Meditation
- thinking of the next meal,
- something that happened just before I came to sit,
- planning a meeting for tomorrow,
- a book that I have read,
- some memory from the past,
- a noise outside and the story that I create around it,
- an emotional reaction to someone moving around in another room.
- Find a friend or family member who you can text/call/email each day at an agreed time to say that you have completed your meditation, or even to share that you couldn’t bring yourself to sit today. That person doesn’t have to be a meditator themselves, simply someone who supports you in what you are doing. Someone who does not judge you for how you show up, but is willing to listen and where appropriate offer some words of support.
- Find a book/audio recording of someone who inspires you within the realm of meditation practice and read or listen to some words by that person when you are looking for encouragement.
- Build a support group through social media where you can check in with each other, and encourage each other in your practice.
- In a time other than this period of social-distancing when I am writing this, look for a meditation group near to you.
- Day 8 Creating a place to sit
- Day 9 Beware of waiting for silence before you meditate
- Day 10 Meditate where you are
- Day 11 The Breath
- Day 12 Take a break
- Day 13 Boredom
- Day 14 Just show up
- What does boredom look like?
- Does it have a colour?
- Does it have a shape?
- Does it have a smell?
- What does it feel like?
- Is it solid, or changing?
- Get into a comfortable meditation posture.
- Reflect for a moment on your motivation.
- If you are using one, start your meditation timer.
- Take a couple of deep breaths to help bring yourself to your cushion, to let go of the activities of the day so far.
- Allow the breath to slowly settle into its natural rhythm. Don’t force the breath. Just allow the breath to breathe itself.
- Gently bring your awareness to the breath as it enters and leaves the nose. Don’t get involved in the breathing, just be a silent observer to the breath’s presence, the flow of the breath.
- If you loose the breath by getting lost in thoughts, stories, external distractions, just note the thought or distraction and without judgement simply come back to the breath. How ever often you get lost in thoughts, when you catch yourself gently come back to the breath.
- If it helps, count each in and out breath as “1”, in and out, “2”, in and out, “3” until you reach “10”, and then come back to “1” again. If you loose count, don’t judge yourself or concern yourself with what number you are at, just come back to “1”.
- At the end of your meditation session, dedicate the benefits of your meditation.
- standing in line at the checkout at the grocery store, bank, etc
- at this time of the COVID-19 virus, standing in line waiting to get into the store
- when you go to the toilet
- out walking
- working in the garden
- are you on the computer? Stop periodically to breathe and come back to yourself. Perhaps every 30, 45 minutes? There is software available for most platforms to remind to take a break
- while waiting to pick the car up from a service
- sitting in the park, on the beach, etc
- are you on your phone? Put it down and meditate instead
- Day 1 The Meditation Posture
- Day 2 Beware of looking for good and bad meditations
- Day 3 Meditation Timer
- Day 4 Frequency - how often and for how long?
- Day 5 Familiarization
- Day 6 Meditation is a marathon not a sprint
- Day 7 Motivation & Dedication
- Find a time or times in the day that work for you.
- Times that fit into your wider life schedule.
- Early morning is a good time, when the mind is settled and the world is waking up. However, if that is not a good time for you, that’s fine.
- Better to sit for a short time everyday/every other day/etc, than grit your teeth and sit for an hour one day and never again for a week or two.
- What do I mean by short time? In essence I mean a time that is comfortable for you. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever you are easily comfortable with. No rights or wrongs here. You will know what works for you. Use that. You can increase it in your own time with experience, if you want to.
May Meditation Nudge 20
Meditate from where you are
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
Maybe you have set up a routine for your practice? It might be daily, every other day, maybe twice a day. The schedule will vary for different people and that is fine. Set up a schedule that works for you, not one that works for someone else. One Tibetan teacher was asked what is the highest, read “best”, practice that one can do. His reply was,
The one that works for you.
I want to see results from my practice. I don’t want it to be something that is a burden on my life. When that happens I start skipping my practice. I start thinking of it with distain and decide that there are other things in my life that are more enjoyable. Hearing of others meditating no longer inspires me. I no longer get curious to learn about meditation. It drifts from my life.
So you might hear of people setting themselves what appear to be incredible schedules, or working on meditation practices that you judge to reflect in some way that they are better than you. My advice is to put that down. Start from where you are. Practice from your place, and practice sincerely from that place. When I pace my practice from where I am, the results come.
