Meditating in a Train

On a sunny morning, I sat near the end of a train to Philadelphia and meditated.  I was sitting on the north side of the train looking across the aisle through the south window.  Eastern Lancaster County farm country spread out in my field of vision framed by the horizontal window and the tall seat backs on the opposite side of the train car.  

In the guided meditation we were told to see life as a river flowing past.  From my framed perspective a very green world flowed past. Sometimes that world was nearly still, as when a field of young corn spread far out from the window with a red barn and white farmhouse a half-mile away at the far end of the field. 

A moment later the train passed between two embankments.  The trees and shrubs near the track were a multi-hued blur of many greens and browns and yellows.  Then the train passed over a bridge and the view was of the tops of trees in the creek valley below.

The view I saw, like a river, was in one way almost eternal.  The passengers on the first trains to Philadelphia from Lancaster more than a century ago saw trees and farm fields and barns and horses and fences spreading on either side of the train. 

And yet, those farmers and horses passed away generations ago. The trees along the tracks and at the edge of the farm fields are different trees than those lining the tracks in the 19th Century.  As with a river, things that appear the same are very different just under the surface.  Since 1994, I have made the trip to and from Philadelphia thousands of times.  Most of that time I would have thought nothing changed along those tracks.  But both the landscape and I have changed over those 30 years. 

As I write, 25,970 days of my life are behind me. The river of life keeps flowing in my life and in the world outside the window. The world changes, I change. My senses only connect with the world and my own physical life in the current moment. All the rest is memory and anticipation.  

I know life can change radically in a moment, and yet as long as I am alive, there will be a continuity, like a river, flowing.  

 

On Target Meditation

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.