Basics of Meditation

We all know that meditating on a regular basis is “good” for us, so why is it so difficult to do? We each will need to ask ourselves three questions: Why meditate? What is meditation? And how to meditate?

To begin, we can ask ourselves why would we want to meditate in the first place? Why are you trying? …you may want less stress in your life, or maybe you want to have a spiritual experience…but don’t we all just want to be happy? This is something innately within all beings. We want to not suffer, we want to be happy. Thomas Jefferson thought it was so important, he made it one of the top three inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. The Buddha thought it was so important he noted that life is suffering as his very first teaching. No matter how unskillfully we think or act, we are all just trying to be happy or trying to relieve suffering, either our own or someone else’s, in whatever conditioned way we have learned. The Buddha also recognized that we suffer because we seek happiness in inherently dissatisfying ways.

So, why meditate? To increase the happiness in ourselves and others. But more importantly, each of us must find our own specific motivation. When the going gets tough, you will need to be clear on why you sat down to meditate in the first place. Meditation can be a powerful transformer, but it doesn’t work to just read about it or hear about it. It requires actual practice. So ask yourself, why try? What is going on with me or my life that is motivating me to meditate? What motivated you to read this material? Be honest with yourself. Because when the alarm goes off tomorrow morning, and you’re supposed to get up and meditate, at that moment, when you really just want to hit the snooze button, you’ll need to remind yourself of this specific motivation.

Second, what is meditation? Meditation in all its various forms begins with one objective: To train the mind. The mind is the most powerful tool that we have. The mind determines how we perceive everything and everyone in our life. The interpretation that our mind gives any situation is so strong that we believe that it is absolutely true. When you walk down the street, you see people who you didn’t know. Think about some stranger you recently. Bring them to mind. What were they wearing? How did they look? Now recognize some judgment you may have about them. What opinion did you already form about them? It seems so real, these opinions and perspectives that we have, yet they are mostly built on our conditioned habits of relating everything we see, feel, experience with something we previously saw, felt, experienced.

In this moment, point to your gizzard. Where did you point? How did you decide where to point? We search our internal database for any information we might have about a gizzard. Maybe something to do with chickens? Maybe something to do with eating? Thoughts and sensations and experiences might seem so real, but mostly we are making up stories about what is going on around us, based on our experiences in the past. Meditation is about helping us recognize these stories for what they are. Just stories. We have the power to transform our lives by looking at our stories, dropping the stories that aren’t serving us, and seeing things and people, including ourselves, more clearly. This is what meditation is all about.

What Meditation is NOT about is stopping our thoughts. Anyone who has tried to meditate even once knows the frustration of trying to stop thinking. The more we try to stop, the more it seems we think. Our mind is like a little puppy running around with too much energy, running from one thought to thought, sometime with very little connection. We spend most of our time either rehashing the past or fantasizing about the future, either can be pleasant or painful, but both the past and the future take us away from being fully present in this moment. Meditation is training the mind to see ourselves and the world more clearly. So, we begin by making friends with our thoughts and emotions, not pushing them away, not clinging to them, not ignoring them, letting them rise and fall of their own natural process.

Meditation falls in two primary categories: concentration or insight. There are techniques for increasing the level of concentration on a particular object, like a candle or a mantra or our breath, and techniques for increasing the level of consciousness we bring to the entirety of our experience.

In Buddhism, the term for concentrated meditation is shamatha. In shamatha practice, we start by focusing all our attention on an object, like our breath or a candle or a mantra. If you’re new to meditation, we usually start with our breath. Breathing in, know that you are breathing in, Breathing out know that you are breathing out. Be aware of all the sensations in your body of breathing. It helps to begin by focusing on one specific area, like the rising and falling of your chest as you breathe. Imagine experiencing each breath like that first breath you take after having your head under water. Breathe naturally but with full awareness. Then, when you realize that you have become distracted and are no longer focused on your breath, you gently, ever-so gently silently note, “thinking” and return awareness to the breath. Again and again as many times as needed. This is the basics of meditation.

The second primary type of meditation is insight or Vipassana. Once we start to concentrate our attention, the mind begins to settle down. The thoughts may still be coming and going, but slowly the hum of random thoughts have less power over us. In Vipassana or insight meditation, awareness then rests in the moment of just being, just sitting. No place to go, nothing to do, resting in the natural perfection of just living. Often, we make things a whole lot harder than they need to be. Just taking it all in, and seeing everyone as interconnected and perfectly placed. In Dzogchen, a particulat Buddhist tradition, it’s called the Natural Great Perfection. Seeing the innate perfection in things left just as they are. Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist teacher, says that 50% of meditation is simply self-acceptance. Carl Rogers, a noted psychologist, says that we must first accept ourselves, before we can truly change.

So, meditation is not just about focusing on our breath, that is the first step. Meditation is a process to reveal the world around us and within us in all its glory, no matter what form. The flower is beautiful but will wilt and become garbage, the garbage will decompose and become a beautiful flower. With meditation, we can begin to look at life more wholistically. Things that we think are beautiful and things that we think are grotesque, they are all part of this incredible process called living. Meditation is ultimately about how to see it all and maintain a compassionate and loving presence--the happiness that lies deep within each moment, regardless of what is happening.

Third, we need to know how to meditate. As many of you may have already figured out, there are many different ways to train the mind--transcendental meditation, Insight meditation, Zen meditation. How to sort it all out? Well, we can start with these basic teachings, and then it’s time to explore the possible traditions. This upcoming Wednesday, September 29, 2010, at 7 pm – 9 pm, you will have an opportunity to experience some of the different kinds of meditation and the groups here at Unity Temple that practice those methods—Thich Nhat Hanh, Korean Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Vipassana--find what fits for you. This is an opportunity to find a small sangha to support your meditation practice.

I encourage everyone to try creating a meditation practice at home. It takes three essential ingredients. First, pick a place in your home, with a chair or a cushion. Designate a special room or corner as the place for meditation. You can make it fancy or plain, just make it consistent. Second, pick a time. It helps to have a specific time in the morning or at night, where you commit to making meditation the number one priority. Sit for five minutes or 20 minutes, the amount of time is less important than the consistency of doing it each day. Third, pick a practice, a type of meditation. I encourage those of you beginning to start with some guided meditations. I can suggest some CD’s that I’ve found helpful. So, you pick a place, a time and a type. That’s it.

Armed with our personal motivation, knowing what is to be done, and making it a priority to do so, we can now begin incorporating this simple practice into our daily lives, a simple practice that turns out to be incredibly transformative. Give yourself 30 days to try this “different” activity. Albert Einstein said that we can never solve a problem with the process that caused the process in the first place. Try out this new process, and let me know how it goes.

Lama Surya Das, a Dzogchen master, relates to life in this way, “Things are not as they seem to be, nor are they otherwise. So, we might as well burst out laughing.”