Starting Out the Weekend

   My meditation group had recently switched from Sunday mornings to Saturday mornings. In the beginning, I felt a bit apprehensive about the change, thinking that many would not be able to adjust to the new change in the schedule. When I checked in with the group meditation members today, however, I found that many benefitted from starting out their weekend with meditation. One of the group members, for example, shared how it can be helpful to frame one's weekend chores as a kind of meditation practice, especially in contrast to treating chores as merely something to get done.
   In fact, I would agree that meditation can give otherwise menial chores a kind of meaning. The reality is that simply being present to anything without desiring something else can make that very same thing meaningful. It takes away from the consumerist mentality that what we have is not enough, and we somehow need to acquire more in order to feel better about themselves.
     Still another participant had shared a different side of this: sometimes group meditation practice can be a kind of place that is especially away from the pressures of daily life, which is what makes it refreshing and different. This view seems to be quite different from the idea that meditation necessarily should or must attend to each moment.  I believe that both views are equally valid. While one contends that we can treat all situations as extensions of sitting meditation, the other view stresses and emphasizes that meditation itself is a special activity that has its own special place and meaning. It is not somehow mired by the stresses of daily life.
   Meditation can be considered both as a rest and as a way of reframing one's stressful life. As another participant had shared: the difference between 'relaxation' and meditation is that meditation allows one to rest in even the most unpleasant situation, while relaxation always favours the pleasant. I mention this because I strongly believe that meditation can prepare people for deep losses that they will inevitably experience in life. By attending to the unpleasant sensations of leg pain (or even boredom) in sitting practice, one is preparing for the much more difficult losses that happen outside the cushion.