San Francisco: the origin of doctrine

I’ve been meditating roughly every day for more than a year now, but mostly without the bits that involve input from others. I just sit there quietly by myself rather than listening to someone talk; I haven’t tried having a teacher; I mostly haven’t been to events or retreats. So when a friend recently mentioned the ‘meditation kool-aid’, I wondered if I had received this drink. 

I do seem to have a set of meditation-related views and attitudes, but where did it come from? My guess is that I heard bits and pieces of other people’s views and cultural associations related to meditation, and then tended to look at my own experience with those things salient, then made up my own picture based on my experience, but tending to line up with the popular headings and words, and fitting the customary vibes. 

That would mean that if my views sound superficially similar to the usual ones, it is unusually little evidence that they are actually similar, because they were constructed to sound superficially similar more than they were constructed to be deeply similar. Much like if I heard you say ‘there is a wolf in the forest’, then ran away into the forest before hearing more details, and met a rabbit, and figured that this was the ‘wolf in the forest’, and now casually chat to you about how furry the wolf is now and then, without us ever really comparing notes thoroughly enough to know that we are talking about different things.

I was going to try to write down what my views are like, for better comparison, but that seems much harder than the evening is long. I’m not sure how much I want better comparison now anyway—perhaps you should have very well developed misconstruals of a set of ideas before meeting the original construals, in case your misconstruals are any good, and might be washed away by a more catchily well worked out conceptual framework.