The Art of Meditation

The child sat at the desk, tapping a pen on a math problem, face scrunched up. Thoughts kept running off in every direction. There was the soccer game this afternoon, the cat, the cake in the fridge. The numbers on the page just lay there and would not go in.

Dad pulled up a chair and sat down alongside. He said nothing about the math. He only said, gently, "Take a breath."

The child looked up, puzzled. "Breathe, Dad? I'm already breathing."

Dad smiled. "You're breathing, but you aren't noticing it. Now let's breathe and know that we're breathing. Breathe in, and count one. Breathe out, and count two. Just go up to three."

The child tried. Breathe in, one. Breathe out, two. Breathe in, three. How strange. By the third breath, the room seemed to grow a little quieter. The electric fan and the traffic in the street suddenly sounded clearer, and softer too. The busy, racing head stopped for a beat.

"What is this called, Dad?"

"This is called thiền," Dad said. "Its full name is thiền định, and in English we say meditation. Many people think meditating means making the head go blank, or sitting until sleep comes. That's not it at all. Meditation is being fully present with what is right here. Just now you breathed and knew you were breathing. So you just meditated a little."

The child's eyes went wide. "Is it really that easy, Dad?"

"At the start, it really is that easy. And here's something else. There was once a man who sat and breathed just the way you did, and he became the Buddha."

The child put the pen down and turned all the way around. Dad told the story.

Long ago, before he became the Buddha, a man set out to find a way free from the suffering of human life. He went from one teacher to the next and still found no answer. At last he came to sit beneath a tree, the one later called the Bodhi tree. He sat with his back straight, and he began to breathe, just as the father and child had done a moment ago. It is said that he sat that way for 49 days and nights.

"49 whole days, Dad? Three breaths already felt long to me."

Dad nodded. "Yes. But he didn't grow sleepy, and his mind didn't go blank. His mind kept settling, little by little. At first it was still stirred up, then calmer, then calmer and deeper still. Buddhists call these four stages of growing stillness the four jhanas, the four levels of meditation. With each level, his heart grew one step clearer."

"Clear like water, Dad?"

"That's right. It's like stirring a glass of muddy water. Leave it alone for a while and the sand sinks to the bottom. The water turns clear, right down to the bottom of the glass. The mind is the same. When the mind is truly settled and clear, understanding appears on its own. That night, sitting in the deepest quiet, he suddenly understood why people suffer and how suffering can end. Buddhists call this enlightenment. From then on, he was the Buddha."

The child thought it over. "So meditation means sitting until the heart turns clear, so understanding can come, Dad?"

"Short and right on the mark," Dad said, ruffling the child's hair. "The teachers of old wrapped the whole path of practice into three words: virtue, concentration and wisdom. Virtue is living honestly and kindly. Concentration is meditation itself, training the mind to settle and be still. Wisdom is understanding, a light that shines inside. And that understanding grows out of a still mind, the way a tree grows out of good soil. So meditation is no faraway mystery. It is the ground that lets the heart grow bright."

Dad went on. Buddhist tradition tells that more than a thousand years after the Buddha, a teacher named Bodhidharma crossed the sea to the East. He brought that way of meditation with him. It spread little by little until it reached Vietnam, where it became the Thiền school of Vietnamese pagodas. Thiền is the Vietnamese name for Zen, a school of Buddhism that puts meditation at its heart. For generations, in many pagodas across the country, monks have sat in meditation before daybreak. The bell, the breath and the quiet of early morning, every single day.

"So meditation is only for the monks in the pagodas, Dad?"

"Not at all. This is the best part." Dad lowered his voice, as if he were about to share a secret. "There was a Zen master from our own country, Thích Nhất Hạnh, who taught the whole world something very simple. He said that washing the dishes is meditation, walking is meditation, and drinking a cup of tea is meditation."

The child burst out laughing. "Washing dishes can be meditation, Dad? Washing dishes is the thing I hate most."

"Of course it can. The secret is to be truly there with the bowl while washing it. Feel the coolness of the water. Listen to it running. Keep your attention on your hands as they wash, and don't let your mind run off somewhere else. He said to drink a cup of tea slowly, as if that cup were the axis the whole Earth turns on. So washing dishes, walking, drinking tea, anything at all can become meditation, as long as you are truly there."

"So I don't need to sit cross-legged in a pagoda."

"You don't. You only need to know how to breathe. Anyone who can breathe can meditate. Meditation is a gift for anyone in this world who is still breathing."

The room was still quiet. The math problem still lay there on the page, with the same numbers, not changed one bit.

Dad stood up and patted the child gently on the shoulder. "Take three more breaths, then keep going, okay?"

Breathe in, one. Breathe out, two. Breathe in, three. Then the child picked up the pen again. The math problem was exactly as it had been. But the head that had been racing everywhere a moment ago was now standing still, clear as a glass of water that has settled. The child bent over the page, and this time the numbers went in.