Do you ever wonder what kind of people are drawn to meditation?  Is it the quiet types who do not have much to say anyway? Or perhaps the boring types who have no life? Do you not have to be prone to meditate – like having a special gene that allows you to sit in the same position forever chanting ohm repetitively? Perhaps – perhaps not.            

Let us take a look at the question again. What kind of people are drawn to meditation? Maybe we need to understand the term meditation before we can understand who might like it. Webster’s dictionary defines meditation as “a focus of one’s thoughts on; a reflection on or ponderance of; a plan or projection in the mind.” These definitions contain either an element of intent or an object. To the Western mind, this renders the impression that meditation must have a purpose, a goal to be achieved. It is something that must be done.  

In the Christian tradition for example, one may contemplate the death of Christ, his suffering, or one’s own sins. This kind of contemplation indeed implies thinking, pondering, and using one’s conscious understanding to grasp a concept, an idea or a situation. It reflects our Western way of action-oriented thinking. Jobs must be done. Kids must be raised. Houses must be cleaned. Food must be cooked. Stress must be diminished. And there is your goal for meditation: to fight stress. Meditation is good for that, isn’t it?  We Westerners are doers. We do lunch. We do sports. We do meditation – twenty minutes a day max. We are busy!

Now take a deep breath and travel to the East with me. Imagine you step on a plane in Los Angeles or New York or Paris and after many hours of flying through space, you land in Tibet. Imagine it is the 1950s when Tibet was still its own country with its own laws. I do not know how you earned it, but somehow you receive the opportunity to visit the Potala and learn about Buddhism from the masters.

Buddha, in case you do not know, was a prince, a royal heir to the thrown.  He was kept exclusively in the royal palace because his parents wanted to shelter him from life’s miseries, such as sickness, disease, disabilities and death. In his early twenties, Buddha finally ventured out of the palace into the city streets where, for the first time in his life, he was confronted with poverty, crippling diseases and death. Overcome with grief and compassion for the suffering in the world, he gave up his royal heritage and became a begging monk. He understood that jewels and money do not make people happy but that  inner peace and happiness are hidden deep inside of us. He found a way to tap the source. And that is what you are here to learn on this imaginary journey to Tibet.

As you step through the entrance doors of the Potala, a magical sound draws you into a big hall where hundreds of monks are chanting. The deep vibrations produced by their voices seep into your body allowing you to feel at ease in this strange environment. You find a seat in the front row facing a lama in a red and yellow robe. As soon as you sit down, the chanting stops and quiet fills the room. It is a tangible quiet although you may not quite know how to grasp it yet.

The lama looks in the round and his eyes meet yours. He begins to speak in perfect English and you listen. “Meditation,” he says, is not meant to reduce stress.  It is a meant to be a spiritual practice. It is meant to clear your mind and let it expand until it is as vast as the sky. Your mind should be spacious and large. Small-minded people hold thoughts tightly. Large-minded people hold thoughts lightly. To hold thoughts lightly means to have much room in your heart and mind – to be tolerant, loving, kind and compassionate; in short, to be a good human being.”

You are shocked. You scoot around in your seat. Should you leave? Should you sneak out? After all, this is not the kind of lecture you came to hear. You came to specifically diminish your stress.  But somehow the clarity and radiance in your teacher’s eyes keeps you still, not moving, willing to follow along, just for a little while. After all, you have flown half around the world to visit the Potala. If you leave now, what are you going to tell your friends?

So you stay. As instructed, you close your eyes. As instructed, you focus on the tip of your nose and listen to your breath. You feel, perhaps for the first time in your life, where the air of your breath enters your nostrils and where it leaves. You feel the space between your shoulders expand and your muscles begin to relax. Your mind indeed begins to expand and so does your heart space.

Somehow you like your stay at the Potala. Every day, as your meditation time increases, you breathe, focus, listen and feel. You are doing it quite well. You learn to focus on compassion and kindness and truth, exploring the depth of these words. You begin to explore them inside your body. What does compassion feel like? Where does it dwell in you? What would it be like to create compassion and spread it in the world or even further – in the entire universe? You learn to spread your heart light until it wraps around the globe and you realize that the world is in you as much as you are in the world.

One day, you stop and wonder – are you really doing this or have you gone beyond the mere act of doing? Is all this pure imagination or has it actually become a way of being? You close your eyes and go back into that magical space deep inside of you where all thoughts cease. You reach a point of bliss, a quiet peace. You feel more conscious and more alive than you ever have before. There is such much love in the universe, you realize, and it is all inside of you.

You came to the Potala to do meditation. Instead, you have become meditation. You look in your teacher’s eyes and see once again the clarity and radiance. Can you do clarity? Can you do radiance? Funny, isn’t it? Can you do human? Or must you be human? Isn’t that your nature? What type are you anyway?

I am a human being. You, too. We all are. We are here to be human, to be clear, to be radiant. What better way to achieve it than through meditation?