Not only is meditation a marathon and not a sprint, I should have added that it is also not a race.
May Meditation Nudge 19
Faith
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
At first glance this might appear as an odd subject to bring into the world of meditation. What my intention is, is to offer you another tool to support you in your practice. However, for that tool to work first I have to explain what I am meaning here by the word faith.
If you go to someone for advice, try out what they say and it helps you, you will have more faith in that person and are more likely to listen to them the next time that you need help in that same area. If you read a book, try out the advice that the author shares and that helps you, you will have more faith in that author and be more likely to go back to them for advice on their chosen topics.
So where does this sit with meditation? It sits alongside self-confidence that I was talking about yesterday. As you start to experience the results of your practice for yourself, you will start to develop faith not only in the practice, but also in yourself to realize the fruits of your practice. These experiences are valuable. If you feel as though you are going through a phase of little happening with your practice, or if someone else challenges what you are doing, your faith in yourself and your efforts can help to carry you through.
As my own teacher said,
If someone challenges your practice, practice it.
May Meditation Nudge 18
Self-Confidence
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
My teacher use to say of meditation practice that it was like tasting good food. Once you have tasted good food, you want to go back for more. Similarly with meditation, once you start to taste or experience the fruits of practice, you will find yourself wanting to stay with the practice, to experience more and dive deeper.
Perhaps at the start of your practice there is the enthusiasm that comes with finding and starting something new. That sense of newness overrides any doubts that you have in the practice or in yourself. However, with time maybe doubts start to set in with regard to the efficacy of the practice, can really be of any benefit? You perhaps start to feel the tug of external attractions when it comes time for you to sit. You might have heard that meditation is a practice that takes times, but when you not feeling confident about yourself or the practice, that time can feel too long.
How do you overcome the doubts and build self-confidence in your practice?
Through practicing awareness and mindfulness we will start to experience the fruits of practice in our own mind. The instruction is no longer the words in a book or a meditation teacher. Instead the words become a part of us. We experience them for ourselves in our mind. We make them our own through our practice of meditation. Our mind is no longer a stranger to us, but a part of ourselves that we are beginning to get to know more intimately. We see how busy the mind is. We get to know how it works and how the emotions arise within it. We start to notice what triggers us into the various emotions, and with that familiarization become less fearful of the emotions. We find ourselves bringing awareness and mindfulness into our lives and starting to respond more skillfully when emotions arise within us.
All of this takes time, but as we taste these fruits for ourselves we will know, experience the truth in our own heart. With knowing arises confidence in the practice that brought us to that place.
May Meditation Nudge 17
Awareness and Mindfulness
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
Awareness and mindfulness live side by side when we are meditating. We hear more about mindfulness these days.
Mindfulness is constantly, or as constantly as I can muster, checking that my mind has not wandered off from the object of meditation. If my mind has become distracted and is lost in story, it is mindfulness that catches that and brings it back to the object of meditation.
Awareness is being conscious of what we are giving our attention to in that moment. If my object of meditation is the breath as it enters and leaves the nose, awareness is fully with that sensation, watching the breath come and go and not getting in its way. Simply observing.
In choosing to meditate, in choosing to bring awareness and mindfulness into our lives, we are choosing to live with a form of discipline. Note the word choosing. As a meditator this is not being imposed upon you. It is voluntary. You are voluntarily choosing to bring some control to your mind, to train your mind. You are choosing to not let the mind wander off whenever and wherever it feels like. Further more when it does, you are choosing, you are striving to not react, but rather note the distraction and gently return to the object of meditation using the combined actions of mindfulness and awareness.
May Meditation Nudge 16
No judgement
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
Whatever the object of meditation, for example the breath, on trying to focus on that object you will find yourself distracted by your mind. Sometimes more distractions than other, but still you will be distracted. The distractions can be many things, but for me might look like,
I’m sure that you get the picture. My mind just thinking, being distracted and reacting.
As I have chosen to sit with an object of meditation, when I am distracted I find that that sometimes emotions such as annoyance or anger arise. I am getting annoyed or frustrated with myself that I have lost focus of the object of meditation. I find it can easily happen when I fall into the trap of setting myself standards to meet.
Instead of allowing annoyance to enter your mind, allow yourself to simply note that you have been distracted. Allow there to be no judgement, but a simple acceptance that in that moment you have lost the object of meditation, and with that acceptance return to the breath. However often you are drawn away from the breath, note it, accept it, and gently return to the breath.
