Coffee Meditation

" 'Coffee meditation' is pain free, guilt free and stress free."  David R. Helms

Over nearly forty years I have tried and failed at many forms of "classic meditation."  I'm defining "classic meditation" as meditation techniques extracted from, espoused by and perfected by gurus from India and Zen Buddhists from China. The East  has been imported to the West in a multitude of forms. My observation of and understanding of "classic meditation" involves being physically uncomfortable for great lengths of time at some particular time on any given day.

The thing I've learned about meditation that I believe I understand correctly is that meditation and mindfulness are  not supposed to propel the practitioner into some sort of blissful, transcendental state of consciousness. Years ago  when I meditated from five a.m. to six a.m. every morning,  that is exactly what I thought I was supposed to be doing.  During that time after many hours of contemplating my navel I did twice achieve such a state. In one of them I experienced a sort of "out of the body experience" where my spirit seemed to float up toward the ceiling and look down on me below.  In the other while meditating on the word Yahweh, I had an instantaneous awareness, an implosion of consciousness,  of "Yah/Weh" as "You/We" that transformed the way I thought about God and me. Really God and all of us.  The gist of it was hat just like I can't be me without God, God can't be God without me. How can He be Savior and redeemer without humans to save and redeem? Just like a king can't be a king without a kingdom. God (or whoever) would still be floating around in the void. But those two transcendental states were hardly worth the time, pain, sleep deprivation and loneliness  I endured to achieve them.

Over the years I have read a multitude of books and watched a multitude of videos on meditation and mindfulness.  I thoroughly enjoy reading about it all. I understand that mindfulness does not have to include any sort of spiritual significance. I understand that Zen practice and mindfulness is not a religion.  They can be a religion, but they don't have to be. I understand that meditation at its core primarily involves first my breathing and secondarily my thinking. I totally understand the importance of meditation.  Something that got my attention recently is that science is learning that mindfulness meditation can actually shrink the amygdala, the fear center of our brain. That is a significant benefit.

I recently read Dan Harris' book 10% Happier and I have employed some of his mindfulness techniques into my daily regimen. It was after reading that book and including five minutes of mindfulness meditation in my day that I discovered and affirmed my very own technique of  what I call "coffee meditation."

"Coffee meditation" includes various aspects of "classic meditation" with some radical departures. These differences are so profound that I'm quite sure most people who meditate daily will discount my techniques as worthless. And yet  it's working  for me.

I have spent many "blissful hours" (a relative term) in the corner of my den where I'm sitting.  This is where I read, where I write, where I surf the net, sometimes where I sleep. Here I also listen to music on Spotify and YouTube and watch movies on Netflix and DVDs.  If our home is where we both stay, this corner is where I live. And it's  now where I meditate from time to time. Besides what I can look around and see inside the room, I'm looking through a sliding glass door to the outside world, well the outside world in my immediate field of vision.  But I can see very much  in that field of vision without changing positions. I primarily see trees.  Over the past several weeks, the leaves have turned from green to the all the colors of the spectrum and now have mostly fallen off. So I can now see what they've been hiding from me all this time. In the trees there are birds and squirrels flitting around.  I can see the semi-circle of bricks that used to surround a large tree. We had that tree cut down years ago.  Besides what I see there are the things I remember, like the groundhog who made a home in that semi-circle. My three year old granddaughter misunderstood this animal's name and called it "the grandfather" for several years. I smile every time I think about my granddaughter and her "grandfather."

If "classic meditation" involves sitting so that I'm  physically uncomfortable or at least have become comfortable with discomfort, "coffee meditation" is the opposite. I go upstairs, brew a cup of steaming hot coffee, bring it to my chair and assume the position for meditation.  Jon Kabat Zinn says that you should "sit in a way that honors the body."  I sit like I always sit and I turn and prop up my feet on the arm of the sofa beside me (the place I sometimes sleep). I don't think Zinn would approve of my Zen. To make myself even more comfortable, I put a pillow under my feet so as to not cut off the circulation in my legs. Now in this position I meditate. I'm in a "blissful state" from the beginning.

What happens now changes every time I meditate.  But my unconventional, if not slightly disrespectful, style of meditation employs various aspects of "classic mediation."  I'm aware of my breathing.  I don't count my breaths or breath in through my nose and out through my mouth.  I'm just aware that I'm breathing and I celebrate that fact.  I'm aware of my thinking.  In "classic meditation" one conquers the "monkey brain" in with any number of techniques.  In "coffee meditation" I just let my thinking do whatever it chooses to do.  I neither encourage my "monkey brain" nor try to tame it. I just think like I always think. Employing "classic meditation" I don't attach myself to any thought. I just let it go. But this thinking includes the added benefit of enjoying what I'm looking at through the glass door. When I see a bird, I acknowledge it without building a story around it.  It's a bird. "Hello little bird. Goodbye little bird."

One of the most important things about "coffee meditation" is I do this as much or as little as I choose to.  Sometimes I meditate several times a day, sometimes once a day and often no times a day. When I meditate, sometimes it's for ninety seconds and sometimes it's for thirty or forty minutes. It's whatever I feel like doing.  In my several months of "coffee meditation" I don't have to achieve a transcendental state because I'm in a transcendental state. My mantra to maintain that state is "get more coffee. get more coffee. get more coffee..."

Since I include the writing I do here as  meditation, I log  many more hours to the practice.  This morning besides the usual enjoyment I find in writing, it's raining.  There is a gentle downpour that I hear in the downspouts and as it hits the pavement. I could stop what I'm doing, get a cup of coffee, throw my feet on the arm of the sofa and "meditate", but I'm already meditating.  I'm quite content.

"Mindfulness meditation" in the West has evolved with as many rules and restrictions as "classic meditation" in the East. I'm quite sure that I do not practice "mindfulness" much better than I practice "meditation."  But one thing is happening to me that I think is important. I'm more aware of what's around me.  In conversation I'm more aware of the person standing there and what they are saying to me. I'm not in a hurry as much to conclude that encounter to get to the next one.  I'm more patient in traffic. Where I'm headed is much less important than where I am. I'm slowly overcoming my slavish obsession with "being on time." Whatever it is that I think needs me can happen without me or not  at all. The earth will keep spinning on its axis either way.  I'm more mindful while I'm eating. I'm more mindful when I pull up the covers to go to sleep. I'm more mindful of everything. And isn't that the point? I must be doing something right.

I don't pretend to believe that "coffee meditation" is as beneficial to me as "classic meditation" is for millions of people around the world willing to put in the time and effort of getting good at it.  I applaud their effort. What I do pretend to believe is what Dan Harris proposes  that meditating five minutes a day is much better than none it all.  And what a multitude of benefits one can glean from that practice. So I have turned what worked for him, and became a national best-seller, into something that's working for me.  I don't expect this post to become a national best-seller, but hopefully it might help at least a few find benefit in mindfulness.

A final benefit of "coffee meditation" is that beer works as well or better.