3 January, 2023.

Perhaps there are no bad meditations.  A couple of weeks ago and more I would have called today’s meditation a bad one.  The distractions of desire and fear swirled, and there were only a few brief moments that felt free of them.  I had no sense of nearness to the Tao or removal from the senses.  It might be that some of the condition of timelessness I have recorded before released some of these distractions, for a number were of the past rather than the present.  In any case, I got nowhere. 

But does that matter?  I was strangely undisturbed by these entanglements.  Perhaps my little mantra of “expect nothing” was still guiding me subliminally.  When I rose, I felt calm, if not fully refreshed.  I felt fairly sure that this meditation was one step on the journey of a thousand miles, rather than a detour into the brambles.  I know that meditation requires a high degree of consistent practice, and it had been four days since I last sat.  I also know that a good meditation can only arise after some that have frustrated me, and that if I now become more determined to sit I will have very different experiences of meditation.

In other words, I feel pleasantly non-attached to this “bad” meditation, and that must mean that I am learning not to be attached to the good meditation.  Sitting is itself a good and necessary practice.  No outcome alters that.