The stick (Allen)

 Ms. Diaz’s latest post touched me, and oddly got me thinking about the time I might have spent in Japan. If I had been in a Zen practice many years ago, under the strict supervision of a traditional Zen instructor, I would have learned how to fake being a really good meditator. Otherwise I would have been beaten quite a lot. Eventually it would have been time to leave the monastery.

 

Instructor: Did you meditate today?

Me: No.

 

Instructor: Why didn’t you meditate like you are supposed to?

Me: Didn’t feel like it.

 

Instructor: Aren’t you scared of my stick anymore?

Me: Yes, I truly hate your stick. I just don’t want to meditate.

 

Instructor: Do you have a reason for not meditating?

Me: Good question. I think I’m done with it. Ouch. Hey, that’s not fair. Put the stick down, OK? Let’s talk a bit, man to man.

Instructor: I am your instructor. I am not here to talk. And you are not a man yet.

Me: Yeah, I get it. But either I leave right this moment without talking or we have a talk.

Instructor: Get out of here.

 

That’s the kind of story to dine out on for the rest of my life. So, many years later, much closer to the present time, which is 6 p.m., I would have repeated the story to a friend who was having trouble meditating.

 

Friend: Wow, that’s heavy.

Me: So what’s going on with your meditating?

Friend: I just can’t get the hang of it. I set aside twenty minutes every morning, and sometimes I can only get through two minutes before I’m on my feet fixing an espresso.

 

Me: Why do you meditate?

Friend: For peace of mind.

 

Me: What’s peace of mind?

Friend: Don’t do that. You know what I mean. It’s good to meditate. It relaxes you, calms you down, makes life easier. That’s what everyone says.

 

Me: So you want to relax? It’s like an affirmation? “I will relax.” And if you say it enough times it will happen?

Friend: Maybe. I don’t like your tone of voice.

 

Me: OK, so there are a bunch of reasons to meditate. You’ve named one of them, which is the one that everybody talks about. But it’s the worst one. It’ll just tie you in knots. I promise that you don’t want to keep doing what you’ve been doing.

Friend: But it’s the one that got the whole thing started, the Beatles, TM, Herbert Benson. It clears your mind.

Me: OK, so it’s the best form of meditation. That’s fine with me, too. I like the Beatles.

 

Me: What is your personal metaphysics?

Friend: I don’t have a personal metaphysics.

Me: Yes you do. What do you think is real?

Friend: This table is real.

Me: That’s your metaphysics. Tables are real. You immediately went to something outside you, so your metaphysics is more interested in outside than inside. It’s empirical. You went to a material object, so your metaphysics is materialist. We know a lot. So what you want to do is find a form of meditation that knocks your empirical materialism on its ass.

Friend: Like what?

Me: How about one that asks you to look for stuff that is inside, and isn’t your organs, which are material. Any idea what that imaginary stuff would be?

Friend: Nope.

Me: Any thoughts?

Friend: Of course I have thoughts. I think, for instance, that you’re being obtuse.

Me: Well, your thoughts are inside you, right, and they’re not made of stuff, right? So maybe if you focus on them a bit, you’ll be able to meditate.

Friend: That doesn’t sound right. I thought I was supposed to get rid of stuff when I meditated.

Me: You will be getting rid of stuff. You won’t be thinking about what you see outside directly, tables and trees, for instance.

Friend: But I’ll still be thinking. I’ll be thinking about my thoughts.

Me: Exactly.

Friend: And that’s OK? It’s OK to think about my thoughts while I meditate?

Me: Sure. That’s called Vipassana meditation. After TM, it’s the most popular meditation around.

Friend: And it’s easier to do than the kind I’ve been doing?

Me: I didn’t say that. It’s probably harder. You’re more interested in things than thoughts. How the hell are you going to start paying attention to your thoughts? I don’t envy you this, man. You’re going to want to open your eyes and fix an espresso.

Friend: I thought you said it was better.

Me: Didn’t say that.

Friend: Yes you did.

Me: OK, I said that. I was wrong. But if your metaphysics is empiricist and materialist, you might want to start with Vipassana meditation.

Friend: What are the other kinds?

Me: There are as many kinds of meditation as there are metaphysical systems to explore.

Friend: I thought I was trying to get rid of my metaphysics.

Me: Didn’t say that.

Friend: No, I guess you didn’t. Aren’t I?

Me: Nah. It’s a waste of time trying to get rid of things. But if you spend enough time exploring something, it’ll eventually show itself so well that you’ll get bored of it and it will leave.

Friend: So I do this boring thing, meditation, in order to bore myself?

Me: Something like that.

