Meditation Is Not Relaxation

Relaxation, presence, focus. These are possible side benefits. Yet, meditation is much more.

The room is full of people sitting on cushions with their legs crossed. We will sit like this for forty minutes as we meditate together. After about twenty minutes, I hear a snore. I ignore it. It’s clear they came to relax, not meditate.

I am a meditation teacher. Most people attend the class looking for the same benefits. They want to relax, find peace amidst our seemly uncontrollable train of thoughts, to not be so easily distracted and keep focus.

These are all possible side benefits of meditation, but that is not what meditation is. If we relax too much over meditation, we might fall asleep. Surprise, surprise: if you are sleeping, you are not meditating. And maybe that is ok: maybe what we need is to rest more often and better, and not to meditate. As with everything in life, nothing beats a clear intention.

That means, completely awake. When we do that, we catch things as they come to us without identifying with them. At first, this is a big challenge: it requires us to separate our awareness from any content that might emerge within. When we detach from these, we can sit and watch as if we were watching a TV that someone else was changing the channels. We don't engage with it. In full awareness, we watch as the TV show changes. That in itself requires a certain level of emotional detachment to occur.

With practice, we get to a quieter place. Fewer thoughts come up, and less often. As the TV within goes on mute, we continue to be aware. Suddenly, other things we couldn't hear before, like body sensations, start to emerge. We get more sensitive to capture new types of things; but only if we are present. If we are too relaxed, we miss the train.

Some people tell me this watching of a quieter river is "boring". My answer is always the same. If you think this is boring, it is because you haven't experienced it yet. Many think they have reached this point, but if you are there, there is no place to judge something is "boring", or to…

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