I remembered today that it’s a pleasure to meditate.  How simple an observation that is, and surely silly sounding to serious practitioners.  But I have not always found it so, not always remembered that—like the writing of poetry, another art that became effortful, required discipline—meditation begins in the instinct that quiet sitting on a solid bodily foundation in a simple, peaceful place will be pleasant to do.  Today the thought occurred no doubt because it has been several days since I felt free to meditate, alone as I was with a rambunctious puppy who needed watching all the time.  I wished I could settle him, and settle myself, into a short period of sitting and contemplation, but the nature of his aggravations in life, which then become mine, denies the broader atmosphere in which my twenty minutes of peace is even conceivable.  Do they have dogs in monasteries?  So, today, when I sat down, the first experience was a rush of simple pleasure at the twenty minutes of quiet that lay ahead, the access to deep, slow breathing, the possibility of a cleared head.  And although the sitting was not always so happy, and I found myself clouded over with many thoughts and plans, I returned continually to the sense of my simple pleasure in those moments of stillness.  If wu-wei is the refusal of effortful striving, as I have long called it, we must take note if our meditation has become effortful and full of strife.  Non-attachment to the end and to the outcome of meditation makes it possible again to sit down with joy and openness to what might lie ahead.

26 March, 2024.