Drive the Speed Limit
Reflecting on the Second Noble Truth and Walking Meditation
We were doing walking meditation. There were about a hundred of us, walking in a big circle around the edges of the meditation room, in socks or barefoot, on a hardwood floor with zafus and zabutons in a half circle in the middle, facing the altar and a Buddha.
A Saturday afternoon, early February, sun low in the sky, dust motes floating in the warm air, the 3rd floor of an elegant house in Cambridge, MA.
Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be.
The teacher led us. But in a big circle it soon becomes clear that there is no leading or following, just circling. She had her hands folded loosely at her sternum, her eyes down-ward facing, a white, gauzy shawl around her shoulders, sleepy. She took slow steps: heel to toe, one step, one breath. It was never shuffling, nor was it giant steps: just regular steps, a little shorter than usual, but with the focus on the right heel landing and the foot curling onto the floor as the left heel lifts and begins its path to land ahead of the right: lifting and placing, one at a time.
“You need to sit A LOT,” she said to me once. Her practice, first thing in the morning, before anything else, was to go straight to her cushion and sit.
The challenge was to try to keep the same distance ahead of you as behind you, and there was always someone who was just the slightest bit too slow, and a big gap would slowly appear ahead of that person, and the teacher might comment that we weren’t meant to be slow zombies, but deliberate, mindful walkers, and to speed up a little.
That afternoon, my hands carefully folded on my belly, lifting and placing each foot, I watched the person in front of me step and step and step. I watched the back of his neck, his elbows, his hair. I noticed I was getting closer to him. Soon I would literally be breathing on his neck.
I wanted him to move more quickly. Why in God’s name was he going so slowly?
A hot urge burst up inside me to grab a meditation cushion and whack him over the head. Move! I wanted to shout: fucking move your goddamn ass a little faster! I could take a zabuton – the big, square cushions on which you place your zafu – and really smack him.
I looked around the room. It was absurd. We were all going nowhere. There was literally nowhere to go. Yet I wanted this person to go more quickly.
Rather, I wanted to go more quickly. But where? And why?
It was ridiculous. I had signed up for slow moving, for a weekend of doing nothing except mindful practice: sitting and walking meditation, mindful eating, mindful chores, and mindful listening of dharma talks, with no talking all day.
Slowly I relaxed my body. It is barely acknowledged, but meditation is a somatic thing, a body practice. I began to breathe more steadily, to notice my heart rate decreasing. I slowed my steps. The practice became to focus on my own pace, and to develop a kind of radar to enable my pace to match the paces of the persons immediately ahead of me and behind me.
The practice is larger than that, too: it is a practice of noticing what I wanted that I could not have. I wanted speed! I wanted this person ahead of me to speed up so that I could speed up! I wanted to run around that room! (Maybe, in fact, I could have left the room and run around the block a couple of times to burn off whatever was kindling inside me. That would have been a mindful practice too. Sometimes sitting meditation is not what is needed.)
When I want something that I cannot have, that’s suffering: that’s the second noble truth that the Buddha outlined, the truth that we suffer when we rebel against the things that are not going the way we want.
The key is to notice this activity of the mind and body, and to act accordingly. Smacking the person ahead of me with a cushion would not have been a mindful or appropriate action, nor would it have been ethical. (Duh!)
So much can be wrapped up in noticing what is going on during meditation, and then just enjoying it.
If only drivers in France practiced their slow driving as I was practicing my mindful walking!
Drivers in this region tailgate, habitually. I might be tooling along at the speed limit, on a two- lane road, and a driver will come careening up and hang behind me, barely a car-length away. They are waiting for a chance to pass, which might be a few minutes, occasionally swerving left to get a peek ahead of me, then falling back.
Inside me, anxiety builds. Why doesn’t that driver slow down? Why won’t they back off a safe distance? What if I have to brake for something and they slam into me? What if they try to pass on a curve (not uncommon) and don’t see the car in the opposing lane?
What if? What if? If I can pull over and give the driver room to pass, I do.
It’s kind of the same thing as wanting the person ahead of me to walk more quickly. Except here, I am wanting this other driver to slow down, which they are unlikely to do. The only real recourse – to reduce my own suffering – is to pull over, and, when that is not possible, to just focus on the road ahead of me and remember that the driver behind me is not really my problem.
I had a friend who liked to practice his slow driving. It’s a wonderful thing, to reduce one’s speed. Why are we rushing around? We have more time than we believe. Slowing down, I see the dust motes, the light on the underside of leaves outside the window.
Don’t forget to practice smiling. Your half-smile will bring calm and delight to your steps and your breath, and help sustain your attention. After practicing for half an hour or an hour, you will find that your breath, your steps, your counting, and your half-smile all blend together in a marvelous balance of mindfulness. Each step grounds us in the solidity of the earth. With each step we fully arrive in the present moment. -Thich Nhat Hanh