One of the oddest listings in the Greenhill School (Texas) Curriculum Guide is a history elective called Inner Light: Traditions and Paths of Meditation. The course seems surprising for a number of reasons. It stretches the expectations of a history class and, even more dangerously, seems to inject an element of spirituality into the academic program of a school that has cultivated a modernist, secular image. Because Greenhill is non-sectarian, it has become a "safe zone" for a very diverse community holding a broad range of religious beliefs and attitudes. Yet my experience has convinced me that many students find great value in examining meditative traditions that are as old as human society and in developing a meditation practice of their own. Each year the class has filled up and students have consistently expressed their appreciation for a course that seems to address some deep-seated needs.
I began offering brief guided meditations to students in my World Religions classes many years ago. Since the Eastern traditions are by nature experiential, I reasoned, students need to sample meditative exercises in order to realize (as in make real) what they are reading in the textbook. The results were overwhelmingly positive, after some initial snickers and restless impatience with extended periods of silence. Students began saying things like "I've been looking forward to this since yesterday," and "I've started doing this on my own at home." They even insisted that we continue the practice when the focus of the course shifted westward to the Abrahamic traditions. Meditation would probably have remained merely a supplement to my religions class without a push from my colleague, Warren Frerichs, who teaches Chinese and Taiji. Four years ago he urged me to join him in a team-taught meditation course that, he believed, could help shape the lives of our students and even influence the tone of the entire institution. Published reports of such successes at other schools convinced me that we should, indeed, make the effort. Sadly, his schedule did not allow him to continue with the course after the first year, but I am most grateful that he pushed me to undertake something new and important.
Recently, I have added brief meditation segments to my 10th grade English classes and even to advisory. Just five minutes of mindful awareness at the beginning of class can provide a focus and a sense of purpose that carries through the rest of the period. If I try to start class without our "mindfulness moments," at least one student is likely to say, "Wait! I really need to meditate." No one ever disagrees.
What my students and I are doing seems profoundly countercultural. "Be still," the psalmist advised nearly 3,000 years ago, yet our world of nonstop busy-ness and multitasking has great difficulty heeding that advice. How can we be still when there is so much to do? Studies confirm that the average American works longer hours today than 50 years ago, before most of our labor-saving and time-saving gadgets were invented! And if there is time to "be still" in contemporary life, it's likely to be spent in front of a TV or computer screen.
Yet the pull of the transcendent remains. When I was a child, I spent endless hours wandering the woods that served as cow pasture on our family farm. "I'm gonna go check them cows," I'd tell my bemused parents as I wandered off on a Sunday afternoon. They probably appreciated my taking the cow herding responsibilities so seriously, but I'm sure they never guessed my real reason for going to the woods. I went because the tall oaks beside the indolent stream encompassed my cathedral. My family wouldn't talk about matters of spirit, certainly not those outside the narrow bounds of our traditional village church. I couldn't say that I was going to a place where, lying on my back beside the creek, looking up at the sky through the branches, I felt somehow connected to the entire fabric of life. I couldn't say that the cow pasture was a place where I experienced Eternity in the here and now. That would have been just too weird. So I said something practical, something that fit within the social, economic, and spiritual constraints of my little town: "I'm gonna go check them cows."
When I relate stories like that to my students in the meditation class, they look at me as if I had just landed from another planet. Nothing could be farther from their experience than a farm boy in a 1950s cow pasture. Yet distant though that woodland is, I try to connect the essence of my childhood experience to my students' contemporary reality.
What I was doing in the pasture was meditating -- paying attention to the way all things seem to cohere just beneath the surface. In stillness, unobstructed by an agenda, a wondrous beauty can manifest. It's like those magic eye pictures that were popular a few years ago. On the surface they look chaotic and random. Moreover, the viewer who strains and struggles to "get it right" and see the hidden image finds only frustration. In quietness and relaxation, however, the pattern emerges, and we see what has been there all along. When we finally learn to see it, we feel surprised, happy, and even grateful. We didn't really believe it was there, yet now it seems utterly obvious. John Muir, the naturalist, said, "You pull on one thread in nature to find it connected to the world." That's a mediator's perspective. Somehow, it's all connected; it's all amazing; it's all mysterious; one can only feel grateful to be here and to be conscious. The enormous privilege of a human life is mindful participation in a miracle. What better use could there be of our brief time on earth than coming to a fuller appreciation of this blessed opportunity?
