It was originally about attention: paying attention and being able to focus. And it was thanks to a friend of mine, Bob Leckey, who I was working with. He had (and still has) this really wonderful ability to quietly focus on things, to see how they work. And I asked him, “How are you doing this?”
Bob told me he’d been having trouble concentrating. So he went to Barre, Massachusetts, to the Insight Meditation Society headquarters, and did a ten-day silent retreat. He said that after the retreat, all his scattered thoughts had calmed down, and he was able to focus. His mind was, as he put it, like a beam. He could kind of move it here or there, look at things steadily for a long time.
And I thought, Whoa, I’d like a mind like a beam! So I went there myself: Insight Meditation Society in Western Massachusetts. This was in ’77, I think maybe their second or third year. It was very early in their programming, and they were pretty hardcore at the time. You’d get up at four, meditate, have your only meal of the day, then a bell would ring and you’d do walking meditation, then sitting, then some water, and then more practice. So it was many, many hours a day.
When I got there, they asked, “Why are you here?” And I said, “I’m here to get a mind like a beam.” And they said, “Oh no, no, this is a path of pain.” And I said, “No, I’m talking about a beam!” So we had this very ridiculous conversation, ping-ponging back and forth between pain and beam, pain and beam.
And finally, after a couple of days, I realized it really was about pain. They said, “You’re here because you’re in pain.” And I said, “No, no, no, that’s not why I’m here.” But I realized… that was why I was there. And it was a very unique way of looking at pain.
Laurie Anderon narrates her introduction to Buddhism
Source: skepticspath.org