Chapter Eight
Om, Um, Oy
During my hitchhiking days—that would be in the 1970s, when I was in college—I was picked up by a free spirit in a VW Beetle. She wore beads and a dress seemingly made out of an old Indian bedspread or an old Indian. Handing me a piece of paper printed with the words Nam Myoh Renge Kyo, she promised that if I chanted the phrase a few times a day, I’d be granted happiness or whatever. Don’t say I didn’t try. I was sick of hitchhiking. I wanted a car. To this day I have never owned a car. (I no longer want one, so maybe that’s how the magic works.)
Years later I met a man at a party who explained why he meditated: “You know how when you’re born into the world, you’re pure love and essence, but it gets covered by your personality so you’re not living? Meditation realigns you with the universe. I also do a lot of spiritual work, such as past-life regressions. I try to live in the present in the presence.”
I know I know I know: It is unenlightened of me to let these encounters prejudice my view of meditation—or to equate the discipline with daydreaming, napping, yoga pants, or Seinfeld’s show about nothing. Sixty-seven percent of Americans ruminate and reflect for at least thirty minutes a week. I made this figure up, but sometimes you just have to do the right thing. Don’t all your friends, and not just the dumb ones, swear to you that meditation has transformed their lives, made them more productive, less agitated, and kinder—as well as better skiers.
Lately scientists have become very rah-rah about meditation. The claim is that it makes gray matter denser in the hippocampus (camping grounds for memory and learning) and less dense in the amygdala (anxiety and stress). Training a mere twenty minutes a day for four days supposedly can make you remarkably better at processing information and sustaining attention. In other words, it raises your IQ in less time than I spend deciding what to wear. Meditation can supposedly even treat attention deficit disorders.
They also say it works wonders on your immune system, lowers your blood pressure, and makes you more altruistic and less likely to become obese, but that is a different book, not this book. Let’s return to what those scientists said about attention.
I could use some buckling down. My mental skyscape has too many aircraft aloft.
There are more techniques for elevating your state of consciousness than there are Heinz varieties. You can do it with or without a mantra, sitting up straight or lying down (it’s called bed med and I didn’t make that up), allowing your mind to wander freely as if it were a Montessori school student or reining your thoughts in as if they were citizens of North Korea. Among the odder types of meditation are labyrinth (walking through a maze as a way to spark creativity and problem-solving), laughter (giggles supposedly boost soothing hormones while lessening stress-inducing ones), and fire (staring at a flame can create a trance; not to be confused with arson meditation).
After some meditation on meditation, I chose the kind called mindfulness because feeling a little mindless, I thought I could use some more mind.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, a molecular biologist turned secular god in the mindfulness movement defines the approach as “paying attention, in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” A friend said, “It’s about treating your thoughts like sheep. They come in, you herd them out. The more you practice the stronger your anti-ADD muscle becomes.” Although Buddhist-inspired, the technique is secular enough that the US military dabbles in it. I could have signed up for a Transcendental Meditation course but that costs around $1,500. (Participants are sworn not to divulge what they learn, but I found out; I can’t tell you how—e-mail if you want to know.)
I clicked on a cosmos of instructional videos on YouTube that featured vistas of fluffy clouds, waves breaking on the beach, sunsets, and any number of other pictures that look like the photographs you’ve removed from store-bought frames, and as I listened to earnest disembodied voices intone about how sublimely relaxed I was feeling, I couldn’t resist the urge to buy under-eye concealer on Amazon. Later, with a hundred or more others, I took an introductory meditation class at the Tibet House in Manhattan, and while everyone else was presumably letting the sounds wash through them, bringing their attention to the sensation of their bodies sitting, and not judging themselves, I spent my time wishing everyone would put their shoes back on. During the Q&A portion, a woman asked the teacher, “My dogs crawl all over me when I meditate. What should I do?” Teacher: “I don’t know. I don’t have that problem.” Finally a friend and I took a series of four one-hour private lessons with a student of Kabat-Zinn who talked a lot about her personal journey and then led us in a raisin consciousness exercise in which we were encouraged to explore a single raisin using all our senses. “If you understand the raisin,” said our teacher, “you understand mindfulness.” That’s a big if.
Achieving inner calm may be the simplest thing I cannot do—that, and making coffee. The instructions regarding the former are straightforward: (1) Sit down. (2) Close your eyes or, if you don’t feel like it, keep them open. (3) Pay attention to your breathing—the way it feels in your nose, lungs, etc. (4) When your mind forgets to pay attention to your breathing, and trust me, it will, take note of where your mind goes but don’t be high-handed about it. It’s only a mind, after all. (5) Return to the tedium of keeping track of your breathing. (6) Do this for the rest of your life.
I did everything I was told, but to no avail. Again I am reminded of the 1970s, which were my days not only of hitchhiking, but also of limited drug sampling. “Do you feel it yet?” a friend who was feeling it would say after we’d both ingested something that was supposed to be mind-altering. “Not one bit,” I’d say. It could be argued that I did not give meditation my all—or for that matter, my any. Perhaps this is because living with contentment and reduced anxiety doesn’t seem natural. Awareness doesn’t do it for me, either.
Mantra or Indian Bread
Which is which? A feature of many but not all forms of meditation, one of these is a sound you repeat silently in order to achieve a state of boredom (but in a good way). The other you eat too much of. You think you know the difference, but let’s see.
2. Hum Dum Har Har
3. Aloo kulcha
4. Bhakri
5. Ram Nam
6. Pesarattu
7. Khakra
8. Thalipeeth
9. Mrityormooksheya
10. Shiam
11. Baati
12. Shreem
13. Em
14. Sheermal
15. Shring
16. Ham-Sah
17. Tat Tvam Asi
18. Aloo paratha
19. Aum
20. Uttapam
21. So ham
23. Hirim
24. Bhatoora
25. Hong-Sau
26. Benne dose
27. Pumpernickel
ANSWERS:
1. Keema naan: bread
2. Hum Dum Har Har: mantra
3. Aloo kulcha: bread
4. Bhakri: bread
5. Ram Nam: mantra
6. Pesarattu: bread
7. Khakra: bread
8. Thalipeeth: bread
9. Mrityormooksheya: mantra
10. Shiam: mantra
11. Baati: bread
12. Shreem: mantra
13. Em: mantra
15. Shring: mantra
16. Ham-Sah: mantra
17. Tat Tvam Asi: mantra
18. Aloo paratha: bread
19. Aum: mantra
20. Uttapam: bread
21. So ham: mantra
22. Sev puri: bread
23. Hirim: mantra
24. Bhatoora: bread
25. Hong-Sau: mantra
26. Benne dose: bread
27. Pumpernickel: bread
YOUR SPIRITUAL QUOTIENT:
| 0–5: | Remind me never to hire you as a waitress at the Taj Mahal Luncheonette. |
| 10–27: | You have transcended the worldly realm. Can I borrow a double sawbuck? |
| Perfect score: | You are like the Buddha—at peace and fat. |