Now you see it - Now you don’t

When I was about two or three I had a curious obsession. I used to sit in front of our television and turn it on, just so that I could turn it off. My objective, which I remember as one of my earliest memories, was to find the point at which the little sparkle on the black screen disappeared. At what point was it there, and when was it not? I do not know why I found this so delightful. Was there a point when it ceased to exist? Could you find the point at which it started to exist, too? So I went on turning the TV on and off, waiting for ages to see what happened. Sparkle there; sparkle not, sparkle there; sparkle not. All the while I was doing this, my mother was becoming a bit worried. Was this normal? Was I retarded? She took me to a local clinic to have me checked and the people there said that some little children did, for some reason, just stare at things. They reassured her it was quite normal.

“Quite normal”. These are my teacher's words of reassurance at any new meditation state. Did I know then that I wanted to practise samatha meditation? Absolutely not. When I tried it for the first time it all just seemed impossible.

I wonder how many other “quite normal” things are remembered later as some first sense of what meditation is all about?