A war in my head

Vic: My question is, even though this is my first time coming to meditation, I have tried doing it on my own a few times, in the morning, but as soon as I wake up I have a war in my head. I have severe anxiety about everything I have to do, places I have to be, people I resent, things that are bothering me, am I going to be late for this, how’s the traffic going to be. I can’t calm myself to sit and meditate and just like happened today, at the beginning for the first few minutes I was able to sustain my concentration on breathing for maybe 15, 20 seconds at a time. But as time went by my lapses—I was thinking about everything that I need to do, and what’s going on in my life and everything else—started being four or five minutes before I could pull myself back and start concentrating again. I do know that I am in a program where meditation is highly suggested, and I want to really get into the habit of it. But I don’t know how to start in the mornings and get myself to sit and not worry about being late for something. I’m never really late anyway. I have a bit of an OCD and I have multi issues.

Ken: It sounded like the white rabbit.

Vic: Yeah, I’m a winner.

Ken: Okay. Well, what kind of work do you do?

Vic: I work for a magazine.

Ken: Oh, high pressure, publishing. Well, 15, 20 seconds? That’s good. What’s your secret?

Vic: As I was breathing, I was imagining a sort of balloon expanding, like a tank balloon.

Ken: Oh I gotta try that. I like that. There’s a teacher in the eastern part of America— Virginia I think—who is a Sri Lankan. His name is Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, and I heard him once at an afternoon workshop. When he teaches meditation, it’s like a string quartet playing. It’s so clear, just so beautiful. In one of his books, he says: “After a while, when you practice meditation, you’ll discover that you’re completely and irretrievably crazy. Your mind is a jibbering mad house on wheels, rushing pell-mell down a hill, completely out of control. Don’t worry. You’re no crazier than you were yesterday. The only difference is now you know it.”

When you first start to meditate


Ken: What you’re describing is the first experience you have when you start meditating. From your description there is absolutely nothing wrong. This is most people’s first experience. There are a few people who, when they sit down, their mind becomes quiet. We aren’t even going to talk about that. I can say the same for me. I started trying to practice meditation when I was at university and then I went to India. You know how long I could last? Just take a guess. [Unclear] I was a bit better than that: one minute. And that was it. And it was a tough minute, too. I couldn’t sit still at all. I mean, literally. It wasn’t that I had lots of thoughts, I couldn’t sit for more than one minute. I had to get up and do something else.

What’s really important here—and what I was trying to demonstrate with this—is that by now, we’ve heard all of these things about meditation: it’s so quiet, the mind is quiet, it’s peaceful, it’s open. Just forget all of that, okay? Meditation is much more like going down into the basement where you haven’t been for two or three centuries, and there are a few things down there. There are some boxes, lots of boxes. None of them have ever been opened for a very long time. Then there are cockroaches and spiders and all kinds of odd things, cobwebs, all kinds of stuff. You go down and think, oh, I’m going to be nice and quiet down here but all of this stuff is there and you never knew it.

So here you are, you sit down in meditation and you find, “Oh, I’m a very anxious person,” and as you said so beautifully yourself, “I’m worried about being late, but I’m never late for meetings.” That’s pretty good that you’re never late for meetings. Why do you worry about it? Well, there’s probably some very deep answers to that question, and we don’t need to go into them this evening, but there’s the worry, which by your own experience and by your own testimony is completely baseless. But that’s the kind of thing that happens to us, isn’t it?

Can you experience anxiety and be at peace?


Ken: I’m going to give you an instruction, which I came up with fairly recently and I found very helpful. And that is, whatever happens when you sit to meditate, I just want you to ask one question: “How can I experience this and be at peace at the same time?” Let’s take your anxiety to start with. “I’m feeling anxious. How can I experience this anxiety and be at peace at the same time?” What happens when I ask you that question?

Vic: I would not know how to start.

Ken: Well, start right now.

Vic: I would have to imagine it’s the last day of my life and just say, “Okay, screw it.”

Ken: Great. Wonderful. That’s another practice. That’s super. Okay. So do that. [Laughter] Does that work?

