I like coffee a lot. Making and drinking it is usually my first order of business when I wake up. I usually choose to meditate early in the day, too. So I often sit down on the cushion with a cup (or two or three) of coffee zinging through me.
I don't know if the caffeine agitates my mind and keeps it jumping all over the place more than it would otherwise. I'm pretty sure it doesn't help. This morning I made a pot, and then sat down to meditate as it brewed. Other than one or two thoughts about how great the coffee was going to be when I was done with this meditation nonsense, it was a more relaxed, focused sit.
I read a passage yesterday about how the in-breath and out-breath is a good metaphor for things coming together in forms, and then falling back apart into formlessness (think birth and death, the founding and eventual dissolution of a company etc.). This helped me. Perhaps on some level I think that focusing on breath is some arbitrary choice - a convenient place-holder. An arbitrary choice that has been passed on for two millennia, right?
I had plenty of thoughts today during the meditation but I can't remember a single one of them. They must have been important. I'll leave you with one from yesterday. Just before the artificial gong sound on my iPhone meditation timer app went off to let me know that twenty minutes had passed, I heard a baby crying with amazing intensity outside my window. The sound brought me back to the present more than focusing on my breath had. I listened closely. After about thirty seconds it became clear that it was actually two babies crying with amazing intensity. I wondered if the analytical function of my mind discerning that it was actually two babies crying counted as 'thinking'.
Then I knew for sure that wondering if the analytical function of my mind discerning that it was two babies crying counted as 'thinking' definitely counted as 'thinking'.
And that it was a good example of how ephemeral my thinking can be.
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