by Werner Low
It bothered Fabian that the Master didn’t have a special meditation room. Instead they sat in the living room. And not even on the floor, cross-legged. Just on regular living room chairs. As if he was visiting an old classmate.
“Please do exactly as I do,” the Master said, without preamble.
The Master didn’t have a shaved head, or a Foo-Manchu beard, and he wasn’t wearing robes; just jeans and a plaid shirt. Nonetheless, Fabian had paid 25 bucks for this half hour intro session, so he nodded his agreement.
The Master closed his eyes and did nothing, just sat there with his eyes closed, not moving.
Fabian waited a moment, then closed his eyes and tried to do nothing.
After a minute, he wondered if the Master was looking at him, and opened his eye a squint. But the Master’s eyes were not open and didn’t look like they had been. Nor had he moved in the slightest.
Fabian closed his eyes and concentrated on doing nothing. Which wasn’t easy. He was fidgety, always had been.
After two minutes that felt like fifteen, the Master asked him, “Are you doing what I’m doing?”
Fabian opened his eyes to see if the Master was looking at him now, but his eyes were still closed.
“I don’t think so,” Fabian admitted, closing his eyes.
“What am I doing?”
“Nothing.”
“And what are you doing?”
“I’ve been trying to find a comfortable position. I stole a look at you. I was thinking about what I should get for dinner at the grocery store on the way home. I tried to clear my mind but I couldn’t.”
“Did I ask you to clear your mind?”
“No.”
“Try again,” the Master said.
“OK.”
Fabian closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to relax his shoulders, and his feet, but they felt tight in his shoes.
“You can take your shoes off,” the Master said.
How did he know that? Fabian wondered.
“I heard your shoe scrape,” the Master said, then added, “It’s a common response.”
Fabian took off his shoes and continued to try and relax, but without much luck. He was thinking he probably wouldn’t come back. He didn’t like the lack of a special room, the plain clothes, the cycling magazine on the coffee table, the casual language, and the fact that the Master didn’t give him any real guidance. He wasn’t even a Master. Susan had said she thought of him as a Master but he never referred to himself in those terms nor asked you to. He was Mr. Po, or just Po, if you wanted to be informal, which he didn’t mind.
“Are you doing what I’m doing?” the Master asked.
“I don’t know. What are you doing?” Fabian asked.
“I’m thinking about whether I should move my client chair – the one you’re sitting in now – a little closer to the window.”
Fabian was stunned.
“You are?”
“Yes. I’m thinking about it in great detail, picturing every item in the room. I can see the chair where it is now, and where it is when I move it, and how everything has been affected. I’m even picturing the small, round impressions that will be left on the carpet from the wooden feet of the chair.”
Fabian chuckled.
“What did you think I was doing?”
“I thought you were emptying your mind and meditating.”
“I’ve never had much luck with that method,” the Master said.
Fabian opened his eyes just long enough to see that the Master still had his closed.
“Everyone is different,” the Master said, “but what works for me is to think intently about a question like moving the chair, to focus my energies on it, and engage all my senses. And then, sometimes, another thought will come to me. If not, at least I will have made some progress with the first question.”
“I see.”
“And what are your thoughts about that?”
“Well, if that method works for you, I guess that’s good.”
“No, I meant about moving the chair.”
“But I can’t see it from your point of view.”
“Yes you can.”
Fabian tried to picture the chair where it was, with himself in it, but a little closer to the window, and the interesting thing was that he felt a difference between the two positions.
Not so much as a result of how the chair related to the window, or the other furniture in the room, but where it was, absolutely, in space and in time. When the chair was closer to the window, he felt calmer, clearer, and lighter, more like a spirit than a physical body.
He heard a distant bell tinkling. It was in the little woods behind the house where he’d grown up. Those woods had seemed huge when he was little, much smaller when he was older. Now they seemed huge again. He moved through the trees, in the direction of the bell. It grew louder as he approached, but it was also moving, slowly, from right to left.
And now he could smell honeysuckle.
A kitchen timer dinged, a signal that the session was over. Fabian was disappointed.
“You can open your eyes now,” the Master said.
Fabian opened his eyes.
The Master looked at him but didn’t say anything.
“For me,” Fabian said, “the chair works better closer to the window.”
The Master nodded solemnly, as if Fabian was the Master.
“Thank you,” he said.
When Fabian left, he wondered if next Wednesday the client chair would be closer to the window. Part of him doubted it, but at the same time he was sure it would be.
And he forgot to stop at the grocery store.
