Editor:
My heart goes out to Sarah Blackstone-Fredericks (“How to Meditate When the World is on Fire,” Jan 15), with her multiple (17!) moves, and I applaud her for finding peace of mind by creating a safe space wherever she found herself.
So while I found myself agreeing with most of her heartfelt essay on meditation, I got hung up when she wrote, “The goal is to find a little peace within… .” My belief is, for most people, having a goal in meditation is not only counterproductive (in this case, finding peace of mind) but can turn folks away from meditation when, after a few sessions, they haven’t found what they were hoping for. I speak from experience. As a one-time instructor for beginning meditators at a Bay Area Zen group, I shudder to think how many people I turned off the practice by setting up such high expectations. (Only one in four or five ever returned after their first session.)
Of course, for some, having a goal does work! But we’re all different, and meditation isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” practice. The late Zen monk Kobun Chino expressed it so well when he explained that “hard sitting” (having a goal, putting effort into it) is perfect for some people. For the rest of us, “soft sitting” (that is, just sitting without a goal, trusting that one’s mind knows best) is the ticket. Or as the Buddhist Heart Sutra says, “… no place to go, nothing to do, nothing to attain.”
Barry Evans, Eureka