In noting and accepting I am applying the ultimate non-violence to myself. I am simply accepting what is and returning to the object of meditation, free of judgement. I might not like what is in my mind, I might not like that I have lost awareness of the breath, but I am training myself to not act out against it - the daily life equivalent being getting lost in addictive or time waisting habits in order to try and blank out what has arisen in the mind.
May Meditation Nudge 15
Community
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
Meditation can be a lonely practice. It is just me sitting with myself. I am choosing to show up and sit with my mind, regardless of how my mind feels. Sometimes I am keen to get to the meditation cushion, sometimes I experience real resistance. My mind feels heavy, I am dealing with life and what I really want to do is distract myself, not sit directly looking at my life.
Getting myself to the meditation cushion can be difficult even if I am blessed with someone to share my sitting with, like a family member or good friend. However, the fact that the other is showing up becomes an impetus for me to show up. “They are sitting and so I can as well.” Somehow that physical presence of the other motivates me to show up as well, even if my meditation practice is a struggle today.
However, perhaps you are a lone meditator with no one in your immediate circle to sit with? Unless you have built a strong muscle of commitment to your meditation practice, come what may, the dedication to showing up can be a struggle and a lonely process. What to do?
My suggestion is look for an accountability partner. This might come in a variety of disguises. Here are some suggestions.
You’ll see that most of these do not require you having someone physically with you, but just knowing that you have someone within reach through technology to help support you in your practice. I encourage you to reach out and ask.
May Meditation Nudges - Second Week
As a compliment to the live meditation sessions that I am running through May on YouTube and archived on my YouTube page, I am sharing tips and advice on meditation practice.
I am calling these brief posts, May Meditation Nudges. Here are the topics and links from the second week. Posts from the first week can be found here.
I hope that you can join me for the May meditations.
If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.
May Meditation Nudge 14
Just show up
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
Sometimes I find that I just don’t have the enthusiasm for meditating. The day in, day out routine of sitting regardless of what is going on in my life just feels too much. It is just another thing to do. And still I sit.
When I lived in the Buddhist Community in South Wales we had a regular meditation practice every morning and every evening. This was easy to attend, even a joy to attend when the community was not busy. However when we were busy with visitors and courses, showing up for these practices while feeling tired was a real effort. Focusing and staying awake were a challenge. When I caught myself nodding off to sleep I wondered what I was doing there. My bed, reading a book, or listening to the radio (one luxury that we were allowed), felt much more appealing.
However, with time I saw that those other options were easy. I could choose to take time off, take a rest, not show if I didn’t feel like it. Or I could choose to just show up, come what may. Yes, at times my meditation was far from focused, but this wasn’t about good or bad meditations. This was about building the habit of showing up to meditate. It was a recognition that to gain benefit from meditation came from making it a priority in my life.
My encouragement to you would be to make showing up be the priority. To not decide not to meditate just on the whim of not feeling like it. Instead, look to build the muscle of forbearance and tolerance. Not a grit the teeth resentment at having to be there, but with an honest recognition that that which is beneficial might not always feel good. That that which helps us is there for us when the going gets tough and not only when the going is easy. That meditation is about familiarization, habit building, and if I just meditate when I am feeling good, that will become my habit and I will loose the strength of applying the meditation practice when life gets difficult - and that is probably when I need it the most.
Give yourself a break if you are hurting. Use your wisdom to decide when a break is beneficial, but have that wisdom be informed by an understanding of the part that meditation is playing in your life.
May Meditation Nudge 13
Boredom
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
I write this about meditation practice, but the ideas can be used just as well in your everyday life.
Boredom can arise in our lives when we are feeling uninspired, disliking and uninterested in what we find ourselves doing in that moment. I find that it can be a heavy state of mind, one that can feel as though my mind is dragging a heavy weight behind it. I experience it as dull, ponderous, thick and ceaseless.
When I sit in meditation I do not know what emotion might arise, but boredom can be one of them. From my experience anything done day in and day out, however important it might be in my life, will have days when I am inspired to be there, and days when I just feel as though I am going through the motions. Devoid of any particular insights, I am just sitting again.
So for the duration of my meditation I might find myself sitting with boredom.
If boredom is present and dragging for your attention, give it your attention. Do not push it away, and also do not engage with it. Rather, watch it. Make boredom the object of your meditation. The problems with boredom come out of seeing it as something solid and unchanging that we do not want. Let’s try and change our relationship with it. You do not have to like boredom, but start from the point of being curious about it. Let’s really get to know it. What is it doing?
