Meditation is like looking for spectacles that are sitting on your nose.

— Zen saying

Mindfulness meditation seems to be everywhere these days. Okay, maybe not so much here in the weed capital of the US, but head south 300 miles to Silicon Valley, to Apple, Google and the like—hundreds of corporations, according to its promoters—and it’s rife. I’m a meditator myself, have been for decades, but I’m wary of what I think of as a simple, unassuming and goal-less exercise being turned into a results-oriented business.

Mindfulness meditation may — or may not — contribute to increased productivity, less anxiety, and greater ability to deal with stress In the workplace. There are so many variables, mainly, the person actually doing it. It’s certainly not a “one size fits all” process, and one person’s breakthrough episode may be another’s traumatic experience. (“How was that for you?” I once asked a young woman inmate in a Mexican jail where I’d been facilitating meditation. “Terrible. It brought up all my painful memories,” she replied. It’s not for everyone.)

I wrote the following for a Buddhist magazine some years ago, and it seems to speak to the more extravagant claims made for mindfulness meditation. I encourage everybody to try “just sitting” sometime, but with the attitude of, “this is an adventure.” Nothing more.

Two elderly monks are sitting side by side. One is mending his robe.

“Tell me,” Dongshan asks, “How do you sew?”

“One stitch at a time,” says Shenshan.

“What!” exclaims Dongshan. “After all these years of practice, that’s all you can say?”

“Well yes. How do you sew?”

“As though flames are shooting out of my head!” replies Dongshan.

“Oh yes,” says Shenshan, “I used to have that problem, too.”

OK, I made up Shenshan’s last response. The rest is (roughly) from Master Dogen, founder of the Soto Zen school of Buddhism, Japan circa 1200 AD. My heart goes out to old one-stitch-at-a-time Shenshan, playing the role of Spiritual Wuss to Dongshan’s Spiritual Warrior. The story, as I’ve heard it, is intended to say something about meditation: you could sit there just breathing, but (if you’re going to take this practice seriously!) you should work on Inhaling and Exhaling the Universe with Every Breath.

Dogen Zenji (Unknown artist, public domain).

I don’t do “serious” meditation very well. It’s not that I don’t admire the dedication and steadfastness of the spiritual warriors I’ve encountered over the years. While I’m sitting seiza-style on my little bench, knees tucked comfortably under me, they’re implacable rocks of dedication in “full-lotus” posture. They’ll be toughing out an intense three-month “practice period” while I’m hanging out at the one-day quickie retreat. “It’s not about easy,” they say, adding, “You get out of it what you put into it.” This is their chosen path, and their commitment is inspiring, like a figure skater arriving at the rink at 5 a.m. every morning for three hours of practice.

For me, though, and after decades of being a wannabe warrior (I never did master the full-lotus), I consider myself more of a spiritual wuss. I’m comfortable with my “meditation-lite” approach, avoiding the hard-core spiritual Olympics advocated by many teachers. I’m fine with meditating or not, long sits or short, on bench, chair or floor. Or walking the boardwalk at midnight.

What changed for me, about 15 years ago, was the start of a gradual realization that this is good as it gets. Having heard, many times, “You’re enlightened as you are: all you have to do is to realize it,” I spent decades — I’m that old — trying to realize whatever “it” was. Until it slowly dawned on my stubborn system that there really was nothing to realize, that there’s just this. Right now: my keyboard responding magically to my fingers, rich Peruvian coffee, Lenny Cohen singing Blue Raincoat in the background (“…and when she got home/She was nobody’s wife…”), this old wool sweater that I probably should have tossed years ago, trees brushed by the wind outside in the gazebo plaza. Nothing extra.

And while I suppose I could spend the rest of my life striving for “deeper” and/or “higher” experiences, it’s so much easier (for a wuss) to notice what I actually do have. As long as I’m struggling and straining for something else, for things to be different, I’m missing the obvious. In front of my nose.