Meditation

[thaibebop]

I was wondering how many here meditate?

What kinds of meditations work best for you?

How long and how often do you meditate?

Do you clear your mind, or focus on something?

And last but not least, has it improved your life.

Thanks for posting.

[sabaijai]

I was wondering how many here meditate?

What kinds of meditations work best for you?

How long and how often do you meditate?

Do you clear your mind, or focus on something?

And last but not least, has it improved your life.

Thanks for posting.

I do.

There are basically two kinds of meditation in Buddhism, one of which is practiced by most if not all religious traditions.

The first and by far the most common is concentration/tranquility meditation, the objective of which is to calm the mind and create concentrated states by focusing on a single object of meditation. Typical concentration/tranquility meditation techniques include counting numerals or the breath; following the breath; gazing at a candle flame, coloured disk, crystal ball or yantra; or repeating mantras or prayers, whether aloud or silently. Sometimes the avowed aim is something mystical beyond simple tranquility, e.g., for Christians following a contemplative tradition, God's presence may become known, or God or various saints may reach down from on high to aid the meditator. In Hindu and some Mahayana/Vajrayana/Pure Land/True Word (Japanese: shingon; Chinese: Zhen Yan)/Transcendental Meditation traditions the mantra will bring one closer to heaven/paradise/pure land, etc.

In Pali these forms are known as samatha, one-pointedness. Usually the practice requires one to hold a sitting position - whether in a chair or cross-legged on the floor - for long periods of time while focussing on your chosen sound, sight or visualisation.

The second broad category of meditation, which as far as I know is confined to Buddhism (mostly Theravada but also Mahayana/Vajrayana) is mindfulness/insight meditation (Pali: satipatthana vipassana). For practitioners of this method, the earlier method - samatha or tranquility/concentration meditation - is considered only preparatory to mindfulness/insight practices. Some Buddhist teachers question whether it is necessary at all, in other words they advise starting with satipatthana immediately.

Buddha's teaching of satipatthana vipassana was arguably his most unique and significant contribution to the history of contemplative traditions. He himself practiced the samatha/concentration techniques for many years – they were and remain a part of Brahmanist tradition – until he decided that they couldn't give him what he was looking for. Only satipatthana brought him arahant-ship (enlightenment).

For mindfulness there is no special physical position needed, i.e., it can be practiced while sitting, standing, walking, lying down, etc. It would take another several paragraphs here to explain the techniques for this kind of meditation, although practicing it is rather simple once you understand the basic idea. One could call it 'the enquiry method', as it's simply an investigation into how the mind interacts with physical and mental objects as they arise.

Aside: Technically speaking, vipassana (Sanskrit: vipashyana) is the result of this kind of meditation, not the practice itself. Most westerners involved with this practice refer to it as vipassana or insight meditation rather than mindfulness.

There are several versions of how to practice satipatthana. The most popular is a method propagated by the late Mahasi Sayadaw, a Burmese monk and founder of a famous meditation center in Rangoon in the 1950s. Another Burmese teacher, U Ba Khin (who was a layperson rather than a monk) started another stream of teaching that has many followers today. You'll find some useful online readings, including basic online instructions, on the Mahasi version of satipatthana vipassana at www.buddhanet.net/insight.htm

mindfulness/insight

In all cases the instructions are based on the Satipatthana Sutta.

Satipatthana Sutta

The best place to learn the Buddhist version of samatha or satipatthana is under an experienced instructor rather than online, or from a book, or from one of us posting here. Many monasteries and meditation centres in Thailand offer retreats that teach the method, and you'll find smaller numbers of the same in countries throughout the world.

I started in my teens with various samatha techniques, and moved towards satipatthana a few years after uni, during the first year I arrived in Thailand. At that time I attended weekly classes with the Sangharaja (Supreme Patriarch of Buddhism in Thailand) at Wat Bowon, but later attended 3- to 14-day intensive retreats in Thailand, Burma and the USA, under Thai, Burmese, British and American meditation instructors. Probably the teacher I got the most from - subjectively speaking - was Sayadaw U Pandita. He still teaches in Burma and in Penang.

For me the retreats have been essential for getting a more in-depth understanding of the technique, not to mention intensive experience under the guidance of an experienced instructor. I have tried to integrate the practice into daily life as much as possible but still attend the occasional retreat. Once you've stabilised the practice there should be no need to attend further retreats.

Benefits? From samatha I think I became more chilled, more focused. I feel I've probably developed an increased capacity to enjoy both work and play because of this enhanced calmness and focus.

But calm and focus are in a sense just moods and as such are transient like all moods. Satipatthana takes one beyond mood-making to insight into how dharma works. to what is called pañña or wisdom. Through wisdom and subsequent right view, the fruit of the path - nibbana - eventually arises. Or so it is said. I'm still a beginner when it comes to pañña.

Aside: Some believe there are mystical benefits to samatha, and thus make it an end unto itself. I don't see any evidence for this either in the Tripitaka or in my own life. At any rate I see no reason to aspire to such benefits since heaven/paradise/pure land/gods/saints, etc, if they exist, appear to be conditioned states of existence like earth, he11, the deva realms, etc. All who abide in these realms remain subject to rebirth and suffering. Satipatthana aims for an end to all of that.

