Meditation Practice 2.0
Today's Morning Journal
To hear the 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, click on the play button:
I took the Morning Journal as my starting point for this essay:
Sitting Meditation Without a Timer
I want to tell you about a change I've made in my sitting meditation practice.
My sitting starts with lighting a candle, arranging myself on the bed with a pillow and zafu, so I am high enough for quarter-lotus position, legs crossed in a comfortable way. I strike the bell three times, arrange my hands in an oval shape in my lap, close my eyes, count 10 breaths, recite a line of Scripture, and let silence find me.
Ever since I began sitting at the Zen Center of Denver 30 years ago, I've assumed that when you sit, you time your sitting.
That makes a lot of sense when you are sitting with other people. When I served as the one timing a round, I would be the only one who knew how much time had elapsed. There was a digital clock on my mat, so I could glance at it. I would start the round with strikes of the bell and ended it with one strike. At that point, we would all bow and stand up for walking meditation before the next round.
As I practiced zazen on my own in the years since I was active at the Zen Center, I always timed the rounds. In the last few years, I have used my Apple Watch. I'd set the timer on my watch using Insight Timer, which I have linked to the Apple Health app built into my iPhone. With the time started, I would ring the bell and sit.
The advantage was that Apple Watch would upload the number of minutes I spent meditating into the Health app. So I could see on my phone that I had sat, say, 35 minutes so far on a given day—20 minutes in the morning and then a few shorter sits. I used the running total of minutes as a measure my spiritual fitness. They were like spiritual brownie points, maybe in order to impress my Higher Power. I don't know exactly why I did it, but it’s safe to say there was a fair amount of ego involved. I would set a goal of 60 minutes a day, or 30 minutes, whatever, and being a tad obsessive I almost always met the goal. This provided some motivation, and it was fun.
In the past few months, I have taken a couple of online courses from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation. One was on Saint Teresa of Avila and the other was an introduction to Saint Francis, playfully titled “Beyond the Bird Bath.” What I learned in those courses led me to wonder what it would be like if I stopped setting a timer when I sit. So I tried it.
After a month of experimentation, here is how my sitting looks currently:
Before a session, I glance at a clock to see how much time is available for sitting. In the morning and evening I generally aim for about 20 minutes a session. During the day, there might be opportunities to sit for 5 or 10 minutes for a mini-reboot. Once I’m settled, I ring the bell as usual and wait for time to pass. I can tell the difference between 20 minutes and 5 minutes without a timer, so that’s not a problem.
Sometimes I might plan to sit for 20 minutes, but my knees start hurting enough for me to ring the bell once, bow, and blow out the candle. Between my inner clock and the guidance of my legs, I have no trouble knowing when it’s time to conclude a sit.
The total amount of time I’m spending is probably close to what it was before, but the sessions seem lighter, less performative, more renewing.
I’ll stop here before claiming entrance into the next room of Saint Teresa’s Interior Castle.
I hope my musings on this matter might be helpful. I would love to hear your thoughts about your own meditation, practice if you’d like to share them in the comments.
Time to post this and ring the bell three more times.