Abstract
Since the age of
14, I have been deeply connected to the experience of riding a motorcycle. With
each passing spring, I look more fondly on the ritual of pulling my motorcycle
out of the shed and hitting the open road. The more I talk to fellow motorcycle
riders, the more I hear riding being talked about as a meditation. What is it
about riding a motorcycle that can create this meditative state? The main idea
I would like to explore in this paper is this idea that motorcycling is a about
truly staying in the present moment, a form of mindfulness and meditation. I
will talk about the physical and mindful aspects of riding that can lead to
mindfulness. I will do this by referencing books on motorcycle travel, articles
and books on mindfulness, my own experience with daily riding journals, and my
experiments with breath work on the bike. I will also poll other riders on
their thoughts of how motorcycling can bring them mindfulness, peace and
enjoyment in the present moment. In the end, I will also discuss how
motorcycling can produce increased awareness, decrease stress, and remind us of
our own mortality. How do these ideas affect our riding and meditation?
Mindfulness in Motorcycling
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite comfortably in the circuits of a
digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of
a mountain or in the petals of a flower.
(Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, p.21)
What
is it about riding a motorcycle down the road that attracts so many people all
over the world from different walks of life? Is it the feeling of connection
with our immediate surroundings: wind, rain, sun, and temperature of all sorts?
Is it the sound of the engine? Is it the thrill of speed? Perhaps it is all of
this and more.
When
I was 14, I remember the first time I took off down an open trail on my first
dirt bike. After I figured out the gears and the shifting part, I felt like I
was riding my own personal rocket ship. I was hooked immediately. Whatever it
was about riding this mechanical device, I knew I wanted more.
25
years, and many miles later, I still experience the same excitement with riding
each and every time I step outside with my helmet in hand, and my leather
jacket on. There was something truly unique about the experience of being on a
motorcycle. For many years, I could not articulate why I loved to ride so much.
Each year my passion grew for this sport. It didn’t matter if I was running
down the store for a slice of pizza on my bike or ripping down the highway at
over 100 miles an hour. All I knew was when I encountered an open stretch of
road with no one ahead, and no one in my rear view mirror, I was in a state of
oneness with the road and my motorcycle. Whatever negative feelings I was
experiencing that day, would be replaced with a sense of peace when I hopped on
my bike.
I
had started meditating in 1999 and doing yoga in 2000. I remembered the sense
of peace and clarity I received from practicing these disciplines. I finally
noticed a few years back one day on a long ride, that the feelings I felt when
I rode a motorcycling, were very similar to the feelings I felt when I practice
yoga and meditation. What was the feeling that I could not explain? I started to look at motorcycling
sites, books and magazines in more recent years to see if other riders talked
about this phenomenon. What were others’ thoughts and feelings as a result of
riding a motorcycle? Since we take in a good deal of feeling through our
senses, it may be helpful to look at a few senses in relation to riding a
motorcycle. Maybe looking at some of these senses will help better explain the
feeling of peace one can have on a motorcycle.
Sound-Garri
Garripoli, author, long time Qigong practitioner, and motorcycle enthusiast, in
his book The Tao of the Ride, says “There is something about being on a bike
alone, cruising down the road in the silence of a loud engine and pounding
wind. In these moments, everything can seem perfect” (1999, p. 9).
There
are so many sounds to experience while riding a bike. One of the prevailing
sounds is the roar of an engine perched in between two wheels. Unlike a car,
you are sitting on an engine while riding a motorcycle. You are in close
contact with the experience of the sounds that the engine makes. The roar of
the engine fills your ears as you go down the road. With a motorcycle, you can
hear what the engine is saying more directly. To go down the road and focus on
the sound of your engine, can bring your senses alive. John Kabat Zinn,
founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness
in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at University of Massachusetts Medical
School asks us to just be present when hearing sounds. He says in such moments
of allowing sound in, “you can let go of yourself completely, opening once
again to the sound and the spaces between sounds, and to the silence lying
inside and underneath sound” (Zinn, 2005, p. 282). Sound could very well add to
this feeling of peace. If we are just listening to what is going on as we ride
down the road, not necessarily stuck in heavy thoughts of the day, we are just
listening, being present with the moment.
