That is, when one meditates, one's mind and body are mostly off duty; they no longer are serving as watchers and laborers in keeping one alive in a biological and social sense; rather, one's body and mind relax as they surrender these tasks. The same kind of effects, though much milder in intensity, occur when a worker relaxes on a coffee break, or when a student leaves off reading a hard text and dreamily looks out the window, or when in the woods one's attention is absorbed by nature. Religious services often produce the same sorts of feelings with prayers, music, and beauty of setting; they take one out of the world of striving and surviving, into the world of sensing and absorbing. Sabbath observers put themselves "off duty" for an entire day (at least those religious groups for whom the Sabbath is not a stern ascetic day).

Sometimes people worry that ceasing to make comparisons implies quietism and leaving ordinary life. Indeed, some depressives avoid the pain of neg-comps by giving up their fundamental goals, which leads them into apathy. But this is an unlikely occurrence in the present context of discussion.

During periods of relaxation from striving -- whether very deeply with meditation, or less deeply in religious services or absorption in nature - the force that makes for sadness and depression is absent: One does not make comparisons - and especially negative self-comparisons - when one is in an experiential mode rather than in a survival mode.

Even non-theistic people sometimes arrive at the thought of God when meditating, because their experience transcends everyday concepts. For example, for me the knowledge that in meditation I can relax into the cessation of mental pain and the existence of physical pleasure is so wonderful, and the state itself is so awesome, that sometimes I refer to this inner refuge as "God," though I am quite without belief in the usual Judaic-Christian concept of an active God. (More about the word "God" below.)

Meditation also has links to the making of art. In creative moments the painter or composer or poet tends to suspend willful direction of the mind, letting thoughts drift as if they have lives of their own. But the artist continues to maintain a general supervisory control over the thoughts - like the director of a play who is out of sight in the wings, but who is nevertheless keeping a watchful eye on the stage. The artist's trick is to exert that supervisory control without worrying about it, to be thinking freely without striving for that freedom. In the most successful moments the artist often feels as if the work gets done by itself, without effort by the artist - just as a skilled athlete sometimes comes to feel that the game is played effortlessly, without any feeling of "trying" to play well. Athletes call this feeling "being in the zone". This is commonly experienced as a moment of pure joy.

There is an apparent logical contradiction between the artist letting the mind be totally free, and supervising the mind at the same time. This pair of apparent opposites is "equivalent to the Buddha's enjoining his disciples to stop desiring, which would of course put them in a state of desiring not to desire."19 But "freedom and "desire" are complex multi-layered words, and in fact there need be no psychological contradiction in these matters.

There is a crucial difference between on the one hand, meditation, and on the other hand, habit-formation and count-your- blessings exercises to combat depression, though they may seem similar in some respects. Meditation seems to produce increased energy in some people, whereas counting your blessings and such habit-formation devices as behavior-modification therapy seem to use up energy in the exertion of "will power" to alter one's behavior. When meditating, you husband energy because you are not "trying" to do anything. It is a state in which you feel no "ought," ; you purposely "let it all hang out" (really, hang in). This unusual cessation of activity for all your striving and physical mental faculties produces a sense of deep restedness afterward.

The Limitations of Meditation

If meditation can have such anti-depressive effects, and if - as seems to be the case - almost everyone can learn to meditate, why is meditation not the perfect cure for depression? For some people, lengthy meditation may in fact be an excellent therapy. But most people cannot leave the workaday world and remain in the world of meditation. Even if one can financially afford to do so, many people feel an urgent need to work for its own sake, as a contribution to society or because one's ability cries out to be used. Another reason that people will not choose to forego involvement in the workaday world is that they hope for joys as well as pain, and full-scale Buddhist-type meditation implies putting aside the craving for joys and the joys themselves.

Zen prescribes that you should do your best at whatever you do, but you should not feel sad when you fail to succeed. This is marvelous advice, but it is a prescription for walking a tight wire so thin and so high that few of us can balance ourselves on it. To strive to do well requires evaluation of how you are doing. But not being sad requires not evaluating how you are doing. So unless you are capable of extraordinary skill in compartmentalizing your thoughts, this prescription is not a perfect cure for most of us - though trying to take the prescription will certainly help all of us somewhat.

Another way through the horns of this dilemma is to restrict your evaluation to your act, and refraining from allowing the evaluation of the act to become a judgment of yourself as a person. It is certainly possible to evaluate that a tennis stroke was hit badly without judging the hitter to be a bad person or even a bad tennis player. This separation of the evaluation of the act from evaluation of the actor is exceedingly valuable mental hygiene for everyone, at all times. And it reconciles Zen doctrine and practice with active participation in the everyday world.