So watch it, observe from a detached distance as best you can. As you do so, ask yourself,
These are some starting questions. Stick with these or add your own. The important thing is to be curious and start to get to know this thing called boredom. Like any relationship, do not expect to be comfortable with boredom after a first visit. This will take time, but in time you can develop a more tolerant, open relationship with boredom when it shows up in your meditation and life.
As Meditation Teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche said, in time the boredom,
begins to become cool boredom
May Meditation Nudge 12
Take a break
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
If your set meditation time is 5 minutes, I encourage you to sit through that time. If your set meditation time is 15 minutes, I encourage you to sit through that time. If your set meditation time is 45 minutes, I encourage you to sit through that time. However long your regular meditation time is, I encourage you to sit through that time using your practice as the anchor that navigates you through difficulties that arise - whether in the mind or body.
Sometimes a pain in the body or mind, if sat with, if used as the object of meditation - watching the pain, asking yourself what is its nature? What colour is it? What shape is it? Is it solid, liquid gas? - just the process of watching it, becoming more personal with it, will in time see it pass away.
However, occasionally that is not the case. Maybe a particular difficult state of mind arises out of the blue? Maybe your body starts hurting in a way that just won’t go away? In such circumstances I advise you to take a break. Stretch, breathe, find an expansive view to look out over, stare up at the sky. When you are refreshed and ready, you can come back to your meditation.
May Meditation Nudge 11
The Breath
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
So far I have looked at practicalities of meditation, and not so much at technique. In these nudges I won’t be going into a lot of detail, but intend to give a flavour of what I am talking about. If you have further questions, please do get in touch (see above).
A foundation meditation is awareness of the breath. We breathe every day, the body just breathing itself. We can use the breath as a way to stabilize the mind, to focus the mind, to gain insight into how our mind works, and as preparation and anchor for other meditation techniques.
Here is an outline for a simple breath meditation:
May Meditation Nudge 10
Meditate where you are
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
As well as having your personal meditation place, I recommend looking for opportunities to meditate in your daily life. They might not be as formal as your regular sitting, in fact you might not even be sitting, but they give you the opportunity to keep the familiarization with you practice going and help you bring your meditation into your life.
Places that you might choose to meditate could include,
Use your creativity in looking for those opportunities to meditate. It doesn’t have to be long. Thirty seconds, a minute grabbed here and there keeps the building the acquaintance with your practice.
May Meditation Nudge 9
Beware of waiting for silence before you meditate
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
At first glance this nudge might appear contradictory to yesterday’s post, but it is not. I still advocate for the importance of having your own special place where you go to sit. Having such a place gets me in the right frame of mind for meditating and I look forward to being there. However, for me my meditation place is in my home. At times my home is quiet when I choose to sit, at other times it is not. The disturbances can be all sorts of unexpected everyday occurrences and the time of day doesn’t seem to matter much either, though early morning I am less likely to be disturbed.
The risk is to go looking for silence when you sit, of seeing your meditation as an escape from the noise of life. Sometimes that might have a place, but the important thing is to show up regardless of external circumstances. Meditation is not an escape from life, but a coming back to life, to paraphrase Zen Meditation Master Thich Naht Hanh.
If meditation becomes a habit of finding a place to run to escape the noise of life, its results will be conditional. If I am looking for silence in my move to meditate, I will probably find myself also having to deal with the annoyance that I feel when my meditation is disturbed by external interruptions.
The key is acceptance of what is. I am not suggesting that you don’t ask for what you want, less noise, but accept that sometimes you are not going to get it. If you can change it, great. If not, make do with what is and still meditate.
So still look to create that meditation place, but accept that sometimes it might not have all of the qualities that you are after.
May Meditation Nudge 8
Creating a place to sit
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
When we sit it is helpful, indeed I might say important that we have a place that is conducive to us for calming our mind. A place of our own which is just for sitting. That just to think about this place, wherever we are and whatever we are doing, will bring the mind to a calmer place because of what you associate it with. A space that we look forward to returning to each time that we sit.
Such a place can be a room of your own if you are blessed with enough space at home, or it can be in the corner of a room. You can set a table up there with images and/or pictures of people who inspire you. You can place books on there with words that inspire you, a book that you perhaps pick up and read just before sitting. There might be a candle there, or some flowers. Perhaps you burn some incense just before you sit or use a vaporizer with some essential oils? AND it can just be very simple.
