language and mindfulness

I took a break from work to read about meditation:

http://antaiji.dogen-zen.de/eng/adult18.shtml

Its title was “Stop being mindful” – meaning not exactly that one should stop being mindful, but that if one is actively being mindful then one isn’t actually being mindful. I think.

Anyway, part of the advice in this article was to “let the walk walk, let the talk talk” – if you do sitting meditation, you aren’t “just” sitting, because you're bringing your concept of yourself along. It brought me to thinking about Hindi and the idea of saying mujhse meditation nahi hoga (“meditation will not be happening using me as an instrument”). Normally that kind of construction is used to deflect responsibility when saying things like "I won't be able to come to your party" ("Coming to your party won't be happening with me"). The active subject disappears, and so does the location of the blame for whatever is not going to be happening.

It’s kind of nonsense to say the positive version of such a sentence, but meditation is a somewhat nonsensical activity as far as I’m concerned, so I like the idea. Mujhse meditation hota hai: “meditation happens [with/using] me.” It removes the self/ego from the activity and lets the activity happen. I don't feel like I can actually do this very well in my own practice, but for me this is a new (and possibly useful) way of conceptualizing it.