I Washed Clean Dishes and Met an Annoying Monk

The origins of my meditation journey

Photo by Bruno Aguirre on Unsplash

“Okay,” my mom said brightly with one foot out the door. She seemed excited for the evening ahead with my father. “We’ll be home around ten. There are plenty of left-overs for dinner.”

I was being granted an evening alone in the house with no competition for the TV and an unmonitored fresh gallon of vanilla ice cream—completely to myself. That should have been music to the ears of my 17-year-old self.

So why did I tense up as the car pulled out of the driveway?

I had learned earlier in the day that my brother would also be out for the evening. It was a jarring and odd twist of schedules that produced a knot in my gut. My parents and brother almost never went out, and I was the one who was consistently occupied with athletic goals, team sports, schoolwork, a few friends, and performing in community theater. Scarcely a moment in any given day would pass that I didn’t have a scheduled focus—and that was on purpose. I was a classic, type A, achievement oriented kid, driven by a restlessness in my mind that, left to its own devices, would gravitate toward worry, self-criticism, and doom thinking. Staying busy had long been my solution for facing the anxiety produced by “downtime.”

As I realized that I was about to spend the evening home alone I ran through an inventory of options about where I could go to also be engaged for the evening. "What could I do, who could I be with?” I thought. I made a few phone calls, but came up short on getting in touch with a friend who could drive, or identifying an available event nearby.

As I drew activity blanks I caught myself pacing nervously and contemplating how many laps around our small circular hallway and living room I might complete before everyone got home. It may have been the first time I experienced concern for my own mental state.

“This is not good,” I muttered.

I realized that I needed to do something to counter the habit of my constant running toward busyness and accomplishment, which was clearly running away from something about myself. This was perhaps informed by my recent reading of Herman Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, where the main character claims “I can think, I can wait, and I can fast,” as his most critical life skills.

I could only do one of those things, think, but the fact that thoughts were more often thinking me than me contemplating them was alarming.

I knew what I had to do, and I made a decision at that moment, not only to stay home by myself that night, but to do nothing on purpose while I was there. Having made the decision to face myself and my personal demons, I turned immediately to the most logical next step—stuffing my face with food.

The fridge was indeed full of options. I made my dinner and ate, slowly drawing out the making, eating and clean-up process as far as I could into the evening, yet by the time the counters had been wiped down and every utensil was loaded into the dishwasher, it was only 7:00 pm.

A good three hours of time alone in the house remained before I’d be relieved of my solitude by the company of my family members.  

If I wasn’t going to be doing anything, that meant sitting. I remember walking out of the kitchen and across the living room to face the menacing sofa. It wasn’t actually a sofa, but a finished platform with storage underneath and an upholstered seat on top that I myself had built. This was one of many household projects I had already taken on in my busy, active, productive mode. I had always loved building and making things. There I was, declaring to myself that now it was time to simply enjoy something I had created by resting on it.

I put my body in what would have been a comfortable and restful position if a different head were attached to it. My mind would simply not allow me to be at ease there, doing nothing. Rest was a foreign and unwelcome concept.

So I sat there on that couch with the intention to remain as still as possible. Despite my intention I squirmed, fidgeted, re-positioned, wiggled, rocked and deep-sighed for what seemed like an eternity. I finally looked up at the clock.

Seven minutes had passed.

The panic increased.

I looked again around the room and thought that perhaps if I became interested enough in the details of my environment—mom’s voluminous plants, the tilting dining room chandelier with a burned out bulb, the orange shag carpet—they would occupy my attention enough to provide me with a distraction from the panic. This worked for several more minutes until I was once again aware of myself in the present time and space without a compelling enough target in thought or activity to avoid the discomfort of my bare presence.

Most people who knew me then saw me as being an outwardly competent, capable, athletic, good grade-earning kid, who was armed with the freedom to succeed. There on the couch the experience I had was that something wasn’t right and that the feeling in my stomach was a long way from anything I could have called freedom. In fact I had created a prison of activity, an inner emptiness from reaching, an agitation and restlessness that I knew I would have to confront somehow at its source.

Ten minutes into my experiment I found myself back at the kitchen sink, having convinced myself that something bad would happen if the dishes were not promptly re-washed. I don’t even remember what I did the rest of the evening, but it wasn’t silent sitting. I might have built another couch, or re-arranged the living room furniture, another habit of mine.

But that experience of brief moments on the couch was the beginning of my meditation journey. I would toy with meditation here and there for another nine years before mustering the determination to commit to the practice by enrolling in a ten-day silent meditation retreat on a remote island with a monk who smiled with an annoying amount of equanimity. Forty-six years later, meditation practice has been a regular habit, an irreplaceable anchor, source of help, guiding influence and inspiration to me.

I have taught meditation to both groups and individuals over the years and I have heard common refrains that stop people from trying, or from sustaining, a meditation practice.

Many people are alarmed by the restlessness of their mind when they slow down to observe it and they come to the conclusion that something is wrong with them, or that they are simply not cut out for meditation. In fact, this experience is normal. The mind is a chaotic random firing of colliding neurons, until it is trained. That goes for everyone. To actually observe and endure our own mind in this uneasy condition is the first step toward true sanity.

Many people think that a good meditation is one where they are having a quiet mind and few thoughts. In truth, "good" meditation is simply a meditation that you successfully complete by remaining in place for an intended period of time. That’s pretty much it. What your mind does during that time is actually irrelevant as long as you are applying yourself to the practice of presence. That usually involves simply paying attention to one’s breath, sensations and emotions.

I commonly see people who expect some immediate results or benefits from their meditation practice and when they don't get them, they assume that the practice is not working.

Meditation practice is in complete contrast to the quick purchases and immediate gratification we've been trained to expect in life. It is a lifelong practice, full of gentle insights and also boring and non-exciting experiences. It is also deeply transformative over time.

If you ever decide to try meditation, I hope you will choose to stick with it for at least a few months before you decide it's "not working."

Presence takes practice.

It's our birthright to be comfortable in our own skin, which necessitates being able to face ourselves as we are. Dedicating ourselves to non-distracted periods of presence is the foundation of a stable inner life, and by extension, to creating meaningful human connections and communities.

If you’re seriously considering this practice, just let me know. I have a nice couch where you can sit and, last I checked, plenty of dishes in the sink.