Instant Meditation

From Menletter September 2003

By Tim Baehr

Instant coffee...instant tea...instant soup...instant lemonade...instant messenger...instant everything! Why not instant meditation? I've recently been experimenting with the benefits of taking just a few seconds at a time to practice various kinds of meditation - mostly the standard kinds, but I haven't stopped exploring.

Breathing. This is the simplest. I just take a long, deep breath and let it out. At the same time I notice the breath itself. I use it as a way of calming down or refocusing and sometimes for a quick scan of my external and internal environment.

Tonglen (a form of Tibetan Buddhist meditation). Cut off in traffic? See someone being inconsiderate? I imagine the situation - the assault against me plus my reaction - as a dark, dense cloud. I breathe in that cloud and let my heart purify it. I breathe out golden light. This can be very healing and put things into perspective.

Mantra. I will sometimes repeat a familiar phrase to myself as a reminder. My favorite is "There is only here. There is only now." It's sometimes effective in letting go of regret and worry or just aimless mental wandering. I use it mostly to bring my attention and consciousness to the present so I don't miss life while off on some reverie.

Checking in. I don't know if this one is "standard," but it seems more powerful than my little mantra. When I'm bored, uncomfortable, sad, impatient, annoyed, etc., I check in with myself: "Are you OK right now?" A lot of my discomforts are based on projections into the future (which doesn't exist until it arrives in the present) or mulling over some failure in the past (which has gone out of the present and no longer exists).

Say I'm stuck in traffic, and I'm impatient and annoyed. I may have a meeting or an appointment that I'll probably be late for. But I can almost always answer the check-in question positively. I'm sitting in a car I like to drive, there's some good music on the radio, I'm not hungry or thirsty, and I don't have to pee. Yeah, I'm OK. Right now. And when I park my car, late for the meeting, I'll still be OK. And when I walk into the meeting, I'll still be OK. And when I apologize and sit down, I'll still be OK. Each of these little slices of the future has arrived into the present, right on schedule, and I was OK for all of them.

Or say I've begun to think about someone I insulted or treated harshly (an hour ago, or even ten years ago!). I begin to think what an asshole I was, and worry about what the person thinks or thought of me. Then I check in. I'm OK right now. At this very moment, I'm not hurting anyone, and no one's hurting me. The "me" that perpetrated the insult no longer exists. If it's necessary and possible to make amends, the current "me" can take care of it in due time. Otherwise, right now, I can enjoy being OK, and the bad feelings can stay where they belong: in the past and extinct like the dodo.

Sometimes it's good to check in even when I'm not feeling challenged about the future or the past. A lot of my excursions into the future or past are totally unconscious, and the check-in is a way to get me back into the present from the realms of moments not-yet-born or already-dead.

Finally, I do understand that "instant" meditation is like instant anything: the real thing is almost always more satisfying. But when I can't sit my butt down for half an hour, these kinds of meditation can really hit the spot.