Meditation

Meditation

About 3 weeks ago, a friend in my bubble invited me to go on a trip with her.  She said she was taking a road trip to Lake Tahoe to spend time at her vacation home for a week.  She would be spending the early part of the trip with her daughter.  She asked if I would like to come for the last part of the trip.  I had never been to Lake Tahoe.  I hadn’t traveled since the fall, and my travel itch was getting strong.  I was super excited.   Thanks to the wonders of Zoom during COVID, I could still connect to my “normal” activities.  I could still teach yoga on Zoom.  I could still attend yoga classes on Zoom.  I could even still attend 7 AM meditations on Zoom, only now they would be at 6 AM since I was traveling to the Pacific Time Zone.  No problem!

The first weekday morning I was there, I woke up early.  With Daylight Savings beginning the day before, that was a surprise to me.  Still, I realized I could sign  into my Zoom account and make it to meditation.  I got out of bed.  No need to put on street clothes, our Sangha is a “come as you are” kind of group and I wasn’t leaving the house.  I headed downstairs to the kitchen with my jammies on.

I set up my iPad and logged into the meditation session.  After the usual greeting and meditation opening, the moderator hit her gong, and the 20-minute sit began.

When I had been with my friend in the kitchen the day before, we chatted and the kitchen was welcoming.  This morning the kitchen was eerily quiet.  Well, it was quiet except for one thing.  There was a very loud analog clock on the wall.  Suddenly it sounded like a drone.   “TICK TICK TICK,” it wailed.   I could not get the noise out of my head.  I tried to do my traditional breathing techniques.  I wanted to take a deep breath in through my nose and a longer breath out through my nose.  I started to follow this technique with the intention of counting breaths.  It couldn’t happen.  It wouldn’t happen.  That TICK TICK TICK kept disturbing me.  I decided to surrender.  I would count the ticks of the clock.

I figured I would just focus and start counting the ticks.  1...2...3...  I knew that 60 ticks made a minute.  So for 20 minutes I would be counting...1200 ticks.  Damn that seemed like a lot.  Could I do it?  Did I have a choice?  The 20 minutes was going to go by whether I liked it or not.

As I approached a minute, I found this counting to be so painful!  It seemed to take forever.  Isn’t that funny?  Whenever I sit for meditation with the sangha, it always lasts 20 minutes.  20 minutes is always 20 minutes.  Some days, it seems like 20 minutes fly by.  Some days, the 20 minutes seem to really drag.  Yet in the end, it’s always the same amount time.  Perception can be so interesting right?

I finally made it through minute one and started on minute two.  It was torture.  These minutes seemed to last FOREVER.  About 30 seconds into the second minute I thought, “This is it!  This is suffering!  This is what the Buddha talked about in the 4 Noble Truths!”  I was excited that I was able recognize the root of my suffering, to step out of my painful situation and see what was really irking me.  I was choosing to focus so much on how miserable these minutes seemed to be that I couldn’t just “be” in the minutes.  I laughed at myself.    I took a deep breath and started to focus on my breath and counted 2 more minutes.  It was a little less painful, but painful none the less.  I dropped counting the minutes.

I sat still and worked on focusing on my breath.  Could I ignore the clock and set my intention to the breath?  I let my mind wander.  I thought about my plans for the rest of the day.  I thought about my gratitude for being in my friend’s house and in this beautiful space in nature.  I never knew how beautiful Lake Tahoe could be.  Here I was enjoying the beautiful venues and vistas.  I didn’t have to worry about my “todo” list at home.  Here, I only had to be.

After what seemed like a couple of minutes, I went back to actually counting the “ticks” on the clock.  I made it to what I thought was about 7 minutes.  Then the moderator rang her gong, and our 20 minutes were over.

Wait!  What?  20 minutes were over?  That doesn’t seem right.  I had only sat for 10 minutes at the most, based on my counting of the clock.  Where did those other 10 minutes go?  How could that be?

I sat and listened to the moderator talk about her awareness over the last week.  As I listened, I thought about my awareness and the clock.  I was still amused that a clock could provide such a distraction.  I mean, I’m a Buddhist.  I meditate all the time.  Normally when I sit for meditation I am peaceful and relaxed.  This time I noticed it was hard to relax, and the clock put me on edge!  But did the clock put me on edge, or was it my reaction to the clock?  Perhaps it was my expectation of the clock.  I thought time should go by so much faster.  

As I listened to the clock in the background, the moderator spoke.  I realized something.  What I had heard as a “tick” was actually a “tick-tock.”  The sound I counted as a second was actually two seconds!  In the time that I thought only a second had gone by, it was really two seconds.  When I thought I had counted 7 minutes, I had actually counted 14 minutes!  Time was sailing by “normally.”  I laughed to myself when I thought about how I wanted to control time, control the environment.  When it’s time to meditate, I set myself up with the “perfect” conditions. Is that what meditation is about?  Because I can certainly use the benefit of focusing on my breath and letting my thoughts pass by other times than when I’m in an “official” meditation setting.  Maybe this clock was providing me with a test of how to just “be.”  It seems that I may have a while to go before I have mastered the art of letting go.