- Meditation

Buddhists meditate in ways that are appropriate to their character and stage along the path.  The aim of Buddhist meditation is to understand the truth about the way things are. Different Buddhist groups use slightly different methods, but all emphasize that it is important for a person to have a meditation teacher. One important kind of meditation is samatha, or calming, which relaxes and calms the mind. It may also depend on the body being relaxed, which is why Buddhists often meditate sitting in a lotus posture. 

Another kind of meditation, which is possible once the mind is calm, develops clear insight into inner thoughts and emotions. This is called vipassana, which means insight or clarity. There is also an emphasis on mindfulness, a total awareness of the present moment, with no distractions. The aim is to be totally alert at all times and in all activities, not just in a quiet room during a meditation session.  Another meditation emphasizes loving kindness, or metta, first of all in a person's own heart, and then flowing outward toward the whole world.

Meditation of Body and Breath

Traditionally we learn to meditate while sitting cross-legged, often using a cushion beneath our backsides. However, a cross-legged position is not necessary. You can also sit in a straight-backed chair. Here are some basic instructions:

- Straighten your back and sit erect, but not rigid. Don’t lean to either side, or try to bend forward or backward. Let your shoulders drop naturally.

- Keep your head straight and drain in your chin slightly.

- Let your tongue rest lightly on the roof of your mouth, with lips and teeth gently closed.

- Place your hands in your lap, with two thumbs touching lightly.

- Keep your eyes closed or half-closed.

- With jaws relaxed, begin by breathing in through the nostrils, then out through the nostrils. Concentrate on the physical sensation of air going in and out of the nostrils. Simply observe our breathing at that very present point and focus on nothing else.

- Whatever occurs while in meditating – noises, an itch, a memory, let it go and return your focus to the breathing.

- Keep your body still and your breathing free and easy.

- Stay loose, open and accepting, while maintaining contact between your mind attention and that sensation of breathing.

- Enjoy the moment.

What we mean by “Let Go of Your Thoughts”

Sometimes when we first start meditation practice, we seem to be swarmed with even more thoughts and feelings than usual. The fact is that they are always there. Thoughts are considered one of the six sensory fields. Thoughts are objects of the mind, just as itch the object of feeling of the body, sights the objects of the eyes, sounds the objects of the ear, smell the object of the nose, and taste the object of the tongue.

“What do I do with my thoughts?” is a question often asked. Some think meditation is about suppressing thoughts or trying not to think. This is a major misconception. In meditation, we bring awareness to everything, including our thoughts and feelings. We are cultivating, present moment-to-moment awareness, to be conscious, awake and aware.

Of course, you will have thought in meditation. Thoughts arise all the time, likes waves on an ocean. You don’t have to iron out the ocean. Just notice the waves as they arise and disappear on the ocean’s surface.

In meditation, we maintain that same attitude regarding our thoughts. We observe the process of thinking. We notice there is a thought; we watch it arise and let it go, and let it pass as we continue breathing,

As we get deeper in meditation, we notice that the breath gets more still, the body gets quieter and the thoughts become calmer. This is not the primary goal of meditation, but it is a beneficial side effect and sign of progress.

Through meditation, we come to know that we are not our thoughts. As we develop what we often referred as “a concentrated mind,” our thoughts lose the power to upset us or throw us topsyturvy. We learn that we have a life apart from our thoughts. We are not what we think. We create our thoughts and we are responsible for our thoughts, but we are not limited by them or enslaved by the thinking process.

In meditation, we simply watch and become aware of our thoughts as they arise. We label them as “thinking”. We don’t judge them or be controlled by them. In meditation, we also make a point of not building upon our thoughts or feelings. Think of each of your thoughts as a wave on the ocean of awareness. No matter how large or unusual your waves, the boundless ocean retains its essential stillness. The ocean of stillness never leaves its bed no matter what kind of waves are moving along the surface.

On retreat it may be easier to meditate, since that is what everyone has come to do. Yet, returning home to busy, modern life it’s hard to maintain mindfulness and calm awareness.

How can we bring the benefits of meditation into busy daily lives?

Slowing down is a way to nourish the roots of mindfulness. We can do this wherever we are, in a monastery, but also at home and in the workplace. We talk about creating world peace, but people must also be concerned with creating mental peace – making their minds healthy and calm. And a healthy mind comes from mindfulness.

When you’re at work or when you are unable to sit for a longer period in a quiet time, you can enjoy a few moments of mindfulness.

