Meditation: A Visit to Myself

In 2009, I had a significant breakthrough in my life, although some may have chosen to call it a breakdown. Back then my employer decided that, as a teacher working on a zero-hours contract, I was worthless, not even worth a proper temporary contract, so in an on-the-spot decision, I left my job teaching at the university. Luckily there were two of us in this bind, so I didn’t have to follow that long and lonely path leading to an employment tribunal on my own. Ruth, my colleague, joined me and we walked away together… in the direction of a solicitor’s office.

For two years I had given a lot of my time and energy to my university job and to my wonderful students. I enjoyed the classes and hoped that they did too. Indeed, while I saw many of my students as decent and hardworking human beings I didn’t feel the same about the university management. From their positions of power, they had shown themselves to be obtuse in the face of our requests to become temporary members of staff at the English Language Unit. Their opposition to our pleas had to do with the rights Ruth and I would be accorded if we had been given temporary status as staff members, as opposed to casual workers. Temporary staff were granted the same salary and employment rights as permanent staff for the duration of their fixed-term contract and that was seemingly what management wanted to avoid at all costs.

This went on for months and the longer it continued, the worse my anxiety and insomnia became. Then one day something happened that opened my eyes to the injustice of our situation. On that day, when my class finished, I called into the main office to collect something when a member of the clerical staff whispered to me that university managers were meeting that morning with the institution’s barristers to discuss how to “get rid of” Ruth and me. They wanted to ensure that they did not create legal grounds that might lead to the university being sued. On hearing these three words “get rid of” my anger exploded. All that I had done for the university in terms of my commitment to providing a professional service while being paid the same rate as an unskilled worker counted for nothing. What was I doing in this place anyway?

By coincidence, that afternoon I had an appointment at the local hospital for an ultrasound scan of my kidneys. For some time, I’d been experiencing an ache in that region, a dull ache that refused to go away… except when I went on holiday. It was weird. Anyway, it was a beautiful sunny day in early September, so I walked to the hospital in a strangely jubilant mood. Maybe my subconscious sensed what was going to happen soon…  In the ultrasound room, the technician helped me adjust my posture so that she could apply gel to the kidney area, and then she began to move the device over that area while observing the screen. While she was engaged in this, she asked me if I had any children, and I replied that I didn’t. The next question was about whether I had a partner, and I didn’t. What she said next alarmed me a bit and this was that it might be prudent to ask a doctor to look at the screen because he/she might want me to stay in hospital. I was so taken aback by this comment that I looked behind me, thinking that she must be talking to someone else...

The doctor came to look at the screen.. He and the technician studied the image closely, mumbling together for a couple of minutes; then he disappeared without addressing me. I was at a loss as to what was happening; it sounded very serious and yet nobody was explaining the issue to me. That was when the technician told me that a report would be sent to out today, so I should make an appointment with my GP for the following week to discuss the matter.

That week was one of the longest of my life. I was convinced that I had cancer of the kidneys, that I was living under a death sentence, and mentally I began to prepare for my exit from this life. Everything in my life looked very different from this gloomy perspective: sharper, brighter, more precious, and more unique. Preparing myself to say goodbye to my life, which I felt I had not appreciated or cherished enough, was agonisingly painful in a dull, heavy way. And that was how I felt when walking to my GP’s surgery one week after the ultrasound check, so the news from the doctor that nothing was amiss with my kidneys came as quite a shock. A very welcome shock.

When I described to the GP what had happened during the ultrasound scan, he thought that I wanted to make a formal complaint against the technician for alarming me needlessly on that afternoon. “On the contrary,” I said. “She has saved me. I now understand how very precious my life is.” Those were my overriding thoughts as I left the surgery and walked home. My eyes had been opened wide and I wanted to feel fully alive in every moment, to never again take either my life or my time on this earth for granted. Taking the initial step was easy. Right then I called the English Language Unit and informed them that I would not be returning to teach there on Monday, nor indeed ever again. Such is the joy of a zero hours contract that no notice is required to leave.

That was when I saw an ad on the noticeboard of my local community centre that got my full attention. Meditation classes for beginners were to begin the following Monday evening and run for six weeks. I was so excited to get my life back that I thought, why not give it a try? Meditation would be the first step but there would be other, equally exciting steps that weren’t in my plans on that day. They included yoga, creative writing and enrolling in a gym, a return trip to Cuba, my first ever meditation retreat and, maybe best of all, endless trips to the cinema. All of this had been put on hold for the two years I was teaching at the university because I didn’t have the time or the energy needed for it.

On Monday evening there were six of us waiting for the teacher to give us our first lesson in meditation. When she walked into the room she was wearing the crimson and yellow colours of a Buddhist nun’s robes. She was English and had been a psychologist before committing to full-time Buddhism. The session lasted an hour and during that time she discussed topics that were clearly important; but they were topics I had never given the time or consideration they merited. They were topics about how precious this life is and how crucial it is for the time not to be squandered. All of this I agreed with 100 per cent, but there was one statement she made that towered above all the others in terms of its impact on me: “You can control the conditions of your own mind:” I had never even thought about this and to be told that it was a possibility instead of an impossibility filled me with hope and excitement. And this was because my mind was the cause of my own suffering. I knew that much after many years of psychotherapy.

A lightbulb in my mind had been switched on in that class, and I was determined to learn about how I might control “the conditions of my own mind.” Over the following five weeks of that course, I read as much as possible of the literature that the nun recommended. Surprisingly, I found myself eagerly looking forward to each morning meditation in my attic. Discipline wasn’t required at all. Meditation felt like this was exactly what I needed in my life, at that point.

