Kinds of Meditation

Look, I think thinking is perfectly wonderful, I just prefer not to.

I prefer not to be running full speed every time I move from one place to another, as well.

Some forms of Buddhist meditation could certainly (in English) be described as methods of thinking — I think most of the ones I’ve been taught, in fact.

I just don’t like those. I also know a lot of people who think they don’t like meditation because they don’t like the thinking kinds.

It depends what the trouble is, in this particular body, if you ask me.

For instance, I frequently hear people for whom “mindfulness” is a resonant word talk about a feeling of boredom, disconnection, lack of meaning, which “mindfulness”-style meditation helps break open, allowing magical interestingness to emerge from the most boring situation.

I have never had that problem a single time.

I find every situation except the most boring (my happy place) to be lurid, outrageous, impossible to behold. It’s like every single atom in existence is my entire life all at once. It’s unbearable to live like that. So I basically discovered and taught myself Zen meditation on my own as a kid — just figured out how to drop my entire mind out the window — and then I could withstand it, as a dream.

Only later did I learn other people also do this. My teacher tells the same story.

Yes, I feel that there is something like A Buddha’s Description of Reality. But I don’t think it should be surprising — given the plain nature of reality as consisting of rather a lot of different manifestations — that the way home is not found by following the exact same directions from every point in the universe.

The doctor treats the disease that is presenting.