"But how does it help me get to Harvard?" is the unspoken query in the minds of many of my success-driven students. They have grown up with the assurance that "Education pays," and "Knowledge is power." So where, they demand, is the functional application of sitting silently in the dark observing one's breath?
Actually, practical benefits do exist, though I prefer to think of them as byproducts rather than primary goals. Many people begin meditating because they think it will help them relax and promote better health. That's a little like my going to the woods to check on the cows. Our objectivist culture teaches us that we must always seek material gain: We should save the rain forests not because they are the most fecund and magnificent outpouring of miraculous life anywhere on earth but because they may contain undiscovered plants that will be of use in medicine. We should explore the wonders of space not because human consciousness is the means by which the universe is coming to understand itself but because spin-offs from space technology may make our lives more comfortable. We should encourage adolescents to study at a good university not because scholarship is a doorway to lifelong development of the mind and spirit but because it is necessary to get a high-paying job.
Nonetheless, whatever our motives might be, the journey to greater mindfulness is worth undertaking. Fundamentally, meditation is a vehicle for enhancing awareness, the relaxation comes later. Stress reduction is a derivative, not the focus of the undertaking. Awareness can give us the confidence to accept the utterly unpredictable confusion of life. Circumstances constantly arise that undermine our physical and psychological stability. Life is literally "one damned thing after another;" meditation won't change that. The stuff just keeps coming! Students discover that what meditation can do, however, is help them break the shackles of the scripts that constantly run through their heads. It can help them realize that the chaos around them might be less overwhelming than it seems.
Our classroom practice emphasizes perspective, not escape. Problems are real; pain hurts; life can be lonely and confusing. To deny those things is to exercise not awareness but avoidance and self-deception. But careful observation and mindfulness can change the framework of life in significant ways.
The first is the rather startling discovery that consciousness itself feels no pain. When we practice mindfulness, when we observe the mind instead of being swept along in its currents, we notice that however tumultuous the rapids might be, the observer on the riverbank need not be swept up in them. Somehow, consciousness is distinct from the events that are happening to us or even the thoughts that are swirling through our minds. That separation, when we remember to notice it, can give us some breathing space and may even help us respond more effectively to the challenges that surround us. The observer on the riverbank is more focused and perceptive than the victim who is thrashing about in the water.
In the water, fear is the source of so much pain. We might drown; we've got to grab onto the rocks; we've got to fight someone else for the safe perch on the tree branch ahead. But maybe the water really isn't so deep. Perhaps if we stop trying so desperately to control the situation we can simply stand up and walk to the shore or let the current carry us to calmer waters. From the perspective of the riverbank, we can see options that the swirling waters keep us from recognizing. Fear, avoidance, and grasping give rise to a great deal of humanity's pain. Meditation can be a tool for taming those monsters of the deep.
For many students an even greater benefit of enhanced awareness is the recognition that we are infinitely more than the sum of our problems and concerns. Whatever is distracting us at the moment, and something always is, has all the significance of a soap bubble in a universe of wonder. We are part of an eternal process with no known bounds. We are atoms of energy that rise miraculously from the union of our parents. We emerge from the womb as unique individuals, different from all others, yet utterly dependent on others. We grow by consuming the bodies and by-products of other animals and plants, and eventually we surrender ourselves to the service of life, our bodies becoming the grass and the trees that grow from our graves. Sentient threads in a blanket of life, we incarnate endlessly as the energy we manifest ceaselessly forms and reforms in an awesome kaleidoscope. No matter what our circumstances, we are engaged in something astounding and beautiful. We simply need to notice.
Meditation can be a pathway to awareness of the ineffable. My students and I practice focusing on our breath not because the breath, in itself, is transformative but because our observation of it is a way to become more cognizant of the ebb and flow of all life. If we achieve health benefits like lower blood pressure, it's because mindfulness gives us a new sense of what matters. We build a habit of paying attention to the splendor that surrounds us. Whitman noted in "Song of Myself" that "A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books." Really seeing and appreciating a morning glory is every bit as legitimate a meditative exercise as sitting in lotus position and counting breaths -- it's all about paying attention. And when we really pay attention, it's all good. The product of awareness is a deep and pervasive gratitude. As Ramakrishna said, "The winds of grace are always blowing, but we must lift our sails." Mindfulness practice is one way of catching that splendid breeze.
I don't expect my students to grasp all of these ideas, or any of them necessarily. Their meditation practice is their own experience. What I can do, however, is invite them to notice a pathway that they might want to continue exploring. I hope that as we sit together and simply "pay attention" each of us encounters the moment in a way that adds depth and appreciation to our lives.