Just around the time the course ended with the nun, I happened to hear an interview on BBC Radio 4 that would lead to a deepening of my experience with meditation. The interview was with Jon Kabat-Zinn, an American academic widely known for introducing mindfulness into the mix of Western Buddhist meditation. The essence of his approach was the importance of being mindful of every moment. That seemed like an impossibility to me, but I was determined to give it a try. My determination arose out of a powerful experience I’d had earlier in the summer. On that evening I’d walked out of the back of my house specifically to embrace the early evening sounds and sunset and to be closer to a blackbird singing from a nearby tree. On the way back into my house, it struck me that I hadn’t done what I’d set out to do. Instead, my mind had been caught up with stuff such as work, family issues, the plague of insomnia and household bills. It was a very depressing realisation. I wondered how much of my life had been wasted in this way, by me being absent for a lot of it.

That Radio 4 interview was exactly what I needed to hear at that time. It jolted me awake. If I didn’t do something soon, my own life would have passed me by. So, I started by listening to one of Jon Kabat Zinn’s guided meditations, very different from the Buddhist meditations I’d been following, but the same essential factor – following the breath to stabilise the mind - was at its core. A friend mentioned that there was a Zen Buddhist temple in Belfast city centre which held regular meditation sessions, and that is where I went next in pursuit of mindfulness.

It was a cold January evening when I arrived at the Black Mountain Zen Centre for the 7.00 zazen sitting. I told the man who opened that door to me that I knew nothing about zen meditation. He explained the basics and invited me into the zendo (meditation room). To my surprise, all those meditating were facing the blank walls of the zendo, being in their own private space, I supposed. For the next half hour, I struggled again and again to focus on my breathing and to keep my attention there. It was nearly impossible to achieve and I felt like an interloper, a fraud. Then the bell chimed, which was the signal to rise and to follow the person to my right, walking slowly in a clockwise circle around the zendo.

As I walked, I kept my eyes focused on the back of the back of the person in front of me; I’d been instructed not to make eye contact with the other meditators. We walked for about ten minutes and during that time I reflected on my surroundings in the darkness of the zendo, with only a few candles to illuminate the room. I noticed that several of those meditating were wearing dark robes and joined their hands at waist level in such a way that their thumbs met. I was intrigued, but more than that I wanted to laugh because it felt as if I had joined a witches’ coven where the brethren shared secrets and codes that I knew nothing about. Just then the bell tinkled and we all walked back to our places. In the very moment that I was assuming my sitting posture something unforgettable happened: I was filled with the absolute certainty that this place, where I was meditating with these people, was exactly where I was supposed to be. That was when I learned that my journey into meditation was not a fad or an experiment; it was for real.

Since then, I have kept up a regular morning practice, which has mostly been solo. For different reasons it has not always been possible to belong to a group, but I have managed to take part in several retreats over the years, as well as postgraduate research in mindfulness. Although I had nothing to compare it with, that first year was probably the most enlightening of any subsequent year. Enlightenment is often pivoted as the goal of meditation in Buddhist traditions, and many practicing Buddhists hope to be enlightened in their lifetime. There is much debate within Buddhist circles as to what exactly constitutes enlightenment and many would agree that a starting point is the ability to “see things as they really are” without the ego standing in the way, whatever that might feel like.  

In those days, I was obviously a beginner with scant hope of obtaining enlightenment. Nevertheless, as I developed greater awareness of ordinary everyday events in my life they were transformed into extraordinary phenomena. Because of this it made sense to me that enlightenment comes in stages. For example, late one winter’s afternoon, I was walking home from my local supermarket carrying groceries, when hailstones began to fall. A strong icy wind assaulted my umbrella and I began to curse my misfortune of living in a country which surely has one of the worst climates in the world. In that very moment, a transformation occurred. The gusts of wind were coming at me from all directions, with hailstones hitting me in the face. But I couldn’t get enough of it. I felt radically alive. Suddenly, it struck me that this was BIG weather; a drama not to be missed for a moment. I ditched my umbrella and walked the rest of the way home relinquishing myself to the powerful natural forces that came at me again and again. I was ecstatic. Life couldn’t get much better than this.

On another occasion I stepped out of the cinema around 10.00 in the evening to discover that snow had fallen while I was watching the film. It was a joy to walk home on that cold moonlit night with my boots crunching and my breath freezing. I wanted the journey to never end. Just before reaching my house, I saw something unforgettable: a fox standing in the entrance to the cemetery looking at me. In the eyes of this beautiful creature, I saw the full moon doubly reflected back at me as we stared at each other..

There were other unique and special moments gifted to me in those early days of meditation. Those moments surely happen to everyone, but it is only when we have trained ourselves to be alert and attentive in our lives that we can fully embrace and appreciate them. I prefer not to dwell on all the others that I have missed because I’ve been too busy in my head and inattentive to enjoy myself. For the time being, I know that I notice a hell of a lot more in my life and for me the key to this ability is nature. Nature makes me happy by luring my attention away from all-consuming preoccupations. Nothing sweeps us off our feet quite as much as the natural world. Strange to consider that all the time we spend on our meditation mat focusing on the breath can open us up to the world and the blessings that our life gives us. But it does. And that is why I don’t foresee me abandoning my mindfulness practice...ever.