Sight-“We
see what we want to see, not what is actually before our eyes” (Zinn, 2005, p.
196). I think this idea is true to fit what we want our reality to be. On a motorcycle, the opposite of this
idea may be true; we have to see what
is before our eyes. We do not have time to see anything else. The reality of
what is coming into our vision is an immediate reality. We don’t have the time,
or the control to see something else. We cannot change what the eyes are taking
in on a motorcycle; we have to just accept most things as they come to us. If
we try make explanations of what we are seeing as something else, or even
forbid we close our eyes to what we see, we could cause our selves great
suffering. Since the motorcycle, by its nature, forces us to take in what we
see as fact, it keeps us honest. We can’t con ourselves into seeing something
untrue. This honesty can gives us time to attend with soft focus on the beauty
of nature around as we ride.
Smell-Smell
is another one of our senses that is in direct contact with the outside world
while we are riding a motorcycle. Like the other sense, the body receives
smell. We don’t have to actively seek out smells on a motorcycle; they come
right into our field of being. The smells while on a motorcycle can be amazing.
Whether it is from passing a field of flowers, a farm full of haystacks, or
even a dead skunk, the olfactory experience can be intense. We can take in
these smells the same way we take in sights and hearing. We observe the
experiences without judgment, because we don’t need to. We allow them to
passively add to our experiences as we ride down the street. Again, John Kabat
Zinn describes using this sense, like the others in hopes of keeping us in the
present tense of our experience. “Scents and fragrances can plunge us into
grief or ecstasy. And yet, and yet,…they wake us up too, invite us to surrender
entirely to the present, basking in the fragrance and fragrances of now” (p.
227)
Vibration (Full body tactile
sensation)- Feeling the vibration put forth by a running
motorcycle with your whole body, is the most powerful of all the senses. I
remember the first time I rode my first street motorcycle on the road at age
23. The vibrations of the bike made me break out laughing and yelling “yahoo!”
as I rode down the street. It was an exhilarating feeling. It reminds you that
you are really out there, risking life and limb on a machine that you need to
give your full awareness and respect to. Feeling the motorcycle vibrate is
almost a way to force you into a state of heightened awareness. You understand
that this machine is serious business and you better pay attention or there
could be consequences. I am in agreement with Garripoli when he talks about the
idea of being fully present on a running motorcycle. “I get on my bike and I am
fully in my body, the noise and vibration won’t let me forget. My senses become
superbly acute as I assess the world I am about to ride into” (1999, p. 69).
Being
a student of healing modalities, and doing a little research on the chakras (energy
channels of the body that are supposedly able to receive energy from outside
the body), I used to joke, that the vibrations of a motorcycle are opening up
my “motorcycle chakras.” For me, there was actually truth in my own humor. I
knew that for me, there was something about all these senses coming together
that created peace and clarity of mind.
Each
time you ride down the road on a motorcycle, you are out in the open with the
wind blasting you, reminding you of how fast you are going. Every sense is set
on hyper alert. You become distinctly aware of what you are doing, because you
are in direct contact with your environment. You experience a symbiosis with
the motorcycle and your environment. You notice things on a motorcycle that you
may not notice in a car. If the road is calm enough, and you can allow all the
senses to just roll into your body, you begin to experience oneness with your
bike and what is around you. You are observing life with a present state of
mind.
In
2005, I was reading an on-line motorcycle web site when I encountered a quote
by the editor that made me smile. These words spoke to me, and help me
articulate what I had been feeling for years, but did not know how to put
accurately into my own words.
We have a wacky
theory for why people like to ride motorcycles, and it goes like this: The act
of riding is a form of meditation, because the concentration that's required to
safely ride a motorcycle tends to focus the mind in a way that eliminates other
mental distractions that might interfere with the mission. This creates a
single-mindedness that, in effect, displaces the continuous stream of thoughts
that normally flow through our consciousness" (WebBikeWorld.com, para. 1).
This
description put into words what I had been feeling for years: The experience of
riding a motorcycle felt like a form of meditation. The more I began to talk to
other riders on the subject, the more I heard the act of riding being referred
to as a form of peace and meditation.
