Running, Meditation Practice, and Mandala
I do not write or talk much about my meditation practice. I wish to avoid proselytizing. Still, I find value in meditation, and others could too. I will make some observations about my meditation practice here, from the viewpoint of a “non-adept”, and also as a creative person. That phrase “non-adept” simply suggests that my experience is no more than ordinary. I do not presume to teach, only to show what a tyro has been thru and continues to go thru.
I was a beginner at running in my twenties. I liked the idea of running but it took some years for me to actually start the regimen. I always played sports but the idea of just running—no ball, no goal—seemed like more than I could comprise.
Eventually I comprised it, and eventually got up to eighty miles a week, even a few hundred milers. Those who don't run think that's a lot. It is if you haven't prepared yourself. But I did prepare myself. There's a joke in which someone asks another, “Do you play the piano?” The other replies, “I don't know, I've never tried.” Yes, everyone has the potential to play the piano, but potential is nothing if you don't actually sit at the piano. I finally started running, got past the early difficulties, and found myself with a daily regimen.
In running, I had no goal but to run. It was an exercise in mindfulness, I suppose, tho I didn't have that vocabulary then. Crisp spring and fall days were exhilarating. Hot, humid summer days and sub-zero winter ones were challenging. Occasionally I felt pain albeit never knee problems. More often I felt the transitory discomfort of physical exertion. Rain could be refreshing or wearing. I found that I needed the equanimity to accept the conditions of the day.
I've mentioned my practice of running but I would really like to speak about my meditation practice in an evidentiary way. First off: no levitation, nary an inch. Truth to say, I haven’t tried to levitate, but you'd think I'd have randomly gotten a lift after twelve or so years. Sadly, no.
More seriously, I cannot profess a greater calmness gained from my meditation. I am an anxious person, always have been. I have yet to reach a state of mellow yellow. However, meditation seems to allow me to swim thru the anxiety in a more healthful way. It has not eliminated my anxiety, but maybe I deal with it better. I have learned, too, that in moments of anxiety, I can turn to my breath, which helps anchor me.
Arthritis in my hips requires something under my thigh to avoid serious discomfort. No lotus position for me, then, but I do sit cross-legged. My ankles and knees start to complain after a while, something most meditators must put up with. I have found that just observing that discomfort, or the random itches that manifest, make them disappear. That is, when you observe pain without weighing it, it becomes a nothing. The hip pain distracts me too much at this time, but further practice will perhaps help me avoid greater distractions.
When I ran regularly, I estimated that one third of the time, I had great, elevating runs, another third were more like getting the work in, and the other third, tiredness, distraction, or physical discomfort made the run labourious. My meditation divides similarly. Some days I can stay close to my breath, some days I need to bring myself back continually, and other days I can barely sit before I stand up and go on to something else.
I don't equate creativity with meditation but they do relate in terms of process. You meditate so that you can learn to meditate. By that same token, I write so that I can learn to write. Likewise for any creative endeavour. No endzone exists.
I haven't written the perfect poem. If I or anyone ever has or does: then what? Stop writing? Maybe you would, maybe you reach a point where poetry no longer fills your need, but you'd still seek creative outlet.
Writing poetry used to be something almost furious for me. Not angry but fast and urgently done. I wrote a lot, some of it satisfied me. Now I write much less. I work just as quickly but more calmly. In doing so, I see something around the process, surrounding it: a quiet place, at both ends of the poem. It is as if the poem, the work, is a mandala. That mandala is where I meditate. I mean I just realized that as I wrote it.
The picture below shows a Tibetan monk creating a sand mandala. The picture would have been better had he allowed me to stand on the table he worked on, but no! He worked alone over the course of several days. When he finished, people gathered to see it. After that, he ceremoniously gathered up the sand and we all followed him to the Concord River, where he dumped the sand. And there we were.
