Yesterday, in my Meditation Circle, I decided to read an excerpt from Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère — a reflection on the meditation journey and the quiet transformation that unfolds as we observe.
In it, Carrère describes his experience participating in a 10-day S.N. Goenka Vipassana retreat in Brittany, France. Early in the book, he shares how he became a meditator. In this passage, he explains what meditation is — in a way that feels both simple and deeply true — and ends with a Zen poem about a mountain.
Meditation
(Emmanuel Carrère — Yoga)
Meditation is everything that happens within oneself during the time one sits — motionless, silent.
Boredom is meditation.
Pain in the knees, the back, the neck — that’s meditation.
Intrusive thoughts — that’s meditation.
The rumbling in the stomach — that’s meditation.
The feeling of wasting one’s time doing some phony spiritual thing — that’s meditation.
The phone call you’re mentally preparing, and the urge to get up and make it — that’s meditation.
The resistance to that urge — that’s meditation too, though not giving in to it.That’s all. Nothing more. Everything added on top of that is too much.
If we do this regularly — ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour a day — then what happens during this time of sitting, still and silent, changes.
The posture changes. The breathing changes. The thoughts change.
All of it changes — because everything changes anyway.But all of it also changes because we observe it.
In meditation, we do nothing. We must especially not do anything — except observe.
We observe the appearance of thoughts, emotions, sensations within the field of consciousness.
We observe their disappearance.
We neither cling to them nor push them away.We follow the current without letting ourselves be swept away.
By doing this again and again, life itself begins to change.
At the beginning of this journey, says a Zen poem, the mountain in the distance looks like a mountain.
As the journey continues, the mountain keeps changing its appearance. We no longer recognize it.
A whole play of illusions replaces the mountain. We no longer know where we are heading.At the end of the journey, it’s a mountain again — but it has nothing to do with what we once saw from afar, long ago, when we first set out.
Now it’s truly the mountain.
At last, we see it.
We’ve arrived. We’re there.
I was drawn to this passage because of how clearly it expresses something we all encounter in practice — the simplicity of sitting still, and the quiet transformation that unfolds when we truly observe.
At the end of my class, I often invite participants to share a word or sentence that expresses how they are present right now. One participant shared how this Zen poem touched him. He said he understood that the point is not about reaching the top of the mountain, but about walking slowly — up, around, and along it. The journey itself allows us to see the mountain with new eyes, with clarity.
What a beautiful metaphor for life, meditation, and mindfulness reflection.
When I was younger, I was always searching — asking questions, striving to reach the top of the mountain as quickly as possible. I was persistent, and although this search often brought sadness and frustration, I kept walking.
But what I eventually found was not the top of the mountain. It was the beginning. It was as though I had never climbed at all. I had walked up and down, around and in circles — and yet, when I stopped striving, I began to truly see. The mountain revealed itself as it truly is.
That was the start of my real journey.
It took half a lifetime to arrive at the starting point. Now, I know what I am here to do:
to discover, to observe, to share, to serve.
To open to the awareness that infuses every aspect of being — my senses, emotions, and thoughts.
Instead of grasping or pushing away, I practice letting go, letting be.
And the journey, I hope, will never end.
And that is good.
Reflection invitation:
When you think of your own journey — in meditation or in life — how does your “mountain” appear to you right now?
Perhaps it’s distant, changing shape, or quietly becoming clear again. Wherever you are on the path, may you pause to simply observe.