The author of the above quote goes on to talk more about this
comparison:
Thoughts about what to eat, who to meet,
and worries about the common stresses of everyday life, such as pressures from
work and home, disappear from our minds during the ride, because the
concentration that’s necessary to focus on the ride pushes those thoughts far
into the background. (WebBikeWorld.com,
para. 2).
For
some folks, riding a motorcycle down the road can create a different state of
mind.
The focus switches from a
day filled with hundreds of thoughts, to a more open, aware, receiving mode of
body and mind. Riding, simply by its challenging nature, demands a type of
focus that simplifies the thought process. No time to think about the stresses
of the day at that moment. I would agree that riding does displace thoughts,
but not necessarily gets rid of them. They are still there, and may even pop up
while riding. The difference is you may only have a brief second to acknowledge
this thought before it is filed somewhere else in the mind, and the mind brings
back its attention to the experience of riding.
So
how does this meditative feeling come to be? Does the physical act of riding a
motorcycle cause this feeling, or to you have to adopt a mindful feeling before
you get on a motorcycle so you can have a safe ride? Do the sum total of the
senses coming together create this meditative feeling? If we are using the
words: mindfulness and meditation, we should get an idea of what we are talking
about first. I will address this
question by looking at some contemporary ideas of mindfulness and meditation
from authors and sources that are speaking of these ideas independent of
motorcycling.
We
should first look at the word mindfulness. According to the American Heritage
Dictionary, the word “mindful” is
defined as Attentive; heedful (2001, p 834). This definition seems to fit our
discussion. Attentiveness as we have discussed, is a very important part of
riding. To ride is to have
awareness in all directions, all of the time. Dropping your attentiveness, even
for a second can mean disaster. In the book “What the Buddha Taught” written by
Walpola Rahula, meditation is talked about as “producing a state of mental
health, equilibrium and tranquility” (1959, p. 67). Could it be inferred that
this attentiveness or awareness could cause a state of peace.
As
mentioned earlier, the rider and the machine together create an oneness. There
are sensations coming from the motorcycle to the rider. There are also
sensations from the outside environment coming to the rider as well. The rider
on his or her motorcycle becomes the very center of all this stimuli. Dan
Seigel, in his book Mindsight, talks about this idea of the mind being at the
center of awareness. He uses the image of a bicycle wheel to demonstrate a
basic concept of awareness. He asks us to picture the mind as a “wheel of
awareness” (Siegel, 2010, p. 91). There is a rim on the outside that represents
all the possibilities that come into our awareness. The spokes of the rim
connect these aspects of awareness to the hub at the center of the wheel. The
hub is the part that receives all of these stimuli, and is the center of
awareness.
We
can take this idea and modify it a bit to apply it to riding a motorcycle. The
person will represent the center of awareness as the hub. The motorcycle itself
can be a representation of the spokes, and the surrounding environment can
represent the rim. The motorcycle is the mechanism that helps bring awareness
to the rider as the center of the experience. It connects us to the ground physically
and all of the road sensations that come up: potholes, bumps, water, road kill,
etc. It carries us through the air
to feel the wind, see the sights and smell the smells.
The
person becomes the center of the awareness. As the hub, the person is the
receiver of all these things. From maintaining speed on the throttle with the
right hand, to shifting up or down with the left foot, to pulling in the clutch
handle with the left hand, all the while monitoring both front and back brakes
with one hand and one foot. This is the physical manipulation part of riding.
All of the other senses mentioned before are engaged as well. This can be a lot
to take in. To operate a motorcycle, it would be very advantages to the rider
to be in observation mode as opposed to a heavy thinking mode. If you are
distracted, your ride may be unpleasant in many ways.
We
can begin to see the comparison of riding a motorcycle to moving
meditating: In both, you are
aware, you are present, and you are taking everything that is coming up and not
getting too attached to ideas or feelings that deeply, so you can be aware of
the experience at hand. You are taking in the tiniest of sounds, smells and
physical body awareness. To
explore this further, generally speaking, in a sitting type meditation, you are
sitting in a position that is conducive to breathing and just being present.
