacher. Any legitimate tradition is filled with multiple voices that enrich interpretation, add fresh views, and make the teaching a living tradition that still has relevance to everyday life no matter how long ago that teaching and tradition began, no matter how different was the way of life at the tradition’s birth.

Conversely, then, a center’s or group’s reliance on a single teacher to the exclusion of all other voices can be seen as a red flag. Centers or groups without room for more than one voice and interpretation are, at best, incomplete or exclusive; at worst, they have something other than enlightenment in mind.

A second area for prudent decision-making is financial. Enlightenment is priceless, but the journey to it always has some cost. Traditions and centers differ about the real question of how much to charge for instruction in meditation and what “paying” means. For example, insight meditation, drawn from the Theravada Buddhist tradition, tries to incorporate dana, a Sanskrit and Pali term that means “donation” or “alms.” Historically, monks possessed almost nothing; they were to beg for their subsistence as part of their spiritual practice. In return, they provided spiritual instruction. This practice has been adopted or adapted by some spiritual teachers, notably within the insight meditation community; some centers charge fees for expenses, but teachers are paid through dana.

Western ways, however, invariably govern Western spiritual centers and teachers. Some make it a spiritual point to make instruction affordable. Many centers have baskets and envelopes out for donations, leaving the matter to the discretion of the student. The cost of retreats, instruction, and spiritual “accessories,” such as cushions and benches, is often the subject of discussion among practitioners concerned about, in Chogyam Trungpa’s apt summary term, “spiritual materialism.” Spiritual materialism can pile up the books and pillows, which lead nowhere if unused. It makes sense to start small and stay simple along the path, watching as the way opens.

Finding the Way

My own way has opened very slowly. Some years back now, when I was a young adult, I tried meditating. At that time, the late 1970s, it seemed a pretty mysterious proposition. I wanted peace of mind and respite from neuroses aggravated by work life and unworkable relationships. Meditation appeared to promise a way. I chose a Hindu path, buying books and taking classes in yoga, which taught me both the physical postures of hatha yoga and the discipline of meditation.

Physically, sitting was not difficult. I could fold fairly easily into a full-lotus position and attend to the movement of my breath. But the mental part was challenging. I thought I was not supposed to think, and I found that very difficult. I kept thinking. The thoughts simply kept coming. I couldn’t find the tap inside my brain and turn it off.

I thought I must be doing something wrong. I thought I was the only one with this problem. I was somewhat intimidated by the foreign cultural context in which I was learning. My thinking continued. It seemed as if nothing was happening. I wasn’t “advancing,” and enlightenment began to seem impossible. And so, despite the fact that I was a decent, disciplined, flexible student of yoga, I gave it up.

Some years and life events later, through the discipline of the silent worship of Quakers, I found my way back to meditation. In 1991, when I began attending Quaker meetings—as our worship gatherings are called—I found it difficult to sit in a group of people who might remain silent for an entire hour, as is the Quaker way. Once again, my mind would go for a walk, or many walks, starting off in one direction, then another. But over time and with repetition and the focused spiritual power of a group providing a supportive and appropriate environment, I began to learn to discriminate among the various things springing up mentally in the course of sitting quietly. More importantly, I learned patience: patience with habit, patience with silence, patience with my own expectations, patience with ambiguity and open-endedness.

Today, I expect less and get more. I heard, again and again, as you may: when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. The way will open.

This book is not intended to teach you how to meditate. I am not a meditation teacher. I am a student of meditation, and of the world’s religions. I am also a journalist with a specialty in religion, trained in observing, questioning, and translating into everyday English the specialty languages often used within religion. So use this book as you knock on the doors of different centers, as you consider different teachers, as you try different paths.

This book follows certain conventions worth clarifying. In visiting centers, I spoke with numerous teachers and students. Some of the students were beginners; all of the teachers were also students. Although I have included the first and last names of center directors, administrators, or significant contacts, for the most part the people in this book are referred to by first names only. This is intended to minimize confusion, but it is also meant to make your exploration a little friendlier. It serves, too, to make the experience of the meditators less tied to unique individual experiences and egos. Meditation, after all, often moves us to the experience of oneness.

A note on spelling and the many foreign words encountered within world spiritual traditions: I have followed the standard practice in books for general readers of omitting diacritical marks when using English translations or transliterations of foreign terms. All foreign words are defined on first usage in the text. A glossary in the back serves as an at-a-glance compendium of foreign terms.

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When I was researching and writing this book, I had this dream: I was in a large, hotel-like public building looking for a large gathering—a conference, or perhaps a high school reunion—I was to attend. I passed through banquet room after banquet room, looking for just the right place where I belonged. I always knew where I was headed, but walking and looking seemed to take a long time.

Having meditated regularly as an essential part—the experiential part—of my research, I wasn’t surprised to have a dream with such clear significance. Like meditation, dreams are a time-honored tool of spiritual development. My dream told me that each religious tradition offers a rich feast; each has attractions and sustenance. Although I could pass through many rooms, however, I really belonged in only one. And, I discovered, once I got there, it was not what I had expected.

If you are searching for the banquet to which you have been invited, your challenge is to find out where it is. It may not be what you expect; you may discover many alternatives along the way. But you have been invited, and you do belong.

Welcome to the many possibilities. Taste and see.

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