Meditation ain’t magic: Seeking spiritual solutions to worldly problems

I’m at a coffee shop I regularly visit and this woman I know asks if she can sit with me for a bit. This attractive, confident woman with her edgy haircut, big rings, and fabulous boots. We talk clothes, weather, and politics for a few minutes and then tells me she’s having a problem with meditating that she’s pretty sure I can help her with. I’m not sure I can, and tell her so, but add what’s also true, that I’d like to hear what’s going on with her. She takes a nervous breath and begins by describing her situation as one of “chronic mental restlessness and emotional lability.” “I can’t focus,” she says, “I sit down to meditate and I’m all over the place.” Now she’s off and rolling as she describes a brother with out of control spending habits, and this guy she works with who refuses to pronounce her name correctly. She talks about an irregular result on a health screening she’s been too afraid to follow up on, the divorce she went through a few years ago, and the stress of living in a house that now feels too big. On top of it all, she explains, she’s stopped working out and has been eating carryout every other day. “I know that meditation can help me get myself together. I know it’s a foundational practice,” she says, “so it’s frustrating that I’m basically failing at that too.”

I have no “advice” to give and so I ask her what it means to her for someone to be “good” at meditation, and how she thinks her life would be different if she were such a person. She responds quickly—clearly, she’d already given thought to this—that a good meditator is capable of sitting blissed out for some open-ended span of time, a period during which no thoughts arise. Someone doing it “right” would experience a sense of unity with all that is, and be more or less unbothered by the details or accidents of human life. Such a person would rise from the cushion and move into their day feeling refreshed, patient, wise, and compassionate. “I know it’s all about my attitude,” she says (as if agreeing with something I’d already said), “and that I need to rise above the small, temporary shit of my life.” I tell her that I have heard lots of stories about the Buddha or other supposed spiritual masters where meditation seems to function like this, as a portal for the skillful —or blessed— meditator into a realm of peace and tranquility. I don’t not-believe that, for some, meditation might could actually work that way, I say. But I confess that I’m not such a person, nor am I confident I’ve ever actually met anyone else who is. In my experience, I say, meditation doesn’t work that way.

She seems both relieved and troubled by my words. Her first impulse—and good for her—is to consider revising her high opinion of me. She gives me a look. “Perhaps, you are not evolved or skillful after all,” she seems to be thinking. But then she moves into relief. After all, I’ve just said out loud that maybe the simple fact that she can’t manage to sit on the floor with her legs crossed and fall into equanimous bliss on demand doesn’t mark her as a spectacular failure. But before long, she sighs, and her disappointment is palpable. Because over the years, while she has been frenetically, half-consciously dealing with the challenges of her life, some part of her has held the precious ideal of meditation in a pristine corner of her mind, imagining it as a gateway to relief waiting for her when she was ready. As many of us do, she’s clung to the idea that Eastern-based spirituality could either transport her away from her life circumstances or alter her character such that she would no longer be bothered by them. From this perspective, the idea of meditation serves as a kind of escape hatch or anesthetic. Like having a flask or oxycodone or single cigarette in one’s pocket for “just in case,” it can be immeasurably comforting to know it’s there even if you don’t reach for it. It’s there waiting for that point in the future when you really, really need—and are ready—to be rescued.

One predictable consequence of this fantasy is that the idea of meditation can then become a stall tactic as one avoids dealing with the ordinary challenges of life. I can’t help but think of this as I am sitting across from this smart, mature, able-bodied, financially secure woman, a mover and shaker in her professional life, who is sort of suggesting that the solution to her difficulties is to meditate her way out of them. This puts tremendous pressure both on the practice of meditation and on herself. And so I share with her a story I heard from one of my teachers, of a student of hers who lived above a 24-hour garage so noisy that he struggled to sleep, let alone meditate. “I know that I should not be bothered by the chaos,” the student said, “but I can’t manage to rise above my distraction and irritation.” This miserable student expected to be given some esoteric advice that would help him be more equanimous and accepting, more aligned with his life circumstances. Instead, the teacher asked the best questions, the greatest questions, the most mundane questions: “Why do you live there? Why don’t you move?”

I sometimes wonder if the greatest of spiritual disillusionments might not be that, as it turns out, spirituality itself is not meant to spare us from the challenges and difficulties of our human lives. That so many of us seek out this path to address our own pain and suffering, sometimes out of sheer desperation, is, I think, normal and fine. But if we continue to idealize spiritual practices like yoga or meditation as potential escapes from frustration, grief, pain, and other fundamentally human experiences, then we are all but guaranteed to be thrown back into our suffering again and again and again. Yes, meditation can help our lives become more peaceful, joyful, and fulfilling, but not by magically eliminating our discomfort or saving us the trouble of using our hands, minds, bodies and wallets to make practical changes in our lives. The bad news, then, is that no one is coming to rescue us, not Jesus, the Buddha, or our own higher self. But the good news—and it is incredibly good news—is that, in general, we humans often have the tools, ability and wherewithal to face and respond to our perfectly imperfect human lives. Meditation will not save me, then, of this I am sure, but that is okay because I do not need to be saved.

The above anecdote is shared with permission from this brave, self-reflective, and capable woman I look forward to knowing better.

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