Meditation comes in waves. That’s the way all meditations work, whether the folks practicing various brands of meditation know it, or not. Everything happens in waves. The entire universe is waves. Everything in sight, everything you know, everything you feel, sense, touch and bump into, happens in waves.

You have direct experiential experience of this. Waves of nausea. Waves of heat. Waves of exhaustion, punctuated by “catching a second wind”. Waves of hunger. Waves of excitement. Waves of joy, sympathy, exaltation. Birthing a baby happens in waves, good and bad luck happen in waves.

When you get into an exalted “high” state, it also happens in waves. You ride the energy downstream toward entropy, then bounce back almost to the top of the wave, then it repeats and repeats until you run out of energy entirely.

When you traverse the Bardos, things happen in waves. When you surf…ah, there’s a great example of how meditation really works, and how you can actually accomplish its aims.

As a surfer, you would first wax your board, then take it out into the surf, lie down on it and paddle your way OVER the waves, barely touching them as you ride the swells against the current, until you were just short of where the waves first break on their way toward the beach. Continue reading →