There's an important distinction to be made as to the goal of our meditation practice.
Our goal isn't to quote unquote meditate properly.
Our goal is to attain mindfulness.
Now that may sound very similar,
But it's an important distinction to be made.
There's a collection of traditional practices and techniques and processes and lifestyles,
All of which are designed to get us closer to the mindfulness state.
But like any system,
Individuals can respond to that system differently.
And what works for one person,
Or a majority of people,
Won't work for everyone.
And it won't necessarily work for you.
So what I'm suggesting here is that whilst we should look towards the traditional practices,
Sit this way,
Focus this way,
Eat this way,
Act this way,
All of those things that we will get from our traditions and heritages and religions and all of those things,
Remember at our core,
Our goal is to attain mindfulness.
So if you need to make a choice between what works for you and the traditional approach,
I would strongly suggest that you choose what works,
Because that's the ultimate goal.
There's a couple of analogies that I want to draw upon to drive home this point.
It's been said that meditation instruction,
Mindfulness instruction,
Is a finger pointing to the moon,
In the sense that I can show you where it is,
But ultimately you have to go there yourself.
I can guide you,
I can direct you,
I can correct you,
I can give you all the tools and tricks and tips and ideas and techniques and everything that I know the tradition knows that's worked for other people,
But ultimately it's a finger pointing to the moon.
Ultimately you have to take that step for yourself.
There's another story that exemplifies this.
There was a monastery.
In that monastery,
Every time before they practiced their meditation,
A stray cat was crawling around and making a lot of fuss,
Making a lot of noise,
And being the Buddhists and caring people that they were,
They didn't want to simply exterminate the animal,
But they couldn't practice in peace,
So they tied the cat up.
At the leader's discretion,
They tied the cat up.
And then over time,
That leader passed,
And the followers,
The people who were there with the leader,
They tied the cat up,
Because they knew that,
Well,
They can't have this cat distracting the rest of the meditators.
But over time,
Everyone that had initially dealt with the original cat was gone.
And yet the tradition to tie up a cat prior to meditation was established.
All the practitioners,
All of the monks,
All of the leaders,
Since the moment they came into the convent,
Knew that when meditation occurred,
A cat was tied up.
And no one ever thought to wonder why,
They just followed the tradition for what it is.
Do we see how this approach of blindly following a tradition can cause us to act in interesting and potentially counterproductive ways?
There's a common kitchen example of the same phenomena.
A lady was cooking a roasted dinner for her children,
And she chopped the end off and chucked it into the bin prior to putting it into the oven.
The child was like,
Why'd you chuck that out,
Mom?
Mom said,
Well,
My mom does it.
And she asked the mom,
Why did you chop the end off the roast before putting it in the oven?
And the mother's like,
Huh,
I always did that because your grandma did it.
And then when the mom asked the grandma,
Why did we chuck the end off the roast,
Grandma?
Grandma was like,
Oh,
I did that because I had a small oven and it wouldn't fit.
But because the reasons behind the action weren't explained,
Because people follow traditions blindly,
Because they don't look at the true end result,
There can be a tendency for traditions and traditional practices to potentially lead people astray.
Now I'm in no way saying that you need to give up every traditional practice you've got.
Rather,
What I'm saying is to look at what works and add it to your repertoire and discard the rest.
Because ultimately,
Your practice is individual to you.
How you practice,
How you act,
What you do in your life is on you.
So apply that same logic to your meditation practice and focus on attaining mindfulness,
Not on quote unquote meditating correctly.
Good luck.
