”Try not to become a person of success, but rather become a person of value.”

~ Albert Einstein

Every winter/spring, I go through what I affectionately refer to as my self-help phase.  Perhaps as a way to begin my year by very intentionally learning and growing.  Pushing boundaries.  Perhaps because as the old year comes to a close, I find myself wanting in certain areas.  Perhaps because not only is a new calendar year beginning, but another year of my life begins each December.  I’m not sure.  What I am sure of is my desire each January to keep chipping away at myself, in hopes of revealing my inner David.  (Pardon the Michelangelo reference, but it’s one of my favorites).

The above quote is another of my favorites because it reminds me that my actions and choices should not be guided by financial (or any other kind) of success, but rather by the pursuit of being the best, most well-rounded human that I can be.  By creating, within my being, a vessel of value.

In that vein, I am working my way through Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism is True and it has – to this point –  profoundly affected me and my worldview.  To be fair, I began it a loooooong time ago and found my way back to it this January.  Maybe I needed that time away to gain perspective.  I’m not sure.

To help clarify, let me begin at my beginning.

Every night (nearly every night) and most mornings, I sit down on my bolster, next to my Buddha statue, and I meditate.  At the beginning, I really didn’t know what I was doing.  I’d wanted to begin meditating for a long time (every one said it was so great!) but didn’t really know how to start.  It all felt uncomfortably disingenuous.  Last January I began yoga teacher training, and meditation was a big component.  And thus, my practice began.

Even during teacher training I wasn’t really sure what the heck was going on, and I was pretty resistant.  Not purposefully, but it’s inherently within me to resist (I’m working on it).  So it was really Covid and being stuck at home that brought me to the meditations on Peloton.  Even then, I was skeptical.

Meditation is this thing that for me had a lot of baggage about what it should be and how it should feel.  And I didn’t get it or feel it so I kind of dismissed it.  Books and magazines and my yogi friends all espoused its transformative power but to me … it was just … overly burdened with expectations.

Even so, I dutifully kept at it, thinking that with repetition I might finally clue in to the big deal.

There was a moment late last summer when I said to John, as I padded back to our bedroom, that I could feel the difference between nights I meditated and nights I didn’t but I couldn’t articulate what it was … I could just feel it.

I think that’s the thing with meditation, and it’s why I’ve struggled for so long.  I need to be able to define it, to give it words and form and shape … and meditation is essentially formless and shapeless.

That’s what Why Buddhism is True has given to me if nothing else (and it’s far from nothing else).  It has validated my inability to adequately describe meditation, its ‘instructions’ or really anything about it.  Other than to say I do it, it makes sense and I feel its benefits.

Which brings me back to Albert Einstein.  I think meditation serves as a tool to help me be a better version of myself — to continue developing my character in order to become a person of value.

Xoxo, g