Too Distracted to Meditate, Part II

The Ego, in Buddhist understanding, is nothing more than a few strands of reality mixed with a fistful of wishful thinking and a couple dashes of bravado, but it looks all nice and impervious on the outside. It looks like, well, you, but is no more real than a drawing on paper. (Note, however, that this says nothing about the healthiness of that ego in a psychological sense: your ego could be of the strong-and-confident variety, or the lay-down-like-a-dormat variety; the issue here is not what it looks like, but how firmly entrenched it is in your thinking about yourself.)

But as the Dhammapada reminds us, when you get serious about meditation you start to undo The Ego ’s death grip on your life. Even a little meditation lets you start to see this as you begin to get control over issues such as anger that have done a better job of managing you than you have of managing them.

That is, if The Ego doesn’t jump in, point out what a disaster you are at meditating, and convince you to give up with a simple, “I can’t do it.” Which, of course, is a fallacy: anyone can meditate. All it takes is plopping your butt down on the couch/floor/chair/stoop/piano bench/ottoman and closing your eyes, moving into stillness with the intention of simply being there, and quietly and gently moving yourself back there anytime you discover that your mind has wandered. Boom, pow, done. That’s it. Are there methods and techniques and advanced levels for which you are not ready? Sure, but just because you can’t pitch in majors doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play catch in the back yard. Anyone can meditate. You can meditate.

It’s simple to do, but the Dhammapada tells us that this doesn’t make it easy. Bringing the mind back to stillness over and over again can be mighty frustrating, and when you seriously start focusing and putting all your energy into one point, that’s when The Ego really kicks in and starts sending every distraction known to humans your way to keep you from getting one step closer to free. 

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When the Buddha sat down under the bodhi tree, we are told, Mara the Tempter threw all the fun temptation his way – pleasure, power, fame. Sounds a lot like Jesus in the desert, doesn’t it? And with a very similar result – both men rejected the trinkets laid before them because they knew that a far greater treasure lay in store. The Buddha found his way beyond The Ego ’s cravings – all by training the mind to remove every distraction, including those thrown at him by the Tempter himself – and sending his thoughts like an arrow to exactly where he wanted them to go:

As an archer aims his arrow,

the wise aim their restless thoughts,

hard to aim, hard to restrain.
Dhammapada Ch 3 

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And as we read the Dhammapada 2½ millennia later, we hear his words echoing through time, telling us that we can do exactly the same thing. It won’t be easy, but what good thing ever is? No miracle is required, no salvation from on high: with our own decisions and by our own efforts, we can release ourselves from The Ego ’s talons and discover truth and freedom beyond anything we have ever known before. 

Quotations from The Dhammapada, trans. Eknath Easwaran