Post #11: Starting Again, and Again, and Again…

14 May 2023

“Continuity of practice is the secret of success,” S.N. Goenka keeps reminding students during his ten-day courses, and adds for reassurance that they are “bound to be successful, bound to be successful.”

The repeated assurance is good to hear but sometimes rings a little hollow, as one of the most disconcerting and discouraging aspects of the practice is how discontinuous it often gets, especially in the trenches of daily practice. A very few, very fortunate, and very stalwart meditators may sit down to the practice and never get up again, so to speak, for the rest of their lives—that is to say, keep up their daily sessions with ease or iron determination and never miss a beat or a sitting. A few still more heroic souls may be able to maintain their mindfulness even between sittings. But for the rest of us it is a very different story and the practice can look more holes than cheese. For us the most relevant Goenkaism is another one of his refrains, namely to “start again” when the bell has struck once more for yet another tedious session in the seemingly endless series that make up a retreat…

You’ve lost your focus and let your mind wander for what seems like the millionth time? Start again. The mat calls you back at the appointed hour, and there is nothing you would rather avoid? Start again. Your practice seems to have broken down altogether, and you’ve dropped the ball? Start again. You’ve given it up, maybe not practiced for years, and you wonder whether you can ever get it back? Just start again!

It’s not that I mean to make it sound easy, when it is clearly not. All this inner adversity, be it entirely self-wrought or owed to conditions and circumstances, can be daunting and disheartening to the point of making all of us, for a moment anyway, want to roll up the mat and be done with it. But such moments do not last, or at least they don’t have to; we always have it in us to pick up the ball and resume our clumsy dribble across the court of life, even to score those elusive baskets again eventually.

The thing to remember when the discouragement hits and you feel a loser in the game that others seem to play so well is that, in this case, at least we are not dealing with a beauty contest or with something that one does for duty’s sake or to oblige others; you do it for yourself, and you will reap what you sow, that is all. So it’s not a matter of failure, and the talk of “failing yourself” is silly. If you find a way to sit more, or more peacefully, you will find yourself better off for it; if you struggle, that is the reality of your life at the moment, and it will pass like everything else. A measure of self-blame may be part of that reality too, but one needs to be careful not to get too entangled in the web of such recriminations. The point of the practice is not to add another overambitious target to your life so that you keep missing it like you miss the others, and then beat yourself up for your inadequacy; the point is to develop a little more equanimity and loving-kindness towards all, yourself included.

That said, there is no denying that it can be a real drag to watch the mandatory hours at camp flow along with all the ease and charm of half-melted tar, or during the unsupervised hours (whether on retreat or at home) to struggle forever with the intractable dilemma between forcing yourself to persist, which feels wrong one way, and getting up (dropping the ball), which feels wrong in another. The recognition that a more mature (or advanced or awakened or whatever label you prefer) practice should not look like this, but a lot more joyful and effortless, only makes things that much worse. Next thing you get unhappy about being unhappy with your practice, and off you go round and round the merry carousel of meditator’s misery...

I’ve done enough such unavailing circling not to be smug about it. What you might notice, though, if you are afflicted by some of the same patterns, is that they are probably not altogether divorced from the rest of your life; that is to say, the frustrations you feel around your meditation are likely to mirror, more or less, the dissatisfactions you struggle with in other departments as well. If you do not have much confidence in your practice, you probably have similar issues in other areas, which is to say that in dealing with them on the mat—if only by observing them with as much dispassion as you can muster—you are dealing with something much bigger that probably needs to be addressed one way or another. And thus, even if your progress is not always very apparent, to put it mildly, at least you are working on the right thing, and the very fact that it keeps coming up for you on the mat is a good indication that this is no mere distraction, but an essential complex for you, whatever it may be specifically.

If you can lighten up on the frustration a little—so much easier said than done—you might notice how comical it all really is. Here you are trying to work on something all-important, and in the very process, you get caught up in the same old troubles that you are trying so hard to address and alleviate! It’s not so easy to laugh at any of this when you are in the midst of it; the misery is undeniable; but maybe you can manage a wry little smile at least, because even if the pain and the sorrow is real, it is also, you must admit, quite funny. Or at least you would find it so if it were not you doing the suffering; so perhaps try to bring a little of that impersonal perspective to it if you can.

The very best way to deal with it all, if only you could (and I cannot very often either), would be to take things one step further still and see whether you cannot enjoy your suffering a little, as a wise therapist of mine—a former Catholic priest, no less—like to say to me, with a beaming smile, when I was on the way out the door. (Thank you, Jim!) Quite a stretch, I always thought, but we are not talking about masochism here, only an acceptance of the texture of life the way it has to be lived, whether we like it or not. We pretend that we are in charge sufficiently to dictate terms to our unwelcome feelings and other unbid visitors to our lives. But the reality is that they cannot just be turned or chased away; they will come whether you like it or not, and go when they want, not when you want them to; so you might as well find a way to cultivate friendlier relations with them. No, they will never be your best buddies; how could they be? But while you are the one suffering, it is they who own the house that you are living in by their sufferance. They do not much care whether you sit down for tea with them occasionally or not; but your life will get a lot easier if you do, because they are not going anywhere any time soon.

It’s not that you should let yourself get overly attached to the darkness either, which is quite possible (strange as it sounds) and exceedingly dangerous, but simply that there are ways to make yourself a little more at home with the highs and lows alike. A Bhutanese friend once said to me that she had never met anyone as comfortable in that respect as I seemed to be. A remarkable thing to say, I thought, and she was giving me far too much credit, of course; but it was still one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten (thank you, Yangki!), not because I think it is quite true, alas, but because I would like nothing better than to be able to surf life’s waves in the way my friend described.