For several years I have been meditating daily. Briefly. Just for five or ten minutes, but regularly. I have a friend who meditates for hours, attending meditation events and meditation retreats. I feel like a grasshopper next to meditation giants like her and her fellow meditation experts. Sam Harris and Yuval Noah Harari are two authors I read who are deeply into meditation.
Listening to a description of a meditation retreat, I realized that my practice is very firmly rooted in the most meditative experience I had prior to actual practice: firing on an Army rifle range. To hit a pop-up target just a foot tall and two feet wide at 50 to 300 meters requires control of body and breathe. Forty shots in less than ten minutes requires that breathe and body stay fully under control as the targets pop and drop.
During the moment of aiming, exhaling and firing, I do not remember random thoughts popping into my mind, the moment is too intense. But lying in the dirt waiting to fire during the summer months, many ranges have gnats and flies flitting around the firing positions. Those gnats are like the random thoughts I have during meditation. I wave them away then ignore them.
Meditation has become such a part of American culture, that people talk about meditation at lunches, dinners, barbecues, just about anywhere. Just as mentioning motorcycles will lead someone to an accident story (fatal or maiming), mentioning meditation will lead someone to say they can't, often in considerable detail. I thought the same. Then I didn't.
I can say definitively as a motorcyclist who survived a bad crash (not maimed, but two weeks in the hospital being reassembled) that meditation is much safer!!
Anyone who can fire a weapon and hit a target can meditate, the focus and breathe control are ready for use.
