The poet Rene Gregorio once wrote, "Intelligent choice is exquisite torture." (I often wonder how long it took her to choose those words.) For more than a year my girlfriend and I have been dodging the conundrums of the day for a spell each morning by: sitting up straight, sipping coffee and watching these things called thoughts play themselves out for a period of time—ambitions, regrets, fears and desires, whatever. For a little while each morning there is nothing to do or decide.
This time-honored practice of meditation begins for me as an act of defiance: "I will just sit." Then of surrender: "Well, here I am." Then impatience: "What now?" If I am lucky I remember what I sat there to do: breathe. Writing about meditation is tricky, because meditation is not just about what you think. Meditating about writing is easy—it's called procrastination.
On a return flight from the East Coast this summer we had an unexpected opportunity to look at the subtle choices at the core of meditation practice, when our pilot announced over Salt Lake City that the landing gear on our airplane had failed to deploy. He told us he would take a series of long approaches to the runway, giving fire crews time to assemble on the ground. Everyone on the plane became quiet.
There is an ancient Egyptian myth of Ma'at, the goddess of truth and order. According to this myth, upon dying, the weight of a person's heart is measured against the weight of a feather in the Hall of Ma'at. If a person's heart is light enough, they are allowed to enter heaven. I began to breathe deeply, thinking also of the Sufi notion of death as a return, the way a single drop of water eventually returns to the ocean. The Buddha came to mind, of course, the way he simply sat under a tree and faced everything, all the terrors and longings of existence, and came to a realization—nothing lasts, and suffering comes from forming attachments to people, places and things.
These ideas and a few more ran through my mind, like how my father mused one starry night on the possibility of human spirits travelling upon death at light speeds across the galaxy. Then the thinking stopped. Maybe it was acceptance, or surrender, or a kind of hope, but I found that a simple choice lay before me in my breath—to open, or to close my heart.
The plane landed safely to a round of applause. Perky passengers spilled out into the terminal. Every small detail in the airport was a thing of wonder. I wondered what had gone on in the minds and hearts of my fellow passengers. For a while, there was no end to the gratitude I felt.
Our meditation teacher, Yongey Mingyur, tells us that there is nothing to look for outside of the present moment (and some present moments are highly over-rated in my opinion). But today, with Christmas a week away, I find myself wanting something back from those minutes we all shared over Salt Lake.
