Thinking, not thinking, and writing

Non-thinking is not the aim of meditation. An empty mind, if we could achieve it, would be a vegetative state, not a productive one. But taking up meditation is an acknowledgement that much of our thinking is counterproductive to good living. So what, ideally, should our minds contain when we meditate?

In meditation, we’re replacing conscious thoughts with sensory experience. When a thought arises in words to ourselves, we let it float away, and adjust our attention to the unnamed sensations, sounds, sights, smells and tastes of the present moment. This includes the sensation of our body breathing, which serves as a drumbeat, an anchor, a point of attention if our busy minds need it. Instead of focusing inward on our thought-invented world, we focus outward on what is actually happening.

With time we may find the thoughts that come are refined into what some schools of meditation call insight. Instead of internal chatter about our hopes and fears and wants and needs, we may hear something more like wisdom shooting in, as a result of our widening attention. It’s common for meditators to report sudden realizations about life issues that were previously cloudy or hidden.

For example, after the sudden death of my first husband, a Social Security officer informed me I couldn’t receive a survivor’s benefit because the marriage hadn’t lasted more than 10 years, an impossibility because same-sex marriage was illegal for all but the last four of 32 years with my partner. In meditation a few weeks later, an unbidden inner voice said, with utter certainty, that the agent was mistaken. How could a wife or husband of eight or nine years have no protection from widowhood?

I called Social Security later that morning and was told the 10-year rule was for a marriage ended by divorce prior to death, and I would be counted as a survivor. It played a role in my decision to retire from the University of Wisconsin not long after.

In that retirement I’ve devoted myself increasingly to the practice of writing fiction, something I intended a couple of decades ago, when I had the privilege of attending the Writing Seminars at Bennington College. The academic degree I received there helped me get the position at Wisconsin, which I loved. But the teaching of writing and literature drained me of all energy for producing it.

Now, with more space to create, I’m finding the epiphanies of meditation often relate to whatever piece I’m writing at the time. For a while I kept a notebook near the meditation seat so as not to lose the realizations. But that tended to pull me away from contemplation into the act of writing, which defeated the meditative purpose. Now I let the realizations go, just like all the other thoughts that come verbally to mind. I find if those epiphanies are worth incorporating onto the page, they stay in mind until I get to the page.

As a result of all this the writing has improved markedly. After Bennington, despite having received much assurance about my abilities as a writer, I racked up a giant, disheartening pile of rejections from publishers, and precisely zero acceptances. Now, picking up that work these years later, the shortcomings appear obvious, often easy to fix, and new work follows with less conscious effort (though far from effortlessly). Acceptances are replacing rejections. I have little doubt that the ensuing years of meditative practice have made the difference.

This is the way we trust meditative practice can work with all endeavors in life: improved by attention to a larger-than-individual self.