Musing about Meditation

It has been a stressful week so far. The hurricane blew away the job of one of Smalltown's church members. Others have friends or family in the cities hit by the hurricane and are worried about them. The rest of us are worried about the worst meltdown on Wall Street since the Great Depression. On top of all that, the church annual meeting with its reports to prepare looms ahead. Everyone seems a little edgy and stressed out. All this caused me to recall my fling with Transcendental Meditation in the 1970s.

This came about courtesy of my father who was trying to manage his work stress as a steel company executive in Cleveland, Ohio. The steel companies were in some trouble which only got worse as time went on. But my father decided that Transcendental Meditation (TM) would be a dandy way to deal with steel-related anxiety. And by golly he was going to take his whole family with him.

We had to bring a handkerchief, two pieces of fruit, and $300 to the TM center. The $300 was the part we were urged not to forget. When we got there, our "teacher" first performed a tribute ceremony to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of TM. At the age of sixteen I found the incense, candles, Sanskrit chanting, and offering of fruit to the picture of the bearded Maharishi quite intriguing. When the ceremony was over, the teacher taught me how to do TM. He gave me a mantra, a secret word in Sanskrit, to recite over and over again as I "transcended" into meditation to make my journey toward "cosmic consciousness." The mantra, which I was told never to reveal to anyone, was pronounced "Eye-Ing." If I revealed it, I would have not only bad karma, but also frequent car breakdowns. I have since found that saying the name of Jesus works just as well or better, but "Eye-Ing" was fine at the time.

Although the teacher told me that TM would help my grade in high school chemistry, that did not happen. Still, the experience had benefits. My father was meditating on the bus on his way home from work one night. It had been a long day, and he fell asleep and drooled all over his tie. Later he wondered if he should contact the teacher and ask what they did about guys who "slopped their mantras."