Vectors, Desire, and Intimacy
This post is about meditation, but whenever I say meditation, I’m really talking about Zen. And when I’m talking about Zen, I’m really talking about how to live your life not just in theory, but practically and moment-to-moment, second-to-second, situation-to-situation.
I just came out of a 2 day retreat (and boy are my arms meditated! dumbest joke ever). Meditation retreats are tough but they also give you an opportunity to really settle into your body and let your mind unwind. Sometimes the experience is frustrating. Often times that frustration yields to inner silence. Sometimes that silence yields to more interesting experiences like insights into the nature of things, insights into your patterns, and occasionally insights into the nature of self and reality. Sounds lofty and it kind of is. It’s precious and very freeing, but like all things, fleeting, which is part of the insight, actually. In the Vipassana tradition that’s called insight into impermanence. All things are changing, including everything that makes up you, so there can never be a steady you, which is an assumption we make about who we are. When you realize you aren’t steady, you realize that “you” as a permanent entity cannot exist, and the struggle against reality to gain and grow immediately ceases. Without struggle you’re really free and at peace. It’s a taste of enlightenment.
That’s actually the subject of this blog post. I wanted to easily describe the meditation process for people because it’s confusing. One of the features of Zen meditation is that it doesn’t give you a goal. There is nothing specific you have to do, which makes instructions really tricky for obvious reasons.
We could define meditation as a state of not trying to get anywhere. Trying to not try to get anywhere is an obvious trap and paradox that’s real, which is why meditation instruction isn’t simply “try not to get anywhere” because that would be trying.
The better instruction is to not fuss with it all. Focus on your breath. Listen. See what it’s like. Don’t get caught up in the stories and goals and self-monitoring that we all do.
I think of it as vectors. Imagine a line jutting out from your chest. That line represents a goal, which implicates thinking, resistance, and generally a doing state. When you’re at work, the vector shoots out (figuratively) and is focused on solving a problem. But even when you’re meditating, that comes out as well. Sometimes it’s just a distraction. Other times it’s about the meditation process or, most likely, the quality of your meditation. But it’s all vectors. The vectors are desires, and these desires drive our thinking and ultimately, suffering (if you’re familiar with Buddh’as second noble truth).
Meditation is slowly undoing these vectors until we’re just sitting there, just listening, without any desire. The vectors shrink and shrink over time, until you’re just there, just being. Then intimacy just happens. You’re intimate with whatever is going on, sometimes slowly, sometimes immediately. The intimacy feels like home. It’s a familiar feeling rather than a novel one. And it’s peace. It’s a little taste of enlightenment. When you practice that vectorless state, it has a momentum, so you can feel the benefits of it for a while, in the form of less thinking, less agitating, less resistance, more openness, less self-criticism, more natural compassion. It can last for days or hours, depending on how much time you put into meditating.
So what’s the big picture? A completely vectorless life isn’t practical. We all go to work and have things we need to do that require motivation and planning. But maybe it’s possible to not get as absorbed in the vector, to keep some perspective. Figuratively, keeping the vectors shorter so we preserve a little bit of that intimacy with ourselves and with others no matter where we are or what we’re doing.