What would meditation bring you?featured

Do you ever wonder what meditation might bring you?

A friend recently asked me by text about that. She asked, specifically, what I got from a week-long meditation retreat I just sat at the Diamond Hill Monastery, which is part of the Kwan Um School of Zen‘s Providence Zen Center. This photo shows the view from my cushion.

The view from my cushion at a recent meditation retreat.

To my friend, about what I got from the retreat, I wrote:

The ice on the pond got thick with snow and then melted and then froze again.
The snow slid off the eves of the roof and hit the ground with a loud thud.
A hawk flew circles over the main building.
The older man sitting next to me laughed at his own incapacity.
The head dharma teacher fell asleep many times.
The pine tree in front of me swayed in the wind.

Also, when I was meditating, I had a vision of being on my death bed and looking up at my daughter Bella’s then 50-year-old face with it’s wrinkles and her having her hand on my cheek and not being scared but my heart breaking to have to leave her.

These things may or may not be things you would want from mediation. But they mean a lot to me. To really see, to really hear, to really smell, to really feel, to really touch, to really think.

What might meditation bring you?

I don’t know. It is for you to find out. And if you want to, I thought that today I would offer this link to some meditation instruction. And if you ever want more personal instruction, you are always welcome to email me.