Sakyong Mipham: Meditative Running

Sakyong Mipham is a teacher who blends mental focus with physical effort, and his book Running with the Mind of Meditation makes the case that a long run can be a contemplative act in its own right. The book took off. Readers started showing up to retreats modeled on the training and sitting routines he describes in it. Still, some people scratch their heads at the sight of a Buddhist leader throwing himself into an activity with no obvious religious pedigree.

His running life started in Boulder, Colorado. Having grown up with martial arts, archery, weight training, and horsemanship, he took to it without much trouble and liked it a great deal. What began as a steady personal habit shifted into something larger after he came back from Tibet carrying a promise to raise money for schools. He ran his first marathon on behalf of the Tibetan people and has since finished more than nine. Several funds now support school construction, and a number of those schools are already built and operating, all set in motion by a man who liked to run.

Running shows up everywhere. Its roots differ from place to place, but today most people know it as plain physical exercise. Physicians point to the usual rewards: a stronger immune system, denser bones, better mental health, improved fitness overall. For plenty of runners, though, the hour means more than fitness. It is a way out of the day's pressure, a stretch of quiet for reflection. Meditation does something comparable, loosening the mind's grip on its ordinary strain.

People drawn to Shambhala Buddhism tend to come for its emphasis on kindness, basic human goodness, and building a healthy society. Many of them lead busy modern lives that look nothing like the old picture of a monk in robes. Shambhala keeps meditation central, using it to calm the mind and let the day's worries drop away so a person can settle into a steadier state. The Sakyong sees the same pull in running. To him the benefits of the two line up so closely that he simply puts them together.

Done with some guidance, running turns out to be deeply meditative. Sitting practice usually centers on the breath, on letting tension go while staying open to whatever is happening right then. Beginners often report the flood of thoughts that hits the moment they settle onto a cushion. The point is not to stop the thoughts, which keep coming, but to notice them and let them pass. That practiced noticing is what makes meditation such a help to mental health. Seeing one's living and thinking as fundamentally not a problem is a kind of release, and it widens the enjoyment of ordinary life, though the mind and the body both need the work.

The Tibetan word lungta means life-force energy, and it carries this idea that mind and body belong together. The Sakyong looks at the United States and sees a shortage of it: an obesity epidemic, punishing work hours, a lot of aggression, shelves of self-help books, widespread unhappiness and mental illness. Recognizing that gap, he wanted a way to bring ordinary people toward meditative practice without asking them to adopt something foreign. Sitting still does not appeal to everyone. Running, by contrast, is done much the same way on every continent.

In his book and his talks he describes concentrating on the breath while moving, the technique being much like the one used sitting down. A runner can arrive at a calm, reflective state close to what traditional meditation offers, working mind and body at once. Two practices, each in its way radical, join East and West when you run them together.

Clothing is hardly a teacher's chief concern, but it raises a fair question. In most settings the Sakyong appears in traditional robes that carry the plain beauty of his lineage. Robes are useless for running, so on the road he wears ordinary Western running gear. He is particular about where it comes from, favoring a few environmentally minded companies whose products fit both his ethics and his standards as a runner.

What started as an idea turned into a way of spreading the dharma alongside healthy living. Like the Sakyong himself, running meditation breaks with tradition while drawing East and West into one thing. He keeps at it, logging 45 to 60 miles a week wherever he happens to be, because it is something he can do in Asia, in America, or in Tibet. - Kate Mattes

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