Whenever my yoga instructor tells us to focus on our breathing, I usually do the opposite. I’ll spend forty-five minutes willingly contorting myself into uncomfortable positions in sweltering heat, but somehow paying attention to my breath feels like asking too much. I think part of my resistance comes from not really understanding what I’m supposed to get out of the exercise. My instructors speak about connecting with the body, finding stillness, or becoming more present, but those ideas have always felt a little abstract to me. I enjoy hot yoga for the physical challenge, not so much the more meditative or spiritual side of it.
I struggle with the instruction to become more present. As far as I can tell, I’m already here, experiencing whatever’s happening around me, whether or not I’m concentrating on my breathing. But our meditation unit made me reconsider whether being conscious and being attentive are quite the same thing. So much of my experience unfolds without me even noticing it, from the rhythm of my breathing to the countless details of my surroundings. I began to think about whether consciousness might be shaped not only by what we’re capable of experiencing, but also by what we choose to notice. With that in mind, I approached our meditation exercises with a little more curiosity than I otherwise might have. I made a genuine effort to follow each practice, hoping to notice some difference in how I experienced my own consciousness. I can’t say I reached the fourth state of consciousness that we read about, but I did find myself paying closer attention to the experience of trying to pay attention.
Looking back, I think I may have approached the exercises with the same expectations that make meditation so hard for me in yoga. I wanted to know whether I was doing it correctly, whether it was working, and whether I would feel any different afterward. Even as I tried to concentrate on the present moment, I was preoccupied with what I might get out of the experience once it was over. I realized how much I rely on some outward indication that something is happening, even when the experience I’m trying to understand is entirely internal.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve always been a little wary of spirituality. I’m more comfortable with things I can observe or explain than with experiences I have to take on faith. That’s partly why I was so intrigued by Ned Friedman, who seemed to have an almost spiritual relationship with trees while remaining firmly skeptical that they were conscious. I am on the same page with him about plant consciousness, or lack thereof, which probably comes as no surprise. I’m not convinced that a tree’s ability to respond to its environment tells us whether it experiences that environment in any conscious sense. Of course, it’s difficult to know what subjective experience might look like in an organism so different from ourselves, but I’m hesitant to treat biological responsiveness as evidence of an inner life.
But, as Professor Harrington pointed out, Friedman’s conviction that trees weren’t conscious didn’t seem to diminish his curiosity about them or the care he devoted to understanding them. I loved his question about whether it’s possible to love a tree that can’t love you back. After all, we love plenty of things that can’t love us in return, from the stuffed animals we’ve kept since childhood to the houses we no longer live in. But there’s something different about a tree, which isn’t quite an inanimate object or a conscious companion. Yet Friedman seemed perfectly comfortable with that ambiguity, finding plenty to appreciate in trees without imagining that they experienced the world as he did. I wish I could bring some of that openness to my yoga practice.
Maybe the next time my instructor asks us to find stillness in tree pose, I’ll channel a little of Friedman’s capacity for reverence without belief. Though I’m pretty sure I’ll still be more concerned with keeping my balance than becoming one with the universe.
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