You concoct dramas each day. As the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu says, “You say no this and yes that.” Something happened and away the mind goes: the boss said this, the co-worker said that, this is what you think, and it’s all a big problem, isn’t it? Mind loops around and around, body gets tighter and tighter, angers and aggressions flare up and subside, flare up and subside… No this: that’s complaining! Drama drama drama. Yes that: that’s fantasy! More craving and drama drama drama…

Boy, and you think that Trump is a drama queen. You’re half-right: he is and so are you, only not so flamboyant (I trust).

What’s amazing about years of concerted, wholesome meditation is that the drama fades away. Fades and fades. After a while, when someone asks you about yourself, the only thing you have to say is, “I’m doing fine.” Without drama, what more is there to say? It’s just quietness. “Every day is a good day,” we read in The Blue Cliff Record. Don’t just read it but feel it deep in our bones.

The funny thing is that no drama means more crying. Haha! More and more, you see somebody suffering and you feel it. You observe a road runner and it’s poignant. You feel the care, or aging, of your wife, and it’s sweet melancholy. Life and death ache in you.

I find myself crying a lot more now but almost never does it have to do with anything concerning me. It’s not at all hard to see why Buddhists have argued that “wisdom entails compassion.” While there may be some wrinkles in this argument, there are times, in one’s direct experience, when seeing the truth of reality does initiate, right then and there, a welling up of genuine compassion.

I like to say that it’s false to suggest that meditation makes you feel calm if by “calm” we might “chilling out.” Nothing of the sort! I like to say instead that meditation raises your vital energy to a point of great expressivity. In your experience, everything becomes as raw as raw can be. It is all raw skin quivering to the slightest touch.