Practice: One-minute Meditation

Take a minute every hour during the day to do this. Word hard for 59 minutes, then take a one-minute break, and totally focus your mind on your breathing. Close your eyes, if you can. Or, if you’re at your desk in a busy office, keep your eyes open at a point in front of you. Quietly, peacefully, count out 15 breaths – that’s about a minute. Don’t think about the future, don’t think about anything that one minute. Just keep your mind totally free from all those things. When that minute is over, you have added some clarity to your mind. You have added some strength to continue on for the other 59 minutes in the hour. Then, vow to yourself than when another hour has passed you’ll give yourself another one-minute mindfulness break.

You can do this at your kitchen table or office desk. You can do this after you’ve parked your car and turned off the engine. You can do this during a restroom break. If you do this kind of one-minute meditation the whole day, at the end of an eight hour work period you’ll have spent eight minutes in meditation. You’ll be less nervous, less tense and less exhausted at the end of the day. Plus, you’ll have a more productive and healthier day, both psychologically and physically.

It is up to each person to take charge of their own mind. Each one of us must learn how to slow down. You know, unmindful people are always in the majority. You can easily lead yourself down that same path if you let yourself. Don’t get caught in this trap!  Wherever you are – at home, at a retreat center, in your car, or in line at the grocery store- mindfulness can rescue us from stressful, painful mental states.

Mindfulness is like one’s “emergency kit.” It’s like when you cut or burn yourself – you immediately reach for a first-aid-kit to treat the wound. The same is true for the mind. When the mind is pain, when it is agitated and distracted, when you are suffering mentally, you really need some first-air to come back to mental health.

But if don’t take care of painful mental states, they can grow worse – just like a wound. At their worst, we slip into a depression or nervous breakdown. And our mental suffering can manifest itself in all kinds of illnesses, from stomach problems to heart disease. So, many things are going on in your mind!  Only when something triggers a breakdown or serious illness do you begin to look back at all the time you’ve spent making your life chaotic.

So, you must bring yourself back to mindfulness wherever you are, all the time. So along with your regular meditation practice, add into your daily life practices like this one-minute meditation. Train yourself in this way – as soon as some psychic irritation arises, stop and take care of it before you proceed on with other activities in your day.

Finding Sense in Sensation - The crucial role of the body in meditation

The Buddha was the foremost scientist of mind and matter. What makes him a peerless scientist is his discovery that craving (tanha) or, by extension, aversion arises from sensation on the body.

Before the Buddha’s time, little of any importance was given to bodily sensation. Spiritual masters would dissuade people to turn away from sensory objects and to ignore their tactile sensations.

However, the bodily sensation is the central to the Buddha’s discovery in determining the root cause of suffering and the means to cessation. The Buddha said that when we examine the bodily sensation more closely, we will realise that when we come into contact with a sense-object through our six sense organs, (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind) we cling to the sensation it creates, giving rise to wanting and delight, or aversion (rejecting it or wanting it to cease). These sensations are the material we will have to work with.

The first step is to train the mind to become so sharp and sensitive that it will learn to detect even the subtlest sensations. That job is done by awareness of the breath (anapana) on the small area under the nostrils, above the upper lip. If we concentrate on this area, the mind becomes sharper and sharper, subtler and subtler. This is the way we begin to become aware of every sort of sensation on the body.

Next, we feel the sensations but don’t react to them. We can learn to maintain this equanimity toward sensation by understanding their transitory nature. Every sensation shares the same characteristic of its arising and passing away, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, gross or subtle. We must experience sensation’s nature, understand its flux and learn not to react to it. This is the practice we have to experience by ourselves.

As we reach deeper states of awareness, we will able to detect subtler and subtler sensations or vibrations of greater rapidity, arising and passing with greater speed. In these deep states, our mind will become so calm, so tranquil, so pure that we will immediately recognise any impurity accompanying the agitated state and make the choice to refrain from reacting adversely. It becomes clear to us that we can’t harm anybody without first defiling ourselves with emotions like hate, anger or lust. If we do this, we will come to an experiential understanding of the deep truth of impermanence (anicca). As we observe sensations without reacting to them, the impurities in our minds lose their strength and cannot overpower us.

The Buddha was not merely giving sermons, he was offering a technique to help people reach a state in which they could feel the harm they do to themselves. Once we see this, ethics (sila) follows naturally. Just as we pull our hand from a flame, we step back from harming ourselves and others.

It is a wonderful discovery that by observing physical sensations on the body, we can eradicate the roots of mental defilement. As we practise more, negative emotions will become far more conspicuous to us much earlier; as soon as they arise, we will become aware of sensations and have the opportunity to make ethical choices. But first we need to begin with what is present to us deeply in our minds at the levels of sensation. Otherwise, we will keep ourselves and other miserable for a very long time.

"Vipassana Meditation is a way of self-transformation through self-observation"