My Reflections on Meditation in Everyday Life

Meditation has been an integral part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a child growing up in the then green and forested outskirts of Colombo, I remember my late grandmother sitting me down after the evening Buddha Pooja and teaching me the basics of Maithree Bhavana, which were to show loving kindness to all beings, myself, first amongst them. A monk here in Sri Lanka, well known to my family, even has a photo of me sitting cross-legged on the grass, eyes closed, a picture of tranquility. Whether 6-year-old me was actually meditating is a question to which we will never know the answer.

Fast forward a couple of decades, meditation continues to play a key role in my everyday life, but my personal application of it has changed much along the way. Maybe I speak for most when I say this (for those whom I don’t, I envy you), but my life has become incredibly complicated over the last few years. This should have been expected; the further one goes through life, the greater one’s needs and wants become and the more one does to meet those ends. This journey is often not the most comfortable ride and is filled with ups and downs. The peaks are typically easier to deal with compared to the troughs, the latter filled with a myriad of unpleasant emotions including frustration, disappointment and anger.

Such things are inevitable, as the Atalo Dahama or the Eight Worldly Conditions teach us. What is important is how we deal with it. For the longest time, the definition of meditation to me remained the Maithree Bhavana. However, as the complexities of everyday life became a daily occurrence, a pivotal introspection took place. One consequence of this was that I began looking at meditation in a different way. Rather than something that is to be done only while sitting down in peace and quiet, meditation became a daily, nay, perpetual effort.

Mindfulness or Sathiya is one of the most important takeaways from the Buddha’s teachings. One is being continually mindful of one’s thoughts, speech and actions in the day to day. I realized that practicing this was much easier in terms of opportunity to do so than anything that involved me having to find time away from daily work and life. This is something I have incorporated into my life for a number of years, but I’m nowhere near perfect at it. But I have noticed evident changes in myself, for example, in how I react to situations, particularly those of an unexpected and unpleasant nature. At this point, I would like to narrow down what I will talk about in the next few paragraphs. Maybe, after reading, it might help you too. Anger. 

For the longest time, I thought anger was only something extreme. Therefore, I considered myself someone who does not get “angry”. How wrong was I. Once I started to keep closer tabs on myself and being more mindful, I realized that anger was the emotion that I experienced the most. The phone rings and no one picks it up, I got angry. My mother asks me to hop over to the shop across the road to buy milk, while I was working, I got angry. Somebody disagreed with me, I got angry. A tuk-tuk cuts across me, I got angry. A mosquito bites me, I get angry, slap it, kill it and now I have taken a life as well. I stub my toe against the bed leg, I kicked the bed and hurt my foot even more and it made me angrier. 

Now, by angry, I do not mean furious (except maybe with the bed). Just that casual, beneath the surface anger that one chalks off to human nature. But that is still anger. If I died in that moment, well, let’s just say, that would be incredibly bad timing. 

All this I noticed after I actually started paying attention. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was arguably the most important part. Once I knew it was happening, that is when I decided to try and deal with it. Usually, I try to do this in one of three ways. One is by extending the benefit of the doubt; second through Meththa and third is by simply focusing uselessness of getting angry. I think it is important to mention that I do not use all three every time. Horses for courses and all that. Let me illustrate with an example. 

Let us take the tuk-tuk. As is the norm when one drives in Colombo, a tuk-tuk cuts me off. I realize that I am getting angry, so what do I do? I give the tuk-tuk driver the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s in a hurry because he’s rushing to the hospital, or some other emergency. The anger immediately subsides. Then I might extend Meththa towards him. May he be well and happy and whatever problems in his life causing him to drive like that, sort themselves out. Anger, poof! Gone! The third method I mentioned also works in this scenario, but it is easier to visualize with an inanimate object, for example, my bed. I stub my toe. I start to get furious. But then, I think why? Did the bed move into my way and hit me? No, I am the one who stubbed my toe. If you think about it, I literally went and kicked my bed and then got angry at the bed for what, exactly? For staying completely still in the exact same place it has been for as long as I can remember, the place where I put it. Besides, what good does shouting at the bed do? Pretty much the same amount of good that would come of shouting at a tuk-tuk, driver. It is at that point, I burst out laughing at the utter ridiculousness of getting ticked off at my bed. Honestly, why?

You may have realized in all these scenarios, I sense the anger coming. When one reaches a state of true, complete mindfulness, even that will cease. But I am nowhere near that stage yet. I am so far only able to realize its onset and deal with it before it pollutes my mind any further or causes me to act out verbally or physically, for example when I killed that mosquito when it bit me. And that has been through being present in the moment. Whether I am brushing my teeth or walking down the road. Always trying to be aware. To be present.

Now, nothing I have said, have I discovered. The Buddha elaborated on all this and much more 2,500 years ago. But sometimes, we forget all that as we get caught up in our seemingly never-ending quest in search of work-life balance. So maybe, after reading this, you will be reminded to be a bit more mindful as you go about your day. Remember, the wisdom hidden within a “Mind Your Step” sign is far greater than you might think.