The Found, the Felt and the Known
Sitting with EBS
SBF here, flying in from SFO via LHR to share a bit of fiction I wrote about MPX and other ACNs almost two years ago …
It was a Friday evening and EBS and I were sitting beside each other in silence at a group meditation gathering. I had arrived 10 minutes late to the sit because I’d been waiting for him to come to my place; the plan was to walk there together, as we usually did. However EBS had texted at 7.10pm:
Not coming to yours. See you at the church.
I was somewhat miffed since he had told me earlier that day he’d be at mine 30 minutes before, and it was pretty short notice to switch up the plans.
OK, whatever, get a move on, I told myself.
I rushed to get myself out the door and to the church where the sit happened, once a month, on the first Friday.
As I walked there, thoughts intruded. Hmm, that was the second time that day he’d canceled our plans. In the afternoon we were meant to go climbing but a morning text in his usual concise style informed me he couldn’t make it after all:
Can’t climb today. Stuff to do.
“OK,” I texted back, mirroring the brevity and trying not to feel disappointed about missing climbing that day. I turned to my too long to-do list, telling myself it was actually a good thing because now I could cross off a couple of tasks that I hadn’t been able to get to yesterday.
This was not like him, he was usually so considerate. What was up with this new casual last-minute cancellation thing of his? Is this what I should expect from now on?
My rational and kinder self knew these were neither fun nor charitable thoughts to entertain. I reminded myself that I didn’t know everything. What a liberating concept that is. To not know everything… to stay open and remain curious. The thought freed me instantly. Remembering that particular universal truth always does for me, and so, instead of going down a path of paranoia or annoyance, I decided to listen to the live stream of the dharma talk that preceded the sit. Walking fast now, I put my headphones on to tune in. It was pretty great that I could listen to the talk as I was walking to the place where I would hear the rest of it live. Teach was saying:
See if you can sit here, feet on the ground. See if you can connect with that felt sense of sitting here, into this body. Ask yourself: What is found? What is felt? What is known?
If my higher self was keeping score — even though higher selves never keep score — it suddenly felt vindicated by the last question.
“What is known… exactly right, Missus!” it said to itself, via me.
I liked the bloke who spoke, the guy who made us try, this man who made us scan. He was audibly from New York, maybe in his early 60s. His was a down-to-earth manner but still I was always surprised to find myself suddenly chuckling. I never saw his jokes coming, it was a kind of subtle unexpected humour, the type which made you laugh 7.3 milliseconds after the words have sunk in. I like it when people make me laugh but what I liked the most about him was that he clearly understood the complexity of being human. Frequently his reflections resonated with my own scientific experiments on myself.
After 12 minutes of walking, I approached the church entrance. As I went to silence my 'phone and wind up my headphones, I saw that another text had arrived five minutes before.
Flat tire. Had to go back home. At the church now, sitting in usual place.
Ah, so that was the reason, I said to myself as I walked into the church. But there was a part of me — my lower self — that remained skeptical.
(My lower self, that poor lil’ thing, wanted to protect me.)
I saw EBS on the left side of the room, closer to the front than I expected him to be. I sat down to his right where he had saved me a chair. I didn’t look at him or say anything because my mind was still in that place of trying to figure out if he was being weird or if I was being oversensitive. I wasn’t trying to be mean, but I also didn’t want to be a sap.
I wanted to give myself a bit of time to assess.
But I was glad to be there. Lordy, it had been a very difficult week — I couldn’t stop cogitating on what I had unwittingly gotten myself into — and this was exactly where I wanted to be on this particular Friday night. I felt myself dropping my shoulders, not realizing how tense and tight they had been until then, and put my attention on Teach’s words. He was telling stories in his usual, mildly self-deprecating manner, causing the group to chortle periodically. I liked his Brooklyn accent…
… that accent always reminded me of a distinct scene from that '90s TV series about two NYPD female detectives, Cagney & Lacey, from an episode I must have seen sometime during my teenage years: Cagney, the blonde detective was angry about something that had gone wrong on a case, it was her fault, it was her that had screwed up. She was kicking her locker repeatedly, cursing as she did so. When she finally stopped, Lacey, her dark-haired partner calmly and lovingly said:
You wanna kick the locker some more?
(File under ~ Scenes That Were Seen)
And me, by that point — which was the point of feeling content to be right there — I knew I didn’t want to kick the locker any more. All the many fraught interactions of the week had weighed heavy but I preferred now for peace to enter my mind and presence to inhabit my body. I breathed deeply and continued to listen. EBS must have heard my exhale for I heard him sigh less than a second later, as if in sympathy. And just like that we were both relaxing in stereo.
25 minutes into his talk, Teach asked the group to shout out whatever we were grateful for. Silence ensued for about 10 seconds and then the first person yelled:
The rain!
Which set off others:
My cat!
Central heating!
Family!
I’m grateful for this sit!
I’m grateful for my sister!
Hot showers!
Friends!
My grandson!
Coffee!
This body!
Meditation, said an exceedingly calm voice, no audible exclamation marks detected.
Obviously, humans would be rightly grateful for all the comforts of life, their people, having people in the first place, whatever was right there, and of course, the beauty of nature…
Trees!
I give thanks for my beautiful roses!
And so it went on for a minute longer. At a certain point, the crowd was running out of mostly generic things to be grateful for and it was at that point a person two chairs behind me, no doubt inspired by our Teach’s random humour, decided