When ego and thought have been silenced, the brain acts like a large
receiver dish
From Martin LeFevre in California
A recent front-page article about meditation in "Time" magazine offered up this
straight line: "Meditation can sometimes be used to replace Viagra."
Let's see if I got that right. Men, instead of taking that little blue pill
tonight to restore or enhance your sexual function, try meditation. It might
help you get it up. Oh please.
I put off reading the essay until I was in the right state of mind to receive
such pearls of wisdom. But an inherently silly article slipped the bonds of
earth and became pure inanity with that single sentence.
The more popular meditation becomes in America, the more I have to meditate to
avoid being overwhelmed by despair. What are these millions of people doing? To
my mind sitting in groups watching one's breathing, visualizing certain images,
conjuring good feelings, or repeating some stupid word over and over again has
about as much to do with meditation as Viagra.
When I was still in my teens, and the Beatles were still together, a friend
talked me into taking "Transcendental Meditation," the rip-off started by
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi whereby one paid for a special sound unique to you. For a
few months my friend and I dutifully set aside 20 minutes a day to silently
intone our personal vibration.
Then, despite being under penalty of karmic disaster should we disclose our
special sound, we couldn't resist sharing our secret word with each other. We
had the same darn sound!
In the 19th century, when hypnotism was all the rage, the gullible turned their
minds over to some charlatan only too willing to separate them from their money.
Hypnotism was touted as a cure for everything, from psychological problems to
medical conditions, just as meditation is today. We've come a long way. Now
people are self-inducing their trances.
Though I'm fighting the Mississippi in saying this, meditation has nothing to do
with concentrating on one's breathing, visualizing images or good feelings, or
repeating some silly sound. These "flavors" can and do trick the mind into a
trance, but they cannot effortlessly gather attention, awaken insight, and
produce spiritual growth.
Revealingly, there is very little discussion in the popular conception of
meditation of religious experience, even though the utter emptiness of this
godforsaken culture is what is driving millions of people to so-called
meditation. Meditation is viewed in secular terms, as a stress-reducer, not in
spiritual terms, as the means and end for a serious life.
It is late afternoon, pleasantly warm in town, though hot on the ridge beyond
it. Dry, brown grass crackles underfoot. After taking in the precipitous and
breathtaking view of the canyon, I sit in the partial shade of a manzanita tree.
The canyon looms below, and fans out to my right. Hawks fly below or just above
eye level, and sometimes circle within a few meters. Every now and then I hear a
truck on the highway, but the world is enveloped by beauty. The place is still
essentially as it was a million years before man, and the feeling of the
primeval is still here.
A hot breeze blows through the small leaves of the manzanita. Imperceptibly, the
accretions of time and experience dissolve. When I stand, there is only the heat
of the sun on my bare back, and the grandeur of the canyon unrolling before me.
Awakening meditation begins with communion with nature, and ends in depths
beyond time and space. When ego and thought have been completely silenced
through unwilled and undivided attention, the brain acts like a large receiver
dish for the background sacredness of the universe.
mglefevre@earthlink.net
The author welcomes comments.
