Yoga Talk: My Journey to Meditation | Mark Blacknell

[00:00:00] Speaker A: And I figured, okay, I better get help now. So I went to the va and you know, my mental health struggles, I'm very upfront with them because that's what led me to meditation practice. You know, most people, including myself, we crawl to practice. We're just looking for something, anything besides traditional. You know, in the west, we're were probably gravitating away from traditional type religions, and we're looking to experiment. And that's pretty much what happened with me. There's a lot in between. I lived in Israel on a kibbutz, did some great scholarships in Australia and other places. I got to travel the world. But the whole time I was somehow keeping it together. But I was relying a lot on alcohol and I hadn't sought help. And I finally sought help in Maui before my daughter was born. And that's kind of what led me to meditation. I had to be stable enough in my life to actually stick with it and take it relatively seriously. I don't like using the word seriously because we can take our practice way too serious. But I mean, yeah, before I became disciplined with it and trusted it so much that now I can't imagine my life without it. Hmm. [00:01:27] Speaker B: I'm wondering, Mark, that's a very honest, you know, story. I'm wondering if there was a specific moment or period where you thought that you're ready to try something as simple as, like, staring at a wall. That's really what you try to emphasize, like in your meditation teachings, Right. Was there a specific moment, was there a specific period? Or was it this progression to get to that point where you were more disciplined and incorporating this into your life? [00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah. I started meditating in Israel. People there do a lot of vipassana and they turned me on to it. But my posture was terrible and there was no real rhyme or reason to it in my mind. I'm not putting it down or anything, but for me, it just. It didn't make much sense to me, but I did it for some reason. I felt this sitting here like this is. There's something to it. So it was always in the back of my mind, and I was always doing it here and there. But I didn't just start staring at a wall until I read a book called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Suzuki Roshi. And I would have never read it on my own. I was totally turned off to spirituality after living on Maui. I just really got turned off. A kid from Philly just could not relate to the scene there. And it. I saw a lot of hypocrisy and it. It kind of turned me off to everything. Buddhism and any type of alternative spirituality. But I had this really good. He wasn't really a good friend, but he was someone I seriously respected who was far older than me. And I just bugged him for years and years and years and find he kept telling me, you know, read this book. Telling you, man, it's not a normal book. It's, you know, I agree. He said. He agreed with me about New Age philosophy and gurus and things of that nature. And he said, telling you, just read this book. And I put it off, and I put it off and put it off. And finally I read it. And after a few pages, it just said, put the book down. And I can keep talking and talking and talking, but you just need to put the book down and meditate silently in the zazen posture. He didn't say staring at a wall, but that is a tradition in Zen. The Bodhidharma stared at a wall for seven years. And that's when it all started. I just started doing it. I didn't know what I was doing. And I was asking the man who became my teacher later, you know, all kinds of silly questions, but really they weren't silly. But looking back, it's a little embarrassing. You know, I was having these mystical experiences. And he would say, just. Just sit. Just sit. Just stay in the posture no matter what. Every day, sit, sit. And I just kept doing it. You know, at first it was on a park bench on my lunch break. And then I realized it's a lot of stimulation. You know, there's people running by squirrels, the wind, weather, the sun. Nature is full of stimulation. Sometimes that's great. But in order for me to sort of. I just sense that I need quiet and I need stillness and I need all of the harried stimulation and distraction. I just needed it to slow down a little. And it was all intuitive and just listening to Suzuki Roshi, he promised nothing, which that impressed me. And he didn't even write the book. It was his students compiled his lectures. So that appealed to me as well. I just trusted, and I think in spiritual practice, that's the key. Trust, Yeah.