Three Aspects of Sitting

Meditation practice can be divided into three parts. These three are not really separate and distinct; they are a continuum. For purposes of description, however, we will look at these three aspects of sitting as if they were separate entities.
So this first aspect of sitting—being-in-the-body—simple as it sounds, is actually very difficult. Why? Because we don’t want to be here. A strong part of us prefers the self-centered dream of plans and fantasies. That’s what makes this practice so difficult: the constant, unromantic, nonexotic struggle just to be here. As we sit in wide-open awareness, however, as the body/mind gradually settles down, we can begin to enter the silence, in which passing thoughts no longer hook us. We enter the silence not by trying to enter, but through the constant soft effort to be present, allowing life to just be.
We come to see that these emotional reactions—which we often fear and prefer to avoid—amount to little more than believed thoughts and strong or unpleasant physical sensations. We can see that when we are willing to experience them with precision and curiosity, we no longer have to fear them or push them away. Thus our belief systems become clarified.
Our efforts to be in the body, and to label and experience, will inevitably “fail” at times. We will have periods of aspiration and effort, followed by dry spells and apathy. Ups and downs in practice are predictable and inevitable. That we seize these ups and downs as opportunities to judge ourselves as failures or as superstars is the problem. The countermeasure is always to simply persevere—to attend to one more breath, to label one more thought, to experience one more sensation, to enter just one more time into the heartspace. We can then experience for ourselves that it is ultimately possible to work with everything. It may not be possible today, but it is possible. In fact, it may take years of work in all three aspects of sitting practice for this understanding to become real to us.