The Fridge Haiku
What to do when you draw a blank.
One of my favourite tropes in Zen and Buddhist philosophy
is the one in which an eager student is handed an utterly mystifying, completely opaque, but oddly specific instruction by their teacher.
The confused but determined student must now sit with this koan
or instruction, turning it around in her head, until she finally sees
what the teacher was waiting for her to realise: that the answer is
not to be found in reason, but another way of seeing.
As a plot device, the koan is a riddle intended to exhaust
the student’s intellect and ego, and her hurry to be enlightened.
By design, it is the starting point at which the student begins to see
language, instruction and metaphor — or world-building — as mere device.
It is, to use another metaphor, what wipes the slate clean.
Koans and clean slates are hard to come by IRL. I first began to meditate
as a twenty-something training to become a yoga teacher. I found it easy
to meditate at the end of sessions, tired muscles made it easier to relax
my brain. Some years later, I tried to meditate while in a vortex of suicidal depression and it no longer felt like sinking into a warm bath. Instead of contemplating a soothing emptiness, I was suddenly confronted by all
of my emotions: spirals of anger, canyons of grief, and yes, tears. Trying
to calm my mind was like wrestling with a tin sheet in a storm.
Here’s the thing. You cannot meditate yourself out of a crisis. And since
we are stuck in what feels like an endless state of personal, political, global, planetary crisis, meditation, i.e, literally sitting down and doing nothing,
can feel counter-intuitive and self-indulgent. Every major religion recommends some form of meditation or sitting silently with your
thoughts, which is only an endorsement if you’re on good terms with
religion in general at the time. Scientists have discovered several
(frankly pretty miraculous) benefits of meditating, which in turn have
formed the basis for a booming and hypocritical mindfulness industry,
where corporations offer meditation rooms but take away fair wages,
and influencers keep telling you how to heal your inner child.
To state the obvious, meditation is not a replacement for therapy
or medication. It will also not fix social inequity, war-hungry politicians
or the climate crisis. Despite all its benefits for the human brain and body, meditation can ultimately only be useful for people who are physically safe, and who have access to food, community, housing, and medical care —
a few overlooked components of wellness. And yet, human beings have
been meditating since forever, or at least 5,000 to 3,500 BCE — when early seals from the Indus Valley depict figures sitting in meditative poses:
cross-legged, hands resting on knees, eyes half-open.
People who choose to meditate aren’t usually in the throes of an actual crisis, but meditation does make people better at handling crises when they arise. By turning down the volume on the incessant chatter of our minds, it also does something that is difficult to describe or evaluate, it softens us to the possibility that we might be something other than just the things that happen to us, our inner monologue and outer meat shell.
What is that something?
For now, I offer you the koan of the refrigerator. When I open the fridge,
my mind draws a blank. It is not the peaceful blank of a clear sky. It is the confusion of someone confronting clutter, who has no plan, a growing
hunger and a vague idea of things I’ve eaten in the past that I liked.
“What did I come here for again?” I think to myself. “What am I even
looking at? There’s nothing here.”
The zen chef Edward Espe Brown suggests that it might be a good idea
to say instead:
"What do we have here?”
“What do we have here?” is a friendly way to assess the assortment
of ingredients/feelings/thoughts that your mind/eye is confronted with.
None of them are good or bad in themselves, although some might
be past their expiry date.
This gentle assessment is also a way to become aware of what’s
happening as you assess the clutter inside your refrigerator/mind.
You will find that there are three distinct things:
The self that is aware.
Awareness of the clutter.
The clutter itself.
This right here is a good place to begin or to stop.
“What do we have here?” can be a good way to decide what you want to make for dinner, or to realise that you have some big feelings to work through right now.
It is a clean slate to do with as you please.
…
Things that made this week yummy:
Delicious: The Financial Times has just launched a four part investigative podcast on “the perils of meditation” which follow a series of mysterious events that began at a vipassana center.
Exotic: The Beatles are said to have discovered Transcendental Meditation as a way to handle their newfound fame. Although the fantastic Peter Jackson documentary Get Back suggests they didn’t
all have a great time in India, their trip fuelled the American media
and corporate obsession with TM and eastern exoticism. Loved this
OG Time Magazine story and spread on transcendental meditation,
“the drugless high”.Surprising: Following his successful performance with Usher at the SuperBowl, Lil’ Jon has dropped a whole guided meditation album on YouTube. I don’t know what to say apart from the fact that we love a genre pivot, and I agree with Lil’ Jon when he says that a DJ can ruin the entire vibe of a party, so as a DJ you’ve got to meditate.
Soothing: Our phones are designed to keep us un-mindful. They’re filled with personal drama and news of death interspersed with advertisements. They’re bad for the environment and our brains, and they are also constanly shilling mindfulness and meditation apps. It’s annoying as heck, and yet, I have two favourite head-clearing apps:
Ten Percent Happier has excellent guided meditations and interviews with real meditation teachers in case you’d like to learn more about the purpose and benefits of meditation.My current favourite is Triple Flame, which sends scheduled reminders to pause for three minutes every three hours, between 9 am and 9 pm. It sounds extreme, but I find this rhythm more helpful than scheduling one long, designated meditation session (that I may not be able to make time for). It helps me transition through the phases of my day/work, and a cute added feature is that the app displays the number of people pausing across the world at any given moment. Triple Flame has the option to choose between silence, music and guided sessions (I like music best).