The Magic of Appropriateness: An Underrated Benefit of Meditation

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of Mindfulness+

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One of my many teachers, John Kesler, has used a certain word a lot over the years, and from the first time I heard it to the last time I heard it, it has sounded kind of lackluster and tasteless in my mouth: appropriateness. 

“We’re going to become masters of mindfulness meditation so that we can be more appropriate.” Yeah, not as hot, sexy, and flashy as other claims that the practice will make. 

But when you look beneath the frumpy surface of this word, appropriateness, it’s quite profound. 

When a human being actually shows up “appropriately,” it’s breathtaking. In the context of awareness practice, appropriateness means something like bringing a totally fresh and open beginner’s mind to every moment and responding to the moment with what the situation asks for. 

The challenge here is that human beings, we’re learning machines, and we have a lot of experience. Having a lot of experience, we have a lot of programs — you could say “learnings” — from the past, things that have worked in past situations, and we bring them to the

present moment. And when we’re not totally present and open, we don’t act spontaneously but rather we act in a rote, habituated way. So, if our unconscious programming could talk, it would say something like, “Well this worked in the past, so I’m going to do this now” or “Last time something like this happened, I got really angry, so I’m going to get really angry at this person now.” That’s kind of the definition of inappropriateness. 

John really instilled this into me over the years and as I let this subtlety of the practice and even the term, this concept, really percolate deep down into me, I started to really turn on to the magic of this word, appropriateness.

For another perspective, a teacher we’ve heard from before on this podcast, Kabir Helminski from the Sufi tradition, he defines appropriateness as the child of love and humbleness. So, from a Zen perspective, you could think of a beginner's mind coming into a situation freshly, acting spontaneously.

From Helminski’s perspective representing the Sufi tradition, it’s the child of love and humbleness. And allow these qualities to wash over you right now, a quality of love, deep embracing love and humility, willingness to do what needs to be done, and we start to feel a certain resonance between these different approaches to the definition, the practice of appropriateness.

Another story: I was traveling with another teacher of mine named Terri O’Fallon almost 3 years ago now. We flew into Seattle, met up there, we were on our way to a retreat center and we were catching a shuttle together. 

We were waiting for the shuttle. She and I needed to use the restroom as we were waiting to embark, and I popped out before her. I walked across just a bustling hallway, this is at SEA-TAC, where the ceiling if I remember is 100 feet high, glass walls, quite a breathtaking room at the far end of the airport and just packed, just shoulder to shoulder, just so much foot traffic, people coming and going, crisscrossing, going up escalators, walking to check into their flights from all over the world. It’s really a bustling airport, and I’m at the door, and Terri makes her way out of the bathroom and she starts to cut through the crowd and at a certain point, I saw her look up and she saw me holding the door for her. And I’ll never forget, it’s like her entire body, her whole being, became luminous. She lit up with an immaculate smile and it was so energetic, this smile, this whole-body smile! It reached across the busy hallway and physically impacted me. I felt just filled with delight when I saw her response to me holding the door. It was like no one had ever held the door for her in her whole life and she thanked me, we got in the shuttle, we made our way to the retreat.

Months afterward I asked her, “Terri, do you remember that time at SEA-TAC when I held the door for you?” And she said, “Oh, how could I forget?” I said, “You know, I just have to check in with you. You seemed disproportionately delighted when you saw me open the door for you!” 

And she said, “Oh, yes, you know in my family growing up, we always held the door for each other, it was so important, it was a sign of love, it was a sign of respect, it was a sign of patience.” She had all these associations with it. It meant so much to her and she was just delighted by the fact that I, some ruffian almost Millennial had you know still preserved some modicum of etiquette. 

That’s my story. But the point being I was right, like holding the door for her, she was totally delighted by it, almost whisked away in delight. And another person in another moment, it might have just been, “Oh thank you.” But in that moment when I held the door for my colleague, my teacher, my friend I felt as if the whole world were smiling, there was just no beginning or end to her delight. And it was really a lesson for me because to me it was a teaching of appropriateness, what if we were so present in the moment that we received every aspect of the moment with that depth of gratitude, if we really allowed ourselves to receive the generosity of the universe that is forthcoming?

Imagine in this moment as you draw your next breath and you bring this quality of appropriateness to it and just allow yourself to feel completely delighted by this gift of breath, by this gift of light.

Meditation

Let’s move into some practice. Just be open, be loving, be humble, be a beginner’s mind. What is this moment asking from you? What is called for? Don’t go searching in thought for that answer; don’t try to work it out in the mind. Relax, be open, be loving, be present, be willing. 

Perhaps in this moment it’s appropriate to just be totally still and soft and open, receiving the gift of life.

Or maybe you’re aware of a need, a demand, an urgency, something in your environment that calls you to move. The practice here is to let any movement come from a deeper place than the restless personality, the seeking mind that’s always seeking, always in motion, always at a certain level discontent. Here the practice is to become so still, so simple that something deeper than you moves you.

When your habits from the past, your learnings from the past are running your life in this moment, when you just stand naked in this moment so to speak, what’s true, what’s so?

Just stay with this a little longer, be curious, be soft. Let this moment be utterly new, an utterly new moment, calling for an utterly novel response.

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As you take this practice into your day, into your life, you can just pause maybe in those moments where you’re feeling intense boredom, ennui, restlessness, maybe sadness, despair or joy and optimism, whatever you’re feeling in a given moment, notice those moments where you remember, come back to this quality: love, humbleness, and see if you can’t surprise yourself by what you do next.