Breathing in mediation is an essential component to the experience. The breath
can be the anchor to keep your mind from wondering all over the place. If you are
just focusing in on the breath coming and falling out, you are less focused at
all of life’s distractions at that vey moment. Vietnamese monk and author,
Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, “Whenever you mind becomes scattered, use your breath
as a means to take hold of your mind again” (Hanh, 1975, p.15)
Riding journal-I
wanted to explore the idea of using breath work on the motorcycle. Does this
component for meditation work the same way on a motorcycle as it does for
sitting meditation? I began a journal of focusing on breathing from my
motorcycle rides. I first experimented with paying attention to the rhythms of
my breathing as I was on the motorcycle.
In later experiments, I did breath work and mediation before I even left
the house and got on my motorcycle to see if there was a difference in effect.
4/23/10-“Have
been experimenting focusing on my breathing while riding. I first began trying
a long inhale and a long exhale while going down back roads on the way the way
to work. No hurry, just following the breath. Instantly I noticed how difficult
this was going to be. I could not sink up my slow, steady breathing to the pace
of the traffic. I tried different patterns; long in, long out, long in short
out, Short in short out. The pace of the breath seemed to following my reaction
to the flow of the traffic. I also noticed that I held my breath as well. Have
I always done this?”
2/24/10-“Found
that on longer straighter roads in the country, my ideal breath was long
inhale, and long exhale. This felt the most natural of the breath patterns.
Took the highway home from the ride and it was very windy. I was really
concentrating on keeping the bike steady on the highway and I was scared a bit.
I was scared enough not to try and focus on the breath. Got off the highway.”
2/26/10-“Coming
home after work around 9pm. Road was pretty clear except for stoplights.
Holding my breath again. Hard to match breath with the frequent stoplights.
Before I headed home, I went on the loop near my house that a river runs by.
The road was completely open, and I got to lock onto my breathing. Wow, this
felt great! Just focusing on the in and out of my breath actually made me slow
the motorcycle down slightly to take in more of the ride. I have been riding
along time, yet this felt like a new feeling to me.
4/29/10-“Got
onto more back, country roads after work and got a chance to stretch out on the
road. No backpack, no rushing anywhere, no traffic, just riding. Got to feel
the feeling again of being in sync with my bike and all around me. Big smile,
this is great! Sometimes it would only last for a few seconds due to the
traffic.”
5/1/10-“Started
to try and use the breath before I went riding this time. Sat for about 20
minutes with my eyes closed before I headed out, just watching my breath come
in and out. I felt very centered as I mindfully put on my safety gear. Hopped
on the bike and went the back roads to Walden Pond in Concord Ma. I felt very
calm as I pulled out into traffic for the first time. I felt very happy to find
that I could focus on my breath again without reacting to quickly to my
environment. This is a good thing. I got to “plan ahead” more. I could see
things happening further down the road this time. My awareness of what was
happening had expanded to encompass a further distance in front of me.”
5/2/10-“This
time I tried both using the breath 20 minutes before a ride and during the ride
itself. This seems to be the best trial yet. Got up early in the morning,
Sunday and headed out at 8am. Seems to be a good time to be on the road. The
breath work before the ride was no problem. It took a minute or two to get into
the rhythm of breathing out on the road. The sensation of riding from this last
trial made things feel like floating. I was not looking down at my speed or
looking at my handlebars. I had my eyes softly gazing in front of me, aware of
all I could see forward or side-to-side. I knew the bike was under me, but I
felt like I was floating a few feet above the road. I might have felt this
feeling in the past and not noticed, but I was distinctly aware of the
sensation at this moment. To compare this to the feeling I get when I meditate,
I would say that the sensations are almost identical. The only real difference
is the level of active participation with the motorcycle as opposed to sitting
in my room in a chair when I meditate.
I am very excited to continue this experimentation with breath focus
from this point forward.”
Was
I alone in these feelings? I thought it would be a good time to check in with
other motorcycle riders. I frequent a site on the Internet that talks about the
many adventures and wonders of motorcycle riding. I decided to put up a post to
see how other folks’ thought about the subject of the meditative feelings that
biking seemed to bring. I posted a thread called “Motorcycling as a
meditation,” and got an overwhelming response! Seems other folks’ had some
thoughts on the subject as well. I tried not to lead things too much when I
posed the question: “What is it about riding that brings you peace?”
