Why Are You Listening?

So, Why Are You Here?
I don’t mean why are you on earth or why are you in Rhode Island or Vermont or California. I mean, “Why are you here, reading this essay?” What drew you to read this one? Are you a regular reader of every Meditative Moment? Or, did you just happen to decide to engage with this one? Why, to either situation?

And the larger question around that is, “what keeps you coming to our meditation group each week?”

Or, if you no longer practice, but keep reading the essays, why did you start practicing the first time?

An even larger question is “what drew you to meditation as a spiritual path in the beginning?”

I will give you the very condensed version of my history with meditation.

When I was a very young man (and that was more years ago than I care to count), the world was a very confusing place for me. I just didn’t understand why everything happened the way it did and why I didn’t seem to fit in any logical or comfortable way. Then I heard that if you meditated and got “enlightened,” you would understand everything! All would be made clear and you would be at peace, or at least that is the way I understood it at the time. I started practicing Transcendental Meditation using a mantra or “sacred sound” as the focus of my practice. It helped, but I didn’t get enlightened.

Fast forward many more years and I made a random selection of weekend retreats (long story) and ended up experiencing Buddhist practice in the Dzogchen (Natural Great Perfection) tradition. Then I connected with the practices now known as Sustainable Compassion Training (Natural Wisdom and Compassion). This also helped, but I still didn’t get enlightened.

However, I eventually came to realize that enlightenment was not what I expected it to be. Awakening seems to be a more useful term for me. I didn’t need to understand everything to relieve my suffering. I only needed to be mindful and realize what I what I was doing in the present moment. For that is the only place we can effect any change in our lives. And, awakening is not a fixed moment in time that we either get or don’t get. Rather it is more of a fluid process than we experience along the spiritual path. As is often said, “The path or the journey is the goal.”

T. S. Eliot famously wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.