Meditation, in some aspects, could be likened to sports.  If you train for a day and are then inactive for a week, you will not make a great deal of progress. 

In point of fact, you might finish up straining a muscle or injuring your back because you haven’t conditioned your body gradually, as virtually all fitness gurus recommend.

When you practice meditation, you are developing certain mental and emotional muscles like concentration, mindfulness (ongoing attention to whatever is arising, moment to moment), and receptive awareness. 

Here, as well, consistency is the key – you need to sustain your practice and keep it regular, irrespective of how you are feeling from day to day. 

As a matter of fact, your feelings furnish the food for your meditation practice, as you expand your awareness from your breath to include the full range of your experience.  There’s no particular way you need to be – just turn up and be yourself!

As one age-old Chinese Zen master used to say, “Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha” – by which he meant, cheerful or sad, dynamic or fatigued, just sit as the being you happen to be.

Whilst discussing the practice of sitting still, one of the distinguished meditation teachers, the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, used to allege that the finest way to show a snake its true nature is to put it in a hollow stick of bamboo. 

Take a moment and afford this extraordinary metaphor some thought.  What could he have possibly had in mind by it?

Well, think that you’re a snake in bamboo.  What does it feel like?  Every time you attempt to slither, which is after all what snakes like to do, you bump against the walls of your straight as-an-arrow home.  If you pay attention, you begin to observe how slippery you actually are. Read more »

Breathing is a standard focus for meditation, for many reasons.  For one thing, breathing is sensuous, rhythmical, and forever with us, as long as we are alive.

Besides, breath is a gift to us from the larger universe; it comes inside our body, into our lungs, into our blood, and then into every cell.  Breath is an intimate exchange with the total universe in which we live.

In paying close attention to the breath, we comprehend all this directly.  Our breath is intrinsically full of grace.  There are hundreds of methods to pay attention to breath.  You can be mindful of its rhythm, of how it expands and contracts, of how it weaves from outside of the body to being absorbed inside. 

You can visualise your breath, being mindful of the tip of your nostril, the hushed sounds of your breathing, the gentle feeling in your throat, the pause at the end of the inhalation, and so forth.  Read more »

This exercise will assist you to deal with overwhelming or negative emotions that may rise up at any time, but particularly during meditation.

1) Close your eyes and breathe deeply for a couple of minutes. Once you feel calm, imagine that you are holding a large stone, rock or crystal in your hand. This is your “worry stone”. Can you see its texture and colour?

2) Now bring to mind the negative emotion that you want to control or chase away. Imagine that you transmit this emotion along your arm, down through your hand and fingers, and into the stone, which is able to absorb it. Read more »

The following instructions are a meditation for getting in touch with your soft spot and initiating the flow of unconditional love, also known as loving-kindness. 

To differentiate this sort of love from conditional love, think of the love of a good mother for her child.  She gives her love freely and unconditionally, without asking for anything in return except her child’s happiness and well-being. 

As with all the meditations, you might prefer to commence with five or ten minutes of a mindfulness practice like counting or following your breaths in order to deepen and stabilise your concentration. 

Once you acquire the knack, though, the cultivation of loving kindness itself can be an first-class way to develop concentration. Read more »

One of the first things you require for true meditation is the correct mental attitude, especially one of listening.  Most people rarely listen.  They are deaf to the symphony of sounds around them. 

They are also deaf to other folks, since they are more concerned in speaking their own minds.  They treat their own conscience as though it were a fault to be overpowered. 

They behave as though they are perpetually crusading for their own ideas.  Like punters at a horse race, they keep betting the “right” horse to win.

The process is ceaseless.  Every horizon reached, if it ever is achieved, only opens up fresh panoramas of expectation and of hopeful thinking.  Some people, when an especially precious hope ceases, experience the balance of their lives in a wonderful never-never land of Might-Have-Been. Read more »

 There are those who feel the term, “monkey mind”, quite disconcerting, disparaging, and disdainful. This can be a shame, because the point is lost, the ego is involved, and our innate human defense arises. After all, we are alleged to be the “king of the primates,” aren’t we?

