How to start meditating when you think you can’t

I’m going to assume for the moment that we’re not going to blow the entire planet up just yet, and that we still have some time.

I was saying here just the other day, in Meditation for a world on edge, that I was born during a rare, relatively calm stretch of human history – after the storms of two world wars and before the digital takeover. For two or three decades a lot of us lived between a slower analog world and a far faster seemingly less grounded one. In many parts of the world there was relative political stability, economic growth, and shared cultural narratives and media. Human life still had a relatively clear script and milestones, and the time and space to follow these.

One small example: when Venerable Geshe Kelsang first introduced the rule of “no TVs at Dharma Centers” in the early 80s (at what was then Manjushri Institute and at his first Centre Madhyamaka Centre), back then this actually meant something. Far from having a million hours of alternative entertainment on our phones or computers, there were no phones or computers. Therefore, if we wanted to watch something other than sheep or each other, we had to drive 30 minutes to the cinema. That now seems impossibly quaint! As well as in some ways a magical time for Dharma and meditation to arrive in the West, allowing, as it did, for the possibility of hours upon hours of Dharma discussions, pujas, and meditations because there was nothing else to do in our spare time. This most likely helped Venerable Geshe Kelsang establish the first generation of Kadampa practitioners, teachers, centers, and study programs – for although he only had a small group to draw from, at least we were paying attention, lol.

We live in different times now. There is far more competition for our time, so practitioners need to be pretty dedicated to spend all those hours studying and meditating (people who do manage it still love it, must be said). There are also new things to work out and strange obstacles to overcome.

It’s all relative, however. Before those early days of Buddhism or Dharma in the West, it had existed in a stable monastic and lay environment in Tibet for well over a thousand years. Monks were immersed in study and debate day and night. The lay community typically had faith in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. All this was a very far cry from Western culture, even in the 80s, lol, and a far bigger culture shock than between Western culture pre- and post-2000. Unlike here, Tibet was a Buddhist country!

An holistic approach

And, once they got here, a lot of Tibetans assumed there was no way for Buddhist meditation to ever take root in the hearts of materialistic, distracted, and spiritually bereft Westerners. But it did. And it will keep doing so. Venerable Geshe-la always had faith in this, and in us; this is why he made it his life’s work to bring Buddhism to people all over the modern world.

For example, he often praised modern people for their practical approach to Dharma, hearing something one day and wanting to practice it the next – he made a point of saying this in particular when Kadam Dharma first got to the United States. These days, we have no choice but to apply meditation to all our daily activities or we don’t have enough time for it. Arguably – and interestingly – this has made us more holistic practitioners. And study and meditation are no longer the sole province of monks and a few nuns, but accessible to everybody.

He also praised modern people for a high level of education and therefore ability to understand profound Dharma. The digital world has also opened up so many possibilities of reaching billions of people throughout the world, a whole new magnitude of reach compared to the small population of Tibet and other traditionally Buddhist countries.

Therefore, (speaking to myself), we don’t need to throw in the towel just yet! We are just getting started. Buddhist meditation is every bit as applicable, relevant, and needed as it ever was. The culture has changed, but Dharma has a long noble flexible history of adapting to the new cultures in which it finds itself without losing its meaning. And, if you are reading this, you are an early adopter and therefore part of this adaptation, hence these conversations.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

Getting started

Meditation, if people know how to do it, is not an onerous task – it’s not nearly as hard work as exercise or eating properly or even couch surfing to find decent entertainment. In fact people find it truly restful, satisfying, freeing, and absorbing, and it helps us to enjoy everything more. But this is not commonly known.

A lot of people think that meditation is not for them. They may be interested in mental wellness and self-improvement, but have still decided:

There’s no way I’ll be able to clear my mind, I am way too distracted, my mind is too anxious to calm down, how am I supposed to just stop thinking?! Meditation is just going to be hard and discouraging.

They may know theoretically that meditation will help, just like broccoli or exercise will help, and perhaps a lot more; but they are not going to open that door only to fail at this as well, ending up feeling even worse about themselves.

One 30-something woman was asking me what a person like her, with no prior experience of meditation, can do when, lying in bed late at night, catastrophic thinking builds up and takes over until there is no space left in the mind and no choice but to chew things over into the early hours? How can she even make an inroad into that with meditation? And, related to that, what if she doesn’t even really want to learn meditation because she’s afraid it’ll make things worse to look deeply at what’s going on inside her? If that is all she is – a mess of worry – why pull the covers back on that?! Surely it’s better to keep the demons in the cellar?

I agreed with her that it is not enough to know in theory that our mind is like a cloudless sky (which it is) and that all these worries are like fleeting clouds. This is not how it FEELS, so how would I advise someone in that situation?

I suggested she start by just breathing and turning her attention to the breath at her nostrils for one or two minutes. Not following other thoughts, and returning her attention to the breath every time it wanders. Just one or two minutes, until something quite miraculous happens, which is that a little bit of space appears. There is a tiny break in the clouds. And that is the break we need. We can sit with that space for a few moments, it is enough to know it is there, we can feel it.

Then we can gently identify two things: (1) This is the natural peace of my own mind. Just as a break in the clouds shows me that the sky is always there, so can I know from this small experience that there is peace and space inside me. In fact, there is more space inside me than outside. (2) This is me. I can identify with the sky, not with the clouds.

Between the clouds

When we say that we’re a mixture of good and bad, it is worth understanding that we are not in fact a mixture of inherently good and inherently bad, let alone with the bad threatening to take over if we pull back the covers in meditation to look at it. We need not be concerned that we will be overwhelmed if we do take a look inside. Instead, we will discover that we are by nature not bad at all, but good, sane, kind, peaceful, and full of potential – all this and more is part of our indestructible Buddha nature. In this context, we can soon learn to handle our thoughts.

Our sky-like peaceful mind has been with us since beginningless time and will eventually merge forever with the unobstructed compassion and endless clear light wisdom of an enlightened being. The bad stuff, like anxiety, is the bad weather – it comes and goes and has never been intrinsic to our sky-like mind. We can identify, reduce, and eventually get rid of all of it, and the methods for doing so have existed for millennia and in fact infinitely longer. In this context, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by looking at the clouds – by accepting these, we can transform and purify them.

In other words, there is literally no possibility of the bad ever taking over so that we are forever doomed. Our indestructible pure nature will always prevail sooner or later.

So, first off, if we can just take a bit of time to breathe, and pull this peaceful experience off for even a minute or two, we have made the first step on the path to both temporary and lasting peace. With some personal experience of this peace, however fleeting and relative, we can develop the confidence that there is another way to be. We can allow ourselves to enjoy this, and encourage ourselves slowly to improve on it, seeing it as something both restful and truly inspiring, not just another item to be checked off an overwhelming, guilt-inducing to-do list.

Out of time. To be continued. If you like this discussion, please say something in the comments!