The important thing is that you create a place that is special for you for sitting.
May Meditation Nudges - First Week
Through May I am streaming twice weekly meditation sessions on YouTube. For those who cannot make the live stream, all of the videos are archived on my YouTube page. The schedule can be seen here. As a compliment to the live sessions, I am writing daily short pieces on tips and advice for meditation.
I am calling these brief posts, May Meditation Nudges. Here are the topics and links for the first week.
I hope that you can make the May meditations.
If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.
May Meditation Nudge 7
Motivation & Dedication
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
If you are joining the meditation sessions, you’ll know that just before the sitting starts I suggest that we sit for a moment and reflect on our reason for being there. In saying that I mean what is our motivation, our intention, our goal in deciding to spend a part of our day sitting in meditation? Something is bringing us to the meditation cushion. What is it?
At the end of the meditation, before getting up and resuming our day, I invite us to reflect back on the motivation that we set ourselves at the beginning of the meditation, and in our own way dedicate any benefits that we have received through meditation to the accomplishment of that motivation. You might feel that the benefits are intangible, maybe even questionable? However, we have spent time meditating instead of doing something else. We are building that habit of meditation for ourselves. We are building that muscle of meditation, taking that one step further in our practice. There is benefit alone in that. It is that idea of Familiarization that I spoke about two days ago.
By creating this moment to sit and reflect, we are creating a gap between daily life and our meditation. I am not suggesting that we will not receive benefit if we do not do this, but from my experience giving myself time to reflect on my motivation and dedicating the benefits, cements the practice that little bit deeper in me and helps me to take an awareness of the practice into my life.
May Meditation Nudge 6
Meditation is a marathon not a sprint
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
We live in a world of quick results (a lot of the time). Flick a switch and the light goes on. Look at the speed and capability of the device that you are reading this on.
Meditation is not the place to go for swift results. The results will come but they’ll take time. Meditation teaches me patience and acceptance of myself as I look at my mind, wanting it to be at peace with the world and seeing it struggle at times. An insight comes from one sitting and is gone within five minutes of getting up. It is not embedded into my being. So I go back to the practice.
This is one reason why I said a couple of days back to beware of judging your meditation sessions good or bad. Just stick with the practice. Be patient, and the results will come.
May Meditation Nudge 5
Familiarization
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
My background in meditation comes via the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, specifically the Gelug-pa tradition, which I have been practicing for 30 years now. Although I have complimented my Tibetan practice with studies of other spiritual traditions and philosophies, my center and focus is the Gelug-pa tradition. In speaking about meditation I like to strip the conversation of Buddhist material while keeping the essence of what is useful to a wider audience regarding the practice of meditation.
With this in mind I find it useful to reflect on the Tibetan word for meditation, göm. Göm means ‘to familiarize’. Where I see meditation leading us comes out of this word göm.
Within the context of meditation we are looking to familiarize ourselves with our mind, to get to know it better, to spend time with our mind, to learn to be with and not react to difficult states of mind, and ultimately to transform our mind. The transformation here comes with familiarizing ourselves and developing positive states of mind - love, compassion, patience, generosity, and the like.
May Meditation Nudge 4
Frequency - how often and for how long?
This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.
For me this is a question of quality over quantity. There are no awards in the meditation world for gritting your teeth and trying to sit for as long or as often as you can.
Build slowly and steadily.
If you sit for longer than you are truly comfortable with the danger is that in time you will develop an aversion to meditation. You look at your meditation cushion, you even just think of your meditation cushion and aversion to meditation starts to arise. Meditation starts to be associated with discomfort, mental and physical.
Scheduling & how long for:
In the same way that we can all have good and bad days, you will still have meditations that feel comfortable and others that feel difficult. However, by making your schedule workable for you, you will be able to handle the ups and downs.
As I said above, build slowly and steadily.
May Meditation Nudges
To compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be running through May on YouTube and are now archived on YouTube, I am posting what I call a daily ‘Meditation Nudge’.
These short posts will offer a meditation instruction or practical meditation tip. I am posting them on my Micro.blog site. If you bookmark this page and refresh it each day, you can read the latest post. I hope to have them up mid to late morning (Hawaii time) each day. As of this post, I have just posted the third nudge.
If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.