A Meditation on Meditation

By student Lee Kaplan

I am no stranger to meditation as a practice; I regularly meditate several times a week using an app called “Headspace.” During these meditations, I close my eyes and focus on the feeling of gravity connecting me to the surface below me, or I can focus on the sounds around me. Most commonly, I focus on my breathing. 

During our class trip to Kamakura, we visited a Buddhist temple called Engaku-ji and practiced a sample of Zazen meditation with a monk who lives at that temple. Instead of closing our eyes as I was accustomed to, we kept our eyes half open, gazing down at a spot in front of us. This way, he said, we were more aware of our surroundings. As the meditation began, the room was not silent as I had expected; instead, the monk clapped two wood planks together once, creating a rather sharp and jarring sound that was hard not to jump at. Then, he rang a bell several times in a row, letting the bell vibrate and ring out before ringing it again. It was the clearest bell I have ever heard in my life. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bell was tuned to the resonant frequency of the room, as the sound seemed to permeate my very being. From there, we continued the meditation.

During the meditation itself, the monk did not speak to us to give instruction or guidance. Before the meditation began, he told us about what we could choose to focus on during the meditation: the feeling of gravity, your bodily sensations, or your breathing. These sounded pretty familiar to me. Despite my best intentions to focus on what I could feel, I often found my mind drifting towards thinking and away from feeling. The monk had quoted Bruce Lee: “Don’t think; feel.” 

When I told him I struggled with thinking, he said to imagine thoughts as clouds in the sky. Instead of trying to analyze them or think about them, he said to let them drift away on a cool breeze. In some ways, this was easier said than done. However, we were not just sitting on our butts the whole time, and I found that during different activities it was easier to let go of my thoughts. We did a walking meditation where we synced our breathing with our walking pace, and we did a meditation lying down, where we could relax our whole body, provided that we didn’t fall asleep! 

The walking meditation was new for me, and I found it easier to focus on my feelings when I was moving. The whole experience, while not entirely novel to me, felt very -- dare I say -- enlightening. I learned more about Buddhist philosophy; I knew some in theory, but it was different to feel it in practice. It was a powerful experience to feel, to be, and to meditate in a real Zen Buddhist temple. It is something that I hope to one day experience again.