“MEDITATION” – (verb) to engage in contemplation or reflection; to engage in mental exercise for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness.

Penelope

What do you practice?

Meditation. I’ve been meditating for a long time — about 55 years.

I am now a Zen Buddhist. I’ve been practicing Zen Buddhism since about ’87, and I’ve been meditating for many more years than that. I’ve practiced it in several traditions and I use a variety of entry ways into meditation. It isn’t just a “mindfulness” practice. This word has been so abused by now that it has no meaning anymore for me. But I meditate as a practice for clearing…for freeing my mind from thought and allowing myself to be more of a river and less of a mountain.

One of the things I use is koans. I started studying koans down in LA with a teacher. But I recently relocated from Los Angeles, so I keep working with her by Skype. I’m also part of a Diamond Heart group. It’s a group that integrates spiritual growth to find one’s true nature, as well as psychological work on the blocks that get in our way and prevent the spiritual growth from being more than concepts and words that we don’t know how to embody. It’s based on teachings of a man named Almaas.

Right now, I sort of cherry pick meditation methods to some degree because I’ve been doing it for so long now that I can kind of see what’s needed. Sort of like if I were using essential oils: do I want to put lavender or peppermint? Relaxed or alert? I’m able to see what’s being called for in a particular situation. If I’m angry as hell when I sit down to meditate then I need to have my focus not on the content of the anger, but the experience of the anger in my body. Just sit with that and accept it and not try to get rid of it and not try to fix it. Just be very very present with it…with what is here. It’s about using a skillful means within the meditation practice, if that makes sense.

How did you get into meditation?

I lived in New York. I was working in a drug prevention/drug rehab program in New York City. A friend of mine that also worked in the program introduced me to a man who had come back from India after his teacher had died. He had lived in India after World War II with a guru for 35 years. When the guru died, he came back to the United States and started teaching the teachings of his guru. He was also teaching meditative practices, specifically meditating with a mantra.

I was raised Christian. And I heard things like “love thy neighbor” which is a great concept, except if you hate your neighbors it’s really hard to figure out how to do that. You can be sweet and syrupy but you won’t necessarily be actually loving your neighbor. It won’t be genuine. But this teacher was really talking about how you do this. How do you work with difficult, challenging feelings? How do you apply the medicine? What steps do you need to go through? And that for me was like, “Oh! Wow. This is what I need.” So I began to practice. I took on the meditation practice and many of the teachings that this guru was talking about. I was in that community in New York City for about 9 years. Then I moved to California where there was no such community.

I was still meditating but I had no community, no sangha. I bitched and moaned for about 2 years…and finally friends got sick of hearing me say, “I need to meditate with people! I’m all alone.” Someone finally said, “Oh shut up and just sit down and say what night and what time you’re going to sit down and tell them they’re welcome to come and meditate.” So I did that. The first week there were 3 people and in the second week there were 9. We wound up being a sangha of about 20 people. We meditated together for 12 years without a leader. We just got together at my house and meditated. Then, rather collectively we all decided that we needed to work with teachers. So I experimented with going up to Green Gulch and San Francisco Zen Center — not even bothering to go near my own backyard. Finally, I wound up in my own backyard at the Zen Center of LA. I lived there for 11 years, and practiced there for 15 years. I’ve just moved up here and while I still work with my teacher by Skype, I’m starting to attend a Zen center up here.

Meditation seems like one of the more serious kinds of practices you can have, because it’s sort of directed your life in a way. You’ve moved around in order to practice better…

Very much so.

I taught meditation in the jails in Los Angeles for 15 years. For a period I had a non-profit organization with a friend where we taught meditation to teachers and nurses. I see meditation as something that helps you stay involved in the world. You don’t just hide away from the world and get peaceful. Instead you use the practice to be in the world, and to help support the world. So, in that sense also, it’s a very strong practice for me. I am an environmentalist. I’m a social justice advocate. Those practices are very interconnected with meditation…otherwise I would just kill people. *laughs*

How does “community” work in the meditation world? Is it necessary? What is it like?

I think community supports your practice because you’re in the present, you’re keeping company virtually with people that are also seeking in the same way. They’re not necessarily similar people. It can be a community of very different people, but they all have this shared search and value.

Meditating in the presence of other people can be very supportive for the days where you’re on your own and the laaaast thing you want to do is meditate. It’s like writing. Those practices are the same. Sometimes I’ll dust every single inch of my house rather than do my meditation or my writing. Sometimes there are those days.

And so, I’m in a community and I practice with others so we can support each other. Right now I’m new and people don’t know me, but if I were back in my community in LA people wouldn’t say, “Naughty girl, you’re not in the zendo.” Instead they’d say, “I noticed you’re not meditating. Is something in the way of your practice? Is something up for you?” It could be that level of support or it could be simply that you see other people doing it and it encourages you to do it. That’s one element of it. There’s also shared wisdom. Sharing ideas, talking or listening to a teaching together and then discussing it.

So, is it necessary? No. I’m sure there are hermits and other people who meditate every day of their lives and they don’t necessarily get together in a sangha. Good for them. I’m not as strong as they are. I’m not saying that pejoratively for me — I really want and value a community. Thich Nhat Hanh says that the future Maitreya (the future manifestation of Buddha) will be the sangha, will be the community.

Is there a structure to your meditation? Especially when you’re meditating with a community?

If you’re sitting in the zendo — in the meditation hall — you would sit and meditate for 35 minutes. Then you’d get up and do a walking meditation for 10 minutes. And then you’d sit down and do another meditation for 35 minutes. Then there might be a service, reciting certain parts of the sutra. There could also be a cleaning of the grounds of the Zen center as a meditation. There’s a kind of eating meditation which is very formal, very ritualized. It slows you down to eat very mindfully. There’s many many many forms that meditation takes. If you want to say it this way, anything is a meditation.

You’ve mentioned a few times about how meditation has to do with bringing your attention back from scattered thinking — could you say that meditation is just being present in whatever you’re doing?

Yes, you could say it like that. You could say it like having a single point of focus. If you sit down to meditate and you’re angry at your boyfriend, and you just try to be breathing and be a saint — you’re skating on the surface. Being present with the anger is taking the story out. I’m not going on a riff about the boyfriend or about the person. I am feeling the feeling of anger without any story. If you just feel the sensation of anger, you completely allow that sensation, a lot of things happen. For example, when you put your attention on something that way, it has it’s moment and then it moves on out. So, if you pay attention to just the experience of the anger (you feel hot inside, like you’re on fire inside your body) and you simply sit down in that and you don’t try to do a thing to change it and are instead very present with it…eventually it changes, it moves on. It becomes a very refined, psychological practice.

You’re also working with the idea that nothing is permanent. Everything is change and impermanent. That’s part of the experience of meditating too — one moment I don’t want to sit down and meditate, and the next moment I’m in bliss…and then the next moment I’m thinking I forgot to turn the stove off. It’s all moving.

What does meditation mean to you?

It’s changed the quality of my life in ways that…I can’t even imagine now how I would do my life [without it]. I can’t imagine it. I hope I’ll be meditating on my last breath.

Anything else?

I think it’s really nice that you’re doing this. It’s an interesting way to connect with what’s really important to people. Because if you’re talking about what people practice, you’re talking about where they live. You’re really in the deeper part of people.