From Linda Modaro and Nelly Kaufer
Our practice doesn’t seem to hit the mark in popular culture. It doesn’t trend or promise a better you in ten easy steps. What’s it like to be part of a practice that hasn’t taken off like the mindfulness explosion, yet is also quietly part of it? Maybe it’s like being one of the hundred legs on a centipede—feeling the pulse and direction of the movement but not leading the charge. There’s something humbling, and perhaps freeing, about that.
We all have friends and family who have heard of mindfulness. They’ve tried it—through apps, workshops, even prescriptions from their doctors. One friend told me she had gone on many retreats and tried all kinds of meditation, but she couldn’t quiet her mind, so she gave up. I asked if she could sit and simply think about her life for five minutes, then reflect on it afterward, and call that meditation. Her eyes lit up—“That I could do,” she said.
We spend a lot of time in our conditioned experience, not so much in the divine or the unconditioned. Perhaps that’s disappointing for meditators who long for transcendence, who want their practice to take them somewhere higher, purer, quieter. When I feel the tug of disappointment in our method from them, I wonder—what is it others want more of? More talk of the unconditioned? More guidance? More calm? More promises? More science, studies that validate what we already know in our bones? More endorsements, perhaps from the right kind of teachers?
Seth Zuiho Segall, in his review of our book, noted that our non-authoritarianism is steeped in feminist values of non-domination, tending, and befriending—a refreshing approach, he said. Then came the caveat, well-earned: he wasn’t sure about our emphasis on post-meditation reflection. He could see both its possible benefits and drawbacks. For the right people, he wrote, this might be the right approach—though not for everyone. Different strokes for different folks.
I appreciate that kind of honesty, that willingness to speak from not knowing. To really get to know a practice takes time, patience, and curiosity—qualities that don’t fit neatly into a research summary or retreat brochure. I don’t know the depth of Zen practice or Tibetan practice either, and I don’t feel drawn to explore them further right now.
In our practice, we cultivate other layers of not knowing, of uncertainty. We place you directly into that field of awareness. That’s where we begin, because we can’t presume to know what you need or what’s best for your practice. The conditions of your bodymind, your life, your timing—these have more primacy than our methods or teachings.
The Dhamma, after all, is known to be hard to understand. Not everyone greets it with enthusiasm. But that doesn’t mean it’s not working its quiet way through us, leg by leg, step by step, feeling its way forward. In Winton Higgin’s words, from his deep study of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness sutta: We’re not heading towards a goal, or chasing any particular experience. We don’t need to be ‘redeemed’, or ‘saved’ – swept off to some post-human, post-suffering plane of existence that would in fact demean our human dignity.
