For many of us driving is an inconvenient and time-consuming daily routine. Traffic jams, poor road conditions, and reckless motorists have become familiar nuisances in this daily ritual. The heart-sinking sight of mangled vehicles on the road and the wailing sirens of ambulances rushing to the scene of an accident offer a grim reminder of the dangers we face every time we step into a vehicle. Yet, driving has become such a mindless activity that we often eat, use the cell phone, and even apply make-up while at the cockpit of two-ton vehicle traveling at tremendous speeds.  The laws of physics are not very forgiving. Even a split-second lapse in attention can lead to disastrous consequences.

We must never confuse mindful driving with sitting meditation. In sitting meditation we attempt to reduce sensory input by focusing our attention on a specific meditation object, such as our breath.  In mindful driving we do not want to enter a deep meditative trance that may limit our field of vision and compromise our ability to react quickly in emergency situations.  What we want to achieve in mindful driving is a heightened state of alertness in which awareness is directed simultaneously at all the perceptions and physical actions necessary for safe driving. If you find that you’re spacing out as you drive, then you’re not driving mindfully.

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Why do we meditate?

People meditate for different reasons. The reason I meditate (or at least attempt to) is to perceive reality in a more objective way. Human perception is subjective since it does not give a particularly accurate picture of the world around us, or the world within us, for that matter. For instance, the human eye is capable of detecting a very narrow range, namely the visible spectrum, of the electromagnetic spectrum. That’s why doctors use x-ray to see our bones and internal organs.

If our eyes were capable of x-ray and infrared vision, which themselves are but small ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, objects would appear entirely different from they do normally; our perception of the world would change fundamentally. As all of our perceptual organs are similarly limited, what we perceive is a really only a conceptualization of the world around us, not what it really is. So, there’s more to the world than meets the eye, so to speak.

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When I was a young boy I used to enjoy staring blankly at the wall whenever I had a few minutes to spare. It was a pastime to which I would return time and time again. It gave me a sense of peace and happiness that I could not really describe. I was not sure if there was a name for such an activity and wondered if other people also indulged in it.

Despite having visited the Buddhist temple with my family on a regular basis, I had a very vague understanding of meditation. I thought it was a special magical practice done only by the monks. Their unintelligible chants seemed to be some form of communication with the higher realms to which only they had access. Meditation was definitely not for the lay people, let alone a young child.

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