When, for the  first time I listened to the saying, “monkey mind,” in respect to meditation, I remembered  Swayambhunath Stupa, in Katmandu, Kingdom of Nepal.  Sometimes, this is called, the “monkey temple,” and it caused me to laugh at heart, as monkeys require supervising in human settings. The impression of unsupervised monkeys entered my head, and I was bottling up laughter during an earnest conversation.

Monkeys may be nuisances, once permitted to wander without some direction, and it is similar with the undisciplined mind that races from subject to subject, without getting very much completed. Therefore please do not waste time being outraged by the term, and attempt to consider the amusing side. Read more »

Here is a uncomplicated form of meditation which almost everyone should able to manage.

1. Sit in a good chair in a comfortable position.

2. Loosen up all your muscles as well as you are able to.

3. Try not to think about anything.

4. Breath out, relaxing all your muscles .

5. Repeat the following for 5 – 10 minutes:

– Inhale but don’t exaggerate your normal breathing pattern.
– Exhale, relaxing your chest and diaphragm completely.
– Each time you breathe out, think the word “one” or another simple word.
You should think the word in a extended manner,  so that you hear it inside you, but you should try to avoid using your mouth or voice.

6. If thoughts come in, just stop these ideas in a relaxed manner, and continue concentrating upon the breathing and the word you repeat.

As you proceed through this meditation, you should experience being steadily more at ease in your mind and body, feel that you breathe steadily more effectively, and that the blood circulation throughout your body gets more efficient.

Anything you do or experience could supply you with an opportunity to practise mindfulness.  But you might prefer to commence with a few of your customary activities – the ones you could be performing now on automatic pilot while you daydream, space out, or obsess. 

The fact is, even the most mundane tasks can prove pleasurable when you do them with wholehearted care and attention.  Here’s a list of common activities with a few suggestions for instilling them with mindfulness:

Washing the dishes: If you put aside your judgments, which might insist you ought be doing something more meaningful or creative with your time, and instead just wash the dishes – or sweep the floor or scrub the bathtub – you might find that you actually enjoy the activity. 

Experience the contours of the plates and bowls as you clean them.  Observe the smell and the slipperiness of the soap, the sounds of the utensils, the gratifying feeling of getting rid of the old food and leaving the dishes clean and available for use. Read more »

For many of the same reasons that meditation helps to facilitate healing, it also enhances performance.  It relaxes your body and reduces stress and anxiety, which allows you to function more effectively. 

It promotes positive mind-states, such as love, joy, and well-being, and encourages the flow of life-energy through the body, which in turn promotes self-confidence and a sense of power and effectiveness. 

Below are 5 additional benefits that meditation can bring to your life:

1. Increased focus and concentration.  As you become adept at staying on task as you follow your breaths or recite your mantra, you can easily transfer this skill to working at your computer or playing ball with friends. 

2. Minimal distractions.  The more regularly you meditate, the more quickly distractions fade into the background as your mind settles down and becomes one-pointed.  Needless to say, you work or play more effectively without a million irrelevant thoughts chattering away inside your head.  Read more »

In the final analysis, the great meditation teachers suggest that the most beneficial attitude to adopt toward meditation is an open mind, totally free from all preconceptions and expectations. 

The aim of meditation is not to amass knowledge, learn something new, or accomplish some exceptional state of mind, but merely to sustain this fresh, uncluttered perspective.

“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything,” Zen master Shunryu Suzuki writes in his book called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.  “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.” 

As the title of his book indicates, Suzuki teaches that beginner’s mind and Zen mind – the awake, clear, unshackled mind of the enlightened Zen master – are fundamentally the same.  Or, as a different teacher puts it, “The seeker is the sought; the looker is what he or she is looking for!”

Irrespective of which meditation technique you choose, try to practise it with the innocent, open, “don’t know” spirit of beginner’s mind.  In a way, beginner’s mind is the non-attitude inherent in all attitudes, the non-technique at the center of all successful techniques.

There are numerous different Buddhist meditation methods that followers and a lot of meditation enthusiasts practice.

But, in spite of their differences, the techniques are all broadly founded on developing two things- mindfulness and concentration.

Paying attention to the movements of the body and to the dynamic states of mind is to be developed in order to identify the genuine concept of self.  Objectivity in this example could be a invaluable aid to clear thinking. With objectivity comes concentration, the ability to concentrate the mind and keep it focused on a single point or object. Read more »