Buoyancy in Meditation

When I sat down to meditate this morning, I found myself reflecting on how meditation begins with a kind of performance.

We arrange the body, sit upright, close our eyes, focus our mind. We try to become the person who meditates. And inevitably, the battle begins. The mind wanders, negotiates, judges, remembers, anticipates. There is almost subtle violence in trying to make ourselves arrive somewhere.

Yet that struggle is part of the crossing. We cannot see through the labyrinth without first entering it. And where are we trying to get? Nowhere. There is no destination. Only that moment when, somehow, the striving softens. The mind settles. Something opens.

The word used by a respected monk in his talk came into my mind: buoyancy. Lightness. Ease. A quiet, almost gleeful joy. The feeling of no longer pushing against yourself.

It came in the final few minutes of my hour-long meditation. And with it, something released. The sense of lightness flooded my whole being. It colors my whole day.