The Joy of Waking Up at 5am to Meditate

What time do you get up to meditate? Maybe not 5am, but I do remember, maybe 25 years ago, a teacher saying to me, “the decision to meditate happens the night before, when you set your alarm thirty minutes early to get up and sit.”

I feel like that’s still so true for me, today. But not as if it’s an obligation! Because what can we really accomplish when we approach our practice with reluctance or resignation? Not the difficult, inspirational, transformational, work of mindfulness. Also not the difficult, rewarding, satisfying work of the law.

When we approach both these with a sense of joy, and energy, though? Or both: joyful energy? Then I’d say, so much is possible. In fact, maybe anything’s possible.

Transcript

Wake Up Call #371: The Joy of Waking Up at 5am to Meditate

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 371. 

We’ve been exploring the Six Perfections, and so far we’ve looked at the perfections of generosity, ethics, and patience. Today let’s look at the perfection of effort, or virya paramita. Given that the virya we put into our meditation practice is one of the first ways to think about joyful effort, and for me anyway that does sometimes happen at 5am, I named that in today’s blurb and then was wondering if anyone would come. Because I could imagine people saying, yeah nope. 

But you’re here, so let’s jump in. I love the way Norman Fischer talks about virya as “joyful” energy, and, as he says, implying irrepressibility. Someone who has perfected joyful energy can’t be kept down. Things happen in their lives, things happen in the world, and still, every day, they get up, sit, go for a run or a swim or to the gym, sing in the shower, work like crazy, and enjoy every minute of it. 

But let’s contextualize. 

I’ve had times in my life when I did that. When I was a baby lawyer, I was in the pool the minute it opened at 5am. I was at my desk by 7. I was working and learning and calling everyone I knew who might be a potential client or referral source, or who might know something I didn’t about the law (which was pretty much everyone) and taking them out to lunch or making plans for drinks. I worked Saturdays. Sundays! And I loved it. It was new, it was interesting, I wanted to be good at it, and I was getting paid a lot - $27,000! And also, I was working that hard because it made me feel powerful.

Truthfully, I was also working that hard because I was scared to death. Scared I’d get something wrong, forget something, miss a deadline. So I was motivated by my love of the work, wanting to be good at it, the money, the status, and also fear.

When I started teaching, same thing, or almost: now I was working twice as hard because I was practicing and teaching, but I loved being in the classroom. I loved seeing the light go on in my students’ eyes when they got the concepts. The light was going on for me, too. In fact in some ways I learned more teaching than practicing. There was almost no money in it (still isn’t) but there was definitely a certain status, so that was motivating, too. And to be fair there was also fear. In fact once I almost hyperventilated, driving to school one evening, because I was so afraid I didn’t understand that night’s materials. 

So even though some of my joyful energy was motivated by fear, and by money, in those early days of practice and teaching, I had a lot of joyful energy. I’m wondering if you can relate. Is joyful energy present for you, at work? Are you familiar with that sense of what Norman calls irrepressibility? And if not in relation to the law, are you familiar with it in relation to something else? Maybe you’re an athlete and passionate about that, or about your kids, or about learning how to be an anti-racist or about democracy (I hope we all have joyful effort for that, and thank you to President Biden for naming that last night). But really it can be anything: I just want to invite you to tap into that sense of irrepressibility, that joyful effort that keeps you going in whatever wholesome direction you’re pointing, even when you’re under slept or overworked or there’s just flat out not enough time in the day.

That’s virya. So now let’s use that frame of reference, and point our attention towards practice. Not law practice or teaching practice, although I see a spillover and I’ll say something about that before the end of this talk. But we’re exploring the paramitas because they’re the path of the Boddhisatva, the person who is moving through the difficulties of life, and living their life, to serve others. To reduce suffering in the world as much as they can by meeting and overcoming – and helping others meet and overcome – the obstacles of life. And not only the external obstacles, of course. Also – and first, and continually throughout their lives – the internal obstacles. The internal obstacles of selfishness, confusion, disappointment. Of greed, aversion, and delusion that are the veil through which we see and filter our lives.

Generosity, the first paramita (dana paramita), is the first step. They do this by perfecting generosity, towards others and towards themselves. They know they can’t be truly generous towards anyone else until they know how to look at themselves with generosity, kindness, understanding that we’re all just imperfect humans. Ethics is the second step, sila paramita. They perfect ethics through an inspired sense of wanting to do the right thing, which is to serve and love everyone, again, starting with themselves. And patience, the third step: they undertake this path with patience, knowing there are an endless number of people to care about, to help, they aren’t going to finish in this lifetime but they are going to put one foot in front of the other and slowly do what they can, including with their own internal issues, chipping away at those, too, with kindness and self-compassion, and slowly, transforming greed, transforming their aversive nature, into more love, more connectedness; and transforming misunderstanding, into clarity.

Joyful effort is what makes all of that possible. Virya. Irrepressibility. The bright, endless, energy that makes not doing all of that, not an option. 

So yeah, it kind of is the joy of waking up at 5am to meditate. Meditation is the key: without a practice, there’s no way to see what’s going on, thus no way to work with it. I actually do love getting up super early but for you, maybe it’s the energy to sit for half an hour late at night. Or before you leave your desk for the day (if you leave your desk for the day, which I hope you do). 

And virya, I would say, is also a habit. Putting aside obsessiveness (and I have plenty of my share of that, too, and that’s not what we want to cultivate), the habit of true joyful effort, to practice mindfulness, to study, to see and uproot greed, aversion, and delusion in our own minds for ourselves but also for the benefit of everyone, and even very specifically for the benefit of our clients, our colleagues, our students, our beloveds? There’s a real spillover effect, in my experience. We cultivate joyful effort by just getting excited about our practice and the transformative work we can do with it, and that virya transfers, out into the world. 

…

Let’s sit. 

What time do you get up to meditate?

Maybe not 5am, but I do remember, maybe 25 years ago, 

a teacher saying to me, “the decision to meditate happens the night before,

when you set your alarm thirty minutes early to get up and sit.” 

I feel like that’s still so true for me, today. 

But not as if it’s an obligation!

Because what can we really accomplish

when we approach our practice with reluctance or resignation? 

Not the difficult, inspirational, transformational, work of mindfulness. 

Also not the difficult, rewarding, satisfying work of the law.

When we approach these with a sense of joy, and energy?

Or both: joyful energy?

Then, I’d say, so much is possible. In fact, maybe, anything’s possible.

[Play the John Lennon Imagine video at the end of the Paramitas – whenever that is! (It’s bookmarked under Music.)]