Vic: Yeah I mean, ultimately when I’m catastrophizing, which is something I do constantly: “How can I be sitting here in my living room for ten minutes when there’s so much to do, I gotta be on the freeway, screaming at somebody.”

Ken: You might have to be on the freeway, but you don’t have to be screaming.

Vic: But I do finally have to say, I have to take the extreme impossibility to calm myself and then enjoy it. So I’m thinking that with meditation, I would have to do the same thing.

Ken: Well, that’s where you’re going to start. Sometimes extreme measures are necessary. But I love that, you have to pretend, “It’s the last day of my life, so screw it!” [laughter] I’m going to use that. I have a different version, but I like yours better.

My version is, and we can just do this together right now. You have all of this stuff in your our life and you have 30 seconds to live. Notice how quickly the room becomes quiet. That’s how it is with death. When we say, okay it is over, then whatever is really important becomes evident very quickly and all of this other stuff, it just vanishes. So I love this. “It’s the last day of my life, so screw it!” Good.

Meditation is the study of what is going on


Ken: Now you’ve got your first meditation practice. That’s going to last for 15 to 30 seconds, and then all of the other stuff hits. But you will have experienced something in that 15 or 30 seconds. Right? Now you know that there is another possibility. You know what everybody does at that point? They try to hold on to that possibility. They try to bring it back. They try to make it longer, and you know what? It doesn’t work. You just have to do it again. So, you’re going to feel the momentum that keeps you anxious, that keeps you wound up. And here, I’m going to quote from Thich Nhat Hanh again. I could also quote from a Zen teacher called Dogen from 12th century Japan. Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The practice of meditation is the study of what is going on.”

What is going on is very important. That’s exactly what you’re describing. When you sit down to meditate, you start to experience, what’s actually going on in you, this anxiety, this uptightness , the franticness and worry about everything. And that’s what makes your life and what makes you, restless and consumes a tremendous amount of energy in your life, I imagine. So it’s very important. But as you keep coming back to that, and I want you to use the question that I posed to you, “How can I experience this and be at peace at the same time?”

There’s the anxiety. How can I be at peace with it? Well, your answer was wonderful. “Screw it, it’s the last day of my life.” This allows you to experience the anxiety, but not really do anything with it. And that is the start, right there. It’s not about getting rid of these things, but about being able to experience them and not have to do something about them. Do you see the difference? And that’s it. It is a subtle difference but it is a huge one.

What if this were the last day of your life?


Ken: Do you ever get angry? Oh, I’ll take that as a yes. Okay. We can all do this together. Think of something that, over the last 24 hours—and if you have to stretch it 48—that made you angry. You got something? Oh yeah. He’s such an easy person to work with. [Laughter] So call that to mind and then ask yourself the question. “How can I experience this anger and be at peace at the same time?” And remember the secret instruction: “Screw it, it’s the last day of my life”. That may be applicable here. So here we are. There’s that anger. How can I experience this and be at peace at the same time? So what did you get, Vic?

Vic: Well, one of the reasons I finally decided to try this today, even though I’ve known this was going on for a long time was because something did happen yesterday, which I’ve had to live with. And my reaction to it obviously didn’t work. I was at a meeting and someone’s dog and leash was being caught into everyone’s legs. Because I’m temperamental. I happened to be the one that told him off. He left the meeting and I felt anxious and bad. I had snapped and I had a temper, and it didn’t come from compassion or understanding. I just told him off in front of everybody, put him on the spot. He ended up leaving. If I were to go back and be pissed because this guy, in my mind, was being inconsiderate … To have peace with that temperament of mine and to think that this is my last day, I would understand that it’s not personal, have compassion and have been more calm, and maybe worked with him.

Ken: Or would have spoken to him at least in a different way.

Vic: Right.

Ken: Yeah, and that’s great. I’m interested in when you think, “Okay, here’s this anger that I have. How can I experience it and be at peace at the same time right now?” What happens?

Vic: Acceptance.

Ken: Great!

Vic: I did it. I screwed up.

Ken: Okay. So acceptance .

Vic: Accepting that what’s done is done and I need to move forward.

Ken: So you begin to see how it works. Is this useful to you?

Vic: Oh yeah , absolutely.

Ken: Good