Once a student approached his Zen Master, asking, “Master, how is it that you seem so at peace and joyful about your meditation practice, when most of us seem to find it such a struggle?” “Well,” replied the Master, “I quit trying to meditate.”
A church member visited her pastor. “Pastor,” she spoke, “I have tried to find peace, but, despite all my good intents, I seem to fail.” “Then, quit wanting to have peace, and you will find peace.”
The above stories present a universal spiritual law, or principle, found in all the great spiritual traditions. Alan W. Watts, in The Wisdom of Insecurity, noted that this “law of reversed effort” had always fascinated him. Sometimes Watts called it “backwards law.”
Watts referred to Jesus to exemplify the law of reversed effort:
People who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives will save them.
(St. Luke 17.33, CEV)
Likewise, a passage often associated with the Resurrection of Christ applies this profound spiritual insight:
Jesus said: The time has come for the Human One to be given his glory. I tell you for certain that a grain of wheat that falls on the ground will never be more than one grain unless it dies. But if it dies, it will produce lots of wheat. If you love your life, you will lose it. If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life. (St.John 12.23-25, CEV, Inclusive Adaptation)
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Western culture is a culture of pursuit. We want to master the world, and we dare not live with much uncertainty. We seek to gain security. We believe in our capacity to create a life which satisfies us, whether by seeking the mate of our dreams, the job we always wanted, eating a particular diet, making certain we have everything ready for retirement, or making and saving as much money as possible. Then, sadly, one generation passes this value to the next, to continue the same futile, frustrating, and exhausting pursuit.
We, essentially, in our society have a humanistic motto, based on a linear logic: “If you want it, go get it.” The great Wisdom traditions offer a paradoxical Way. This says, essentially, “If you want it, don’t try to get it.” We, then, are able to receive, to be given to. A beautiful discourse on this way is the Tao Te Ching, and the entire Pascal Mystery embodies it, as exemplified in Philippians 2.
This is a reason I teach meditation. And, I see students come to meditation the same way they approach the rest of life. They come to meditation to find a spiritual technology to get what they want: peace, or love, or a sense of oneness with God, … I tell them that meditation is meant to fail and will fail them. They do not understand, until they discover it for themselves.
Meditation, and religion and spiritually, generally, are paradoxical. Spiritual technology and teachings are means to cease grasping for what we need; then, we find that we have it. Do you want to feel loved? Be content feeling unloved. Do you want peace? Accept your lack of peace. Do you want security? Admit such is unattainable. If you want to know, then, give up knowing. …
This is the way of Grace. And, when you can sit in meditation without caring if you are meditating, then, you are experiencing how Life, universally, operates. Life gives Itself when we are unselfish enough to discontinue trying to get It for ourselves.
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