People.

(shudder)

Nah, I'm just kidding; people are cool. They (we) can be evil, and jerky, and douchey, and creepy, but nearly all of them (us), at least when they (we) are by themselves (ourselves), are cool. But this post isn't about seeing people as individual persons or cool, this is about people. The groups. The collection of minds and bodies that is noisy, that burns stuff, that marches around shouting bad poetry into megaphones. This is about the crowds that fill an area with sounds of slurping, and coughing, and sniffling, and whispering, and street-noises...

A group of people at their most boisterous is what makes a meditator and an LSAT student better.

Why?

Because reaching a 178 or kensho in a perfect environment, while impressive, is not a mark of mastery and will likely not be replicated without the same environment.

Now for a personal story: In the final months of my year of LSAT study, I was performing very well on practice tests: 171+ was the norm. My highest was a 179. My average, on 30 tests, was a 175. These numbers came after three months of six hours of study a day, two practice tests a week scoring 154-164. In these early months, I had noticed an increase in my score when I worked at the library. The library--and its flora and fauna of like-minded studiers--added four points to my practice test. Furthermore, one California roll and one cup of coffee, two hours before a practice test, bumped my score up another few notches. Taking ten deep breaths to shut out the noise around me before I began the first section added another couple of points. And so on.

But my study was not entirely based on the examination of my eating and breathing habits, I would often ascribe my poorer performances to something either present or lacking in the external world. For example, if my score had dipped from a 173 to a 171, I would blame it on the noisy MCAT student across the table, or the second California roll, or the pretty girl with the evil eye, or whatever I could conjure up. The list of culprits was limitless.

When the end of test day rolled around, I convinced myself that I had done well; any failure was due to the noisiness/crowdedness of the test center, the guy with a remarkable body odor, or to the 7-10 students who left mid-test (people--more than two--got up and ran out of the room, sobbing). A month later, when the scores were released, I saw that I tanked. I got more than ten poins less than what I thought was a "bad" score.

After a week or so of sitting and counting my breaths, I admitted to myself that what I had mistaken as thoroughness was really nothing more than well-argued superstition: I had been basing my performance on the number of California rolls, coughing MCAT students, and weeping adults. I should have just skipped the rationalizations and blamed it on Saturn's position or my father's sins.

Maybe those weeping people did disrupt the test center, but I didn't have to count how many. And maybe the guy next to me did have a bit of a hygeine problem, but in the end, it was me who decided to construct the narrative about how it came to pass (he woke up late, took a rinse instead of a shower, grabbed coffee--not breakfast--and hustled to the center; the June sun, however, caused his body to perspire, and because he didn't use soap blah blah blah)...I should have been working on the test in front of me.

It's true that digestion, noise, and everything else in the multiverse has an effect on LSAT performance and study (and meditation, and sexual performance, and creativity, ad infinitum), but that doesn't mean the effect needs to decide the raw score. I would have saved myself hundreds of dollars in materials and fees and even a few trips to the doctor's office if I would have relegated the external factors to the scenery and not cast them in leading roles.

And what this anecdote brings us to is this: mastery of any kind--LSAT, Zen, whatever--is only achieved in circumstances intially regarded as "shitty."

After the LSAT student learns the proper methods for diagramming Formal Logic, and identifying Conclusions and Evidence, s/he should hone these skills in noisy places where people come and go. Taking a practice test while seeing Puscifer, live, is a step too far. But going to the park or the mall where a mild level of chaos is happening all around is a perfect way to acclimate to test day imperfections.

As for the meditator, s/he knows that only zazen ends when s/he rises from the pillow. Meditating continues throughout the day and into the next. And the best time to meditate is in the presence of people--especially those that s/he might not immediately get along with. It's these people that offer the meditator an opportunity to engage with evil, jerkiness, douchery, and creepiness in a headspace where s/he can admit, "Oh, I see myself in them."