I
started first by just looking at common words that came up. When I did this
tally, the thread was new, and there were about 19 people who had responded at
this point. The thread has more than doubled since then. Either this exact word
came up or a variation of it:
1.
Focus-10
2.
Meditation-4
3.
Sound-3
4.
Smell-3
5.
Speed-3
6.
Wind-3
7.
Peace-2
8.
“Pick a line”-2
9.
Breathing-2
It
seems that some common themes and ideas coming out from the question that I put
forth. Some responses from riders were as short as one sentence. Some were
almost a whole page. The level of information was great enough to make this
paper endless. I emailed a few of the riders to get permission to use ideas and
quotes for my research. Some riders will remain anonymous, others allowed me to
use their screen names.
Reg
Kittrelle-“Focus
is the key component in riding successfully. Risk exercise puts the body at an
alert stage, which causes certain physiological changes. The positive part of
this is that it focuses the mind. On the negative side, it can disrupt a normal
breathing pattern and cause an adrenal and endorphin surges which impedes
smooth operation.”
The
word focus has come up a lot in my research so far. Riding does demand
attention of the mind and body. As I have found on my riding and journaling,
the natural risk of riding a motorcycle can also can make your attention go
elsewhere and interrupt a normal thought pattern or breathing pattern.
Blue
& Yellow-“I’ve
said it before and I will say it again: as humans we’re always planning ahead,
thinking about the future. However, when I ride my motorcycle, I exist only in
the now. I guess that the psychologically best way to describe it is that we
enter a flow like state where not much more exists than the road, the
motorcycle and us.”
From
my experience of using breath and meditation, I would agree that staying in the
present is a key component to not allowing distractions to take the mind away
from what it is doing. Ideas, thoughts, feelings, emotions can all pop up when
we are closing our eyes and having a quiet moment. We don’t have to cling on to
any of them to too long, we can just let them go by and return to our breath
and mediation. The same can be said for riding. All kinds of distractions can
come up on the road. We just can come back to riding and let all other things
just go by.
Kamala-“When riding, my mind and senses
becomes all encompassed in the ride.”
Again,
the idea comes up of all the senses coming together as well as the mind.
Whether by our fear, or just plain love of riding, we can enter a state of
oneness with our senses, the motorcycle and the ride itself.
Anonymous-“A few years ago in a wide open
country I rode 130 mph for 15-20 minutes. When I stopped, the sensation was
very much the same as after 40-60 minutes of meditation/yoga. Perception,
attention & focus with a neuro-chemical result.”
Even
though the actual word “speed” was not mentioned very much in the beginning of
this thread, it was alluded to quite a bit. For some, speed did not matter. It
seems for others that the speed at which they are traveling have a relation to
the amount of feeling that someone can have on a motorcycle.
In
meditation, not everyone has the same technique for achieving a certain state
of conscientious. Some use breath, some use visualization, others chant. Does
not matter how you get there, as long as you know what works for you to get
that state.
Motomike_14- “Motorcycling
is a certain escape for me. In some scenarios, there is a definite meditation
to it because I can get away from the norm and the over bearing things involved
in daily life.”
Motorcycling
for sure can be an escape as you twist the throttle down the open road or just
cruise slowing and take in the world. Generally speaking, meditation can be
seen as an escape from our daily lives. I would suggest that rather than
escaping, meditation could offer us a chance to see certain things in a different
light. We may not be able to escape certain thoughts, feelings or emotions.
They are in there (mind and body), part of us, escaping from them may not work
altogether. These feelings or thoughts can pop back up no matter how hard we
try in pushing them away, or running away from. One may use meditation to just
observe things swimming around in our minds and acknowledge them. “You can have
those thoughts and feelings and also be able to just notice them with the
wisdom that they are not your identity. They are simply one part of your mind’s
experience” (Siegal, 2010, p. 91).
If
we get caught up in thoughts in our head, in life, it can cause sorrow or
suffering. Get caught up in thoughts on a motorcycle, you can be putting your
self in great danger. Put another way, by Ted Simon, a man who spent 4 years in
the 70’s riding around the world on a Triumph motorcycle: “Why does the mind
the mind dwell so much on the down side of life, when the present is so
exhilarating and satisfying” (Simon, 1979, p. 24)?
