Situated Meditation

Americans have no legitimate context for meditation, Zen, or Buddhism. In fact, meditation seems to fly in the face of many American values and traditions. We value endless hard work, strength, and action. John Wayne never meditated in between shootouts with bad guys. And as far as the religious aspect goes, Buddhism still hasn’t made much of a dent in the U.S. population. But to be fair, even countries where there is a cultural and communal context to meditation, like Japan, have had decreased participation in Zen and Buddhism. It appears that modern culture is somewhat antithetical to meditation.

I explain all of this to help explain why it might be difficult for many to learn to meditate and keep the habit going, which is really a critical part of learning to meditate—self-discipline. So when reading about situated learning, I thought of how difficult it is to learn something, like meditation, out of the situated places that created the practice (i.e., Eastern cultures with long histories and practitioners). I was raised LDS and grew up in Utah, where the majority of the population (save certain areas of Salt Lake City) is Mormon. Growing up there was a vast array of supporting learning about the religion, including traditions, beliefs, rules, language, and on and on. Every aspect of the small town I grew up in contained within it some form of support or reinforcement: our neighbors, the churches, our church leaders, the way our parents interacted, the activities we were expected to do every Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night. I’m sure I could go on forever. Being in that situated learning experience, it would be nearly impossible to not learn a great deal about the LDS faith. Even my non-LDS friends new a great deal about the beliefs, culture, and traditions of Mormons.

I’ve been thinking about this while I struggle to force myself to sit for 25-30 minutes every morning to meditate. Because I used do much more as member of the LDS religion than I’m required to do to meditate, and it never felt this difficult. I guess part of the problem is not having a community of support or example. When I used to wake up to go to church on Sunday morning, I didn’t complain because it was just the thing that we did—it was expected of me. And while I do have my weekly meditation class, I don’t feel the same expectations being placed on me, and I start to feel like I’m the only person in the world really doing this wacky stuff. I really believe that I would have an easier time meditating, if I saw other people meditating in the front yards on my way to work. Or if people at school talked about their meditation sessions, like they talk about church meetings and celebrations. I feel like we’re wired to learn this way, but when you attempt to learn something so unsituated to your culture, you run into challenges.

So, as a quick update, I will say that I’ve been able to sit longer, but I still have challenging meditation sessions. With both school and work coming to a fevered pitch in the last week, I’ve been pretty distracted, and it crosses over into my meditation. It’s funny, in a way, because when you most need the relaxation and release of meditation, it’s the most difficult time to do it. Quite honestly, I have learned quite a bit about Zen and Self-Hypnosis, but in the end, this learning project is really about gaining self-discipline and delayed gratification, which I’ve always struggled with. But what I’m beginning to understand is that habits are learned. You don’t flip a habit on or off like a light switch. You work hard and build on your previous skills to obtain a higher competency and a clearer awareness of your self. So I still feel like I’ve been learning, although I’m not regurgitating a laundry list of facts.  In fact, I think learning a new habit is really difficult, up there with learning a new language.