 

Friend: Wait a minute. What happens if it works and I lose my metaphysics? What if I stop being an empirical materialist?

Me: Don’t worry. Another metaphysics will find you. The universe always organizes itself for us.

Friend: So what’s the point?

Me: Some metaphysical systems are more painful than others. You’re living in what some people have noticed is the most painful of all, empirical materialism.

Friend: I am? That sucks. Who gave me my metaphysics?

Me: Do I look like an anthropologist? The deal is that each system of metaphysics is looking at two sets of two variables. One set is self and other. The other set is time and space. Sometimes they overlap, and sometimes one set is more prominent than the other. Most intellectuals who study metaphysics think they’re considering truth and untruth, right and wrong, and real and unreal. But they’re really looking at self and other, and time and space. That’s it. It’s incredible how many variations they’ve come up with, East and West, for trying to figure out the relationships between these four terms.

 

Friend: So what’s a boy to do?

Me: Start with your background metaphysics, and do that one first. Once you’re seeing through it, another one will show up all on its own.

 

Friend: What happened to you in Japan with that abusive Zen master?

Me: It isn’t abusive if the culture says it’s fine. But it hurts the same. I think that if I had continued studying with a Zen instructor I would have eventually gotten tired of looking at the metaphysics he wanted me to look at.

Friend: So you kept mediating?

Me: Off and on. If a new metaphysics came my way, I would have to. Meditation becomes a compulsion, but only if there is a reason to do it compulsively. At least that’s the way it feels. Dogen says, “When genuine trust arises, practice and study with a teacher. If it does not, wait for a while. It is regrettable if you have not received the beneficence of the buddha dharma.” Living life with no regrets ain’t bad.

Friend: Can you give me some examples of metaphysics coming your way?

Me: Sure. Generally, they come one at a time, and a new metaphysical set of conditions can last anywhere from a few days to a few months. Eventually you might settle into one more prominently than the others, and stay there most of the time. Euclid's fourth proposition might extend into a whole realm of overlaying patterns; I'm pretty sure it was there to stop me in some bigger way than whether it should have been called an axiom. Some are in the program and some aren't. There’s one where everything disappears and all that’s left is a big luminous ball thing. Another’s a void that toggles with everything. The first one I saw, tripping on a St. John’s parking lot when I was 17, was the pervasive unity of visible things. There’s another where emptiness sticks its nose into thingness and they both get weirded out. Gautama Buddha explored that one. One where everything is exactly what it is at the moment you look at it. One where every two things you pair become a new, third thing. Hegel was really turned on by that one. There’s another where time drops out and all the events of history stack up on top of each other, but they somehow stay apart, too, and the pile is quite neat. Welcome, cyclic historians. One where things drop out but thoughts about things stick around. Some are two-dimensional, like on screens that form a bubble around you. And some are vast. The vast ones might collapse into two dimensions, too, as if in a horizontal geometric plane extending out from you. At other times, when space gets compressed, you can relocate without moving. They’re all pretty trippy. It seems like an endless variety of possibilities. The nondualists focus on three or four of them, but there are lots more.

Friend: Wow. That’s so cool.

Me: For a while. Eventually, the novelty wears off. Traveling to distant galaxies is actually kind of useless. I stick around with the normal conditions nowadays.

Friend: Why wouldn’t you keep visiting these other metaphysical systems?

Me: First, they don’t visit me so much now. I’m not sure why, but it has something to do with their all having equal weight, and so one’s about as good as another, and I might as well hang out with my friends and family, and enjoy my own form of normal empirical materialism.

Friend: Your own form?

Me: Yeah. It’s lighter than it used to be, less dense and shallower, because it’s informed by all the weirdass places I’ve visited. I can’t take my life too seriously if it can morph into two dimensions without my asking, or if the interesting part suddenly starts to be the thoughts, or if I notice that nobody’s really doing much of anything around me. Freedom allows me to be dragged along by life, and then interesting scenes and immersions just show up. Plus we humans have lots of meanings for love, and I can just float around in love’s various themes staying right where I am, and as far as I can tell that’s about the most normal thing to do in the world.

 

Friend: So should I meditate?

Me: Do you want to?

Friend: I guess so.

Me: Then no. Wait until you have to.

Friend: Can I encourage it coming my way?

Me: You’re doing that by talking about it. We’re all explorers mainly, curious about what’s right in front of our eyes.

 

Friend: I wish I weren’t so bad at meditation.

Me: You’re not. You win every time you meditate. How could you not? You’re doing something nice for yourself. Even if it’s for twenty seconds, it’s a nice thing. Beware anyone waving a stick at you, telling you you’re doing it wrong, except for when that’s the right meditation for you to explore.