Meditative Conversation

In our encounter together, we meet with friendly and polite gestures. I shake your hand and we smile. We are former colleagues in the same class. And I don’t know what will happen, how the conversation will go or what we will learn. I am even venturing to say that, like all conversations, this one will be full of spontaneity, as we start to explore the future after school and after all the courses have finished. This mysterious encounter has no beginning, middle or end. It might pick up again where we leave off, or it might go to some other future. It has no specific speaker. Its journey is part of a greater journey. But we always come back to the rhythm of speech, the patterns of speaking and listening, the sight of the shared table space in front of us. The words we speak become the solid utensils, the grounds upon which further communication can be based. I pick up the word, then put it down when I am done.

When is conversation a meditative practice, and when it is not meditative at all? Some might take issue with this question, seeing that formal meditation practice does not use words or discursive thinking to mobilize itself.  Is this to say, then, that mediation and speech are mutually exclusive social practices? I would have to suggest that they are not mutually exclusive at all. But in order to prevent the term ‘meditative’ from becoming a meaningless rhetorical word, I would need to explore the question of when we can take this activity to be meditative at all. And there are related questions: should it turn out to actually exist, does meditative conversation demand that all the conversation participants be deep in meditation? Does it demand a consensual decision to practice being aware in a certain way? Does the effort to mutually converse meditatively preclude or disqualify certain states of mind, or so-called ‘unmindful’ dialogue and speech? I think that maybe the concept goes a bit deeper than this, because most meditative experiences throw into question whether there are separate selves in the first place.

Most of the time, bodies lean a little bit forward in orientation, seeking one thing and avoiding others. I have oftentimes experienced the body a little bit tight, as though primed to defend itself from unseen dangers. When the body is chronically held in this way, what happens? What takes shape then?  The body in repose is something quite different. It surrenders, it falls into its state of being forever tentative, and it takes its time. A body that surrenders to its chair reflects a mind that is open to “just listening”, or just attending to the whole situation and others in that situation. It does not categorize the experience in terms of an already existing criterion. But the other point is that in conversation, the meditative stance is not even to hold onto this notion of a body in silent repose. It somehow manages to surrender so much of its own pretensions to be meditative, that the conversation becomes uncannily ordinary. By that, I mean that the conversation becomes ordinary to the point where there is a touch of strangeness to the ordinary, in a world where ordinary always strives to be extraordinary or to transcend its own perceived ‘limits’. The body and mind are then free to move in ways that are plain and simple, unaffected, and unafraid of mistakes or even failed expectations. It comes the point where even expectations lose their sting, because they are popping up like the wandering thoughts that they are, only to dissolve into the present experience. I observe the whole dynamic, using an internal anchor: the thoughts popping up and then dissolving again. And it occurs to me that all these loose threads and wild chases, all these playful writings in the sky, are wonderful, and building a shared rapport. They serve the function of mind in that moment, then lead to whatever they need to lead, or not.

We say goodbyes, we leave, we surrender the meeting. We promise to catch up in some later time. And we part into the dark and cool August night.