Looked
at so far, is the possibility, that riding a motorcycle can be seen as a form
of meditation or at least helping one get into more of a present state of mind.
From my journal and other’s voices as well, I would venture to claim that this
act of riding has an can improve the quality of people’s lives even if only
briefly. From some, it decreases stress, for others, their awareness is
heightened, for some it is just a relaxing experience they do not need to put
words into.
Non-mindful state-So what happens on
the other side of the coin? What can be the results if a present state of mind
is not found on the motorcycle, or in our daily lives? As we has briefly
mentioned earlier, not being mindfully in tune with what you are doing a
motorcycle can have dangerous or even fatal results. There are two phrases I
would like to use here to help demonstrate what mindful and non-mindful states
may do for us: Pick a line and Target
fixation.
Target fixation- When I was 16, I took a driver education course.
A phrase kept coming up, called target fixation. I remember being basically
told, that where you eyes go, the car will go. If you stare at the yellow line
in the middle of the road, you and then vehicle will be drawn towards it. This
is even more exaggerated on motorcycle. The motorcycle is more responsive to
the rider’s body movements. The person on the motorcycle has to take in all of
the surroundings ahead and his or her peripheral vision. If you get stuck, or
fixated on one object, you can be drawn right towards it. This point could not
be better summed up by Carlo Strenger, PhD: “The key to avoiding potholes or
rocky slopes is to detach our gaze from them. Miraculously, if you do not look at the danger, but rather where
you want to go, the bike will effortlessly lean into the corner and go where
you want it to” (Strenger, 2004, p. 647).
In meditation, this theory can apply as well. If we are trying to
focus on our breathing or object of our meditation while we are meditating,
this may be helpful at keeping us in the moment. Other thoughts can and do come
up. The problem could be when we lose our breath or focus, and start to fixate
on one of the thoughts in our head floating by. We could latch onto an old thought
or feeling and be drawn right into it completely, forgetting that we are
sitting quietly, meditating.
Pick a line- The phrase “pick a line” was mentioned a few
times in the thread that I had riders respond to. I don’t know exactly where
the phrase started, but I would guess it came from or is used a lot in
motorcycle racing. I have only heard of this phrase in reference to motorcycles
so far. This phrase is similar and different from our previous term. As I said
before, the bike will go where your eyes go. In picking a line, you are
intentionally looking at something, usually contours, colors, or shapes of a
road as you are riding. You are picking where you want the bike to go. However,
you are not fixating on the particular object or spot in the road for a great
length of time. Your focus is softer, and you are taking in the whole picture.
If you are about to go around a corner and you know there is pothole on the
outside of the corner of the road, you will look ahead to inside of the corner
so you can avoid the pothole. You are looking through the area of the turn, not
directly into it. If you look directly at the pothole as you are riding, you
will be drawn right towards it.
How can picking a line work for meditation? Since we may not want to
fixate on a thought, feeling, or emotion that has entered our conscientious
while we are meditating. Instead, we want to use our soft focus to keep us
anchored while meditating. Softly focusing on the breath, an object or even a
chant can keep us anchored to what we are doing in meditation. We are in sense,
picking our line. The line is the method we chose to use to stay on track with
what we are doing. We are choosing to look objectively at things coming and
going. We are not using hard focus on anyone thing, we are again taking in all
things, but the line is holding us on track.
The consequences of non-mindful riding and non-mindful meditative
practice can be seen as similar. However, if we can learn something from these
phrases, for just motorcycling alone, we might find that developing the correct
perception can help add to the experience of motorcycling as a meditative
experience. “Looking far enough and developing depth of vision does not just
increase your safety and speed. It generates pleasure, harmony, and a sense of
effortlessness that, at moments turns motorcycling into a meditative
experience” (Strenger, 2004, p. 648).
In the end, there can be many reasons one could call motorcycling a
form a meditation. From the physical act of riding that can produce a state of
mindfulness by its attentive nature, to the heightening of the senses, which
can cause increased awareness. Through my personal riding journals and input
from other riders, it can be seen that motorcycling can be thought of as an
experience that can bring clarity, joy and a sense of peace.
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