On Meditation

No worries, wee monk, you'll get there.

I have a client who's gone away to meditate for a month in one of those countryside meditation places. To make conversation, I not-jokingly said, "I tried meditating last week, but I'm not sure if I did it right because I think I fell asleep."

He gave me a smile of uncondescending sympathy and said, "The problem is, today, we're just tired all the time. When you go away on a meditation retreat you basically spend the first week falling asleep. Then you get to the point where you're actually rested. And that's when you can really start working on stuff."

I liked this and have been thinking about it ever since. It's silly to say, but it never occurs to me that everyone else is just as tired as I am, that this is an epidemic, and that falling asleep while trying to meditate isn't some expression of your inability to attain inner attunedness, it's an expression of how goddamn dragged-across-the-cobblestones we feel all the livelong day.

Isn't that reassuring? And doesn't that make you want to get to the place where you're rested, if only to see what you're like once you arrive?