I enjoy Koshin Paley Ellison’s Buddhist-infused Substack. He is a Zen student, teacher, and Jungian psychotherapist. I was moved by his recent post on how to wake up when meditation practice feels dull and uninspiring. He writes, “It is easy to slip into the question, ‘What is this doing for me?’ It is a very human question. We want to know whether our effort is producing something.”
That resonated with me. It’s the same feeling that plagued me as a youngster, sitting in a rowboat on Jenness Pond waiting for what seemed like an eternity for a fish to bite. Ellison says that’s the place where we get caught.
What I think he is really talking about is not just how to practice meditation, but how we should live our lives. “The practice is not here to entertain us or to constantly provide some special experience. It is not about chasing after a feeling of inspiration. It is about discovering the extraordinary nature of what is already here.”
We do this, he writes, by listening to our breath, feeling our bodies, and hearing the sounds around us, fully alive in this moment.
It was and is difficult for me to feel alive like that — sitting in a boat, line dangling in the water, a worm impaled on the hook — waiting to see if a passing fish might take pity on me.
Maybe the fish will bite, maybe she won’t. Just sitting around, waiting for something to happen: that’s how most of us spend our lives. We become so focused on catching that damn fish that we lose sight of what’s happening inside our bodies and minds — as well as what’s happening around us.
Unfortunately, that’s how most people meditate, according to Ellison: “We can become so focused on accomplishing something meaningful that we stop noticing what’s happening right in front of us.”
That’s the trouble with bait fishing. It’s hard to stay focused while passively waiting, hoping a fish might happen by. Fly fishing is different because it’s active. I call it meditation in action because it does make me feel alive in the moment.
First, you need the skill and coordination to cast your fly to the exact spot where you think a trout might be lurking, because it will not move from its sweet spot to accommodate you. And it won’t be tantalized unless the dry fly you present impersonates the insect hatching that day.
Last, you have to be absolutely in the moment, able to yank back on the rod and set the hook the instant the trout strikes. Otherwise, the trout will spit out your offering in disgust.
If everything goes right, you reel in your trout, pat him on his back and release him back into the wild.
That’s how you know it’s been a good day.
Jean Stimmell, retired stone mason and psychotherapist, lives in Northwood and blogs at jstim.substack.com.