Po attempts to meditate in “Kung Fu Panda 4.”

In Kung Fu Panda 4, released earlier this year, there is a very important scene hidden in the midst of animals fighting each other. The films have always shown that martial prowess is connected to inner peace, but the most recent iteration gives a glimpse into just how difficult meditation can be.

The scene shows Po, the titular Kung Fu Panda voiced by Jack Black, sitting underneath a cherry blossom tree and attempting to chant “inner peace, inner peace.” At first, he is distracted by the fact that inner peace sounds a lot like “dinner peas,” but then we get a visualization of exactly what confronts anyone who chooses to practice meditation – his inner voices are depicted on screen as conflicting, distracting, and not at all conducive to seeking serenity. One wonders what’s for dinner, another wonders if we are alone in the universe, and several of them speak over each other as Po tries to find peace. When Po asks how many inner voices he has, one says, “you don’t want to know.”

That sounds right to me. I found my way to meditation about a year and a half ago in my decades-long pursuit of mastering my anxiety. Honestly, it has no business working. You try to think about nothing. How is that supposed to make a difference to a mind that is a whir of activity? And yet, it works. In making meditation a part of a spiritual practice, I found that I gained a unique superpower. I could think about nothing and push the negative, anxious thoughts out of my head. Like any activity or skill, you get better at it the more you practice, and pretty soon, you can apply it in real-world situations.

When I first started my meditation practice, I had to confront a central fact: my mind was a disordered place. If you sit down and try to think of nothing, and you haven’t practiced meditation before, you will immediately be confronted with just how loud your inner voices are. They demand attention and energy. In my case, they all seem to think that they are very important, but meditation taught me that almost all of my thoughts are just noise – random bits of data that my mind throws out into my consciousness that have nothing to do with reality or even what I might be doing at the current moment.

The Buddhist tradition has a whole set of literature about how to meditate, and one of the problems that comes up time and time again is itchiness. In the absence of stimulus, your body will tell you to scratch any number of itches on your body – it’s something to do in the middle of a practice that is all about doing nothing. There are a lot of ways to handle itchiness, but my favorite is to just observe it and notice that it will fade over time. The same is true of our thoughts. If we become curious about them, rather than afraid of them, then we can move into a space of observation. The observer of the itch is not themselves itchy. The observer of anxiety is (well, hopefully) not themselves anxious, or at least not as anxious as they were.

I was delighted to see a clear representation of just what it looks like to meditate in a kids’ movie. Meditation is hard work, and it is rare to be successful the first time one practices it. But, if like me and Po, you’re seeking a way to find inner peace, you should probably give it a try. I’m still mad that it works, but it does.