In the Buddhist tradition of training the mind with lojong slogans we say, ‘In post-meditation, be a child of illusion’. It means that when you go back to moving around the world after you’ve been siting in meditation, you allow yourself to continue to experience things free from your habitual ways of sorting them into the categories of good/bad, easy/hard and desirable/repulsive.
My moment of post-meditation did not last very long.
In fact, rather amusingly, I seemed to slip straight back into my habitual patterns as soon as I left the meditation centre. I started worrying about all the marking I needed to do, the teaching prep, the reference letters and other myriad things. I went straight to thinking about how I ‘had’ to get these things done, because other people need them from me, before doing any of my own writing. In short, I started worrying about the person that I must be in the world in order for the world to be acceptable to me. As I’ve noted before, it always seems like something else necessarily comes before the writing, and post-meditation that feeling was no different.
I recognize, though, that I am working with my mind somewhat more clearly, since rather than feeling totally disheartened about it, I notice that I saw myself doing it and thought it was quite funny. So tomorrow, I will wake up, meditate and try again.