Long post, apologies

[chownah]

I've done about 3 different types of meditation and they're all great...my favorite is Tai Chi Chuan. Perhaps you've heard of it...some people think its a martial art but I don't...my teacher always said that if you want to fight with someone a 45 calibre pistol was more effective and quicker to learn than Tai Chi Chuan...so just relax and learn. Tai Chi Chuan is a moving meditation. It takes a really long time to get the meditative effect....an absolute minimum of two years I'd say and that is practicing twice a day and doing sitting meditation twice a day as well...and even then it takes longer for many/most people...most people report that it takes five years but then most people don't do the twice a day every day routineand then again many people never get the meditative effect since they don't do it for that purpose...many people just do it for the health effect. The advantage of Thai Chi Chuan over other types of meditation is that since you meditate while moving you can do it almost anywhere and incorporate it into your daily activities whatever they may be.

[camerata]

The best place to learn the Buddhist version of samatha or satipatthana is under an experienced instructor rather than online, or from a book, or from one of us posting here.

Very good advice from Sabaijai here. If you start off on your own without proper guidance, you can get into trouble - more than just failing to achieve what you expected. Samatha can have a pretty significant effect on your mind in a fairly short time.

To give you an extreme example, Kornfield recounts (in A Path with a Heart) a story about one of his students who was a martial artist and a rather stubborn individual. The guy ignored advice and decided to meditate non-stop for 24 hours. After this marathon session he turned up in the meditation hall doing kung-<deleted> kicks and babbling about being able to see everyone's past lives.

In general, you're supposed to try and live a fairly moral life if you want to progress with meditation. In other words, there's not much point in getting drunk, beating the wife, ripping off your business partners and then spending 30 minutes on the cushion to calm yourself down!

[thaibebop]

Wow! All you guys are just well springs of knowledge. I take it most of you have been doing this for awhile. I feel better knowing that my failed attempts meant just a lack of teaching. I am only 27 so still young and plenty of time to get it right.

I have tried to sit and meditate but I can never do it for very long, I have a busy mind, it won't sit still. Any advice?

I feel I have been most successful with the mindfulness technique. Like when I am walking, or riding a bike. The movement of my body gives me somthing to focus on, or when I listen to certain kinds of music. I know that listen to music is not meditating but it does calm my mind.

Thanks for all the advice, any more please let me know.

[chownah]

I have tried to sit and meditate but I can never do it for very long, I have a busy mind, it won't sit still. Any advice?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Welcome to the club!!!! Don't worry about this....everyone is this way. Most people don't realize how busy their minds are...until they try meditating...then they see how hard it is to calm the mind. Just keep going...it takes awhile...drinking and smoking don't help.

[Neeranam]

Long post, apologies 

Please don't apologise.

I was going to ask a similar question about meditation. What a great, informative post! I never new that.

For years I have been pretending to know all about meditation and spiritual practices, where in reality I know nothing.

Yeah, I've been on this retreat and that, met so and so, but so what?

Do I meditate now - not really.

I did "samatha" for a few years, sometimes a ew hours a day and it actually did get me to level which I can only call "a spiritual experience/visions", but who knows what it really was. I know that it was blissful most times I did it and after trying for a while it seemed to last after I sat down and meditated. The aim for me was to be able to switch this awareness on like a light switch any time or under any condition. One yogi, whom I have spent time with can do this, and is in a permanent state of "bliss". She has been in the laboratory with scientists doing all kinds of tests, and she can remain calm(measured the type of brainwaves) under all conditions. maybe I should say she has a link with God, Shiva.

But as I am learning, through some of the posts here, i might add, is that the past is not important, it is now!

I don't know much about Buddhism, but i am wanting to learn.

I cannot seem to meditate now, and I want to.

Why can't I? that is the big question.

I could be trying now! I think for some very strange reason, I don't want to, why?

Maybe I am scared of something.

In other words, there's not much point in getting drunk, beating the wife, ripping off your business partners and then spending 30 minutes on the cushion to calm yourself down!

Very true.

Thai Chi Chuan

Done that, but forgot the moves. I never actually learned the full thing, maybe about 32 of the movements. I did it purely for the meditative part of it.

I did "Wu Shu" as the fighting part. Sometime now I do a couple of Thai Chi/Qi Gong moves to try and chill out. I had an amazing experience at one retreat in the North of India. An English, Tibetan nun taught us Qi Gong at 5/6 am. The "electric force", or whatever it is, travelling through us was incredible.

When I do meditate, I concentrate on a point between my eyes, about 1 inch behind, which is where many people believe is the "seat of the soul". I then do some visualising stuff, body melting etc. When I get into a still, peaceful place(not often these days), I realise that my body is not me, it is just material. Then I lift "myself"(soul) up out of the body and try to get connection with a higher power. This all seems a bit weird when trying to explain, I know, but it is what I do.

Sorry for the long post.

How can I meditate? I have a 2 year old running around the house, and with work and one thing or another, I can't seem to find the time, or don't want to.(why is this?)

[sabaijai]

Wow! All you guys are just well springs of knowledge. I take it most of you have been doing this for awhile. I feel better knowing that my failed attempts meant just a lack of teaching. I am only 27 so still young and plenty of time to get it right.

I have tried to sit and meditate but I can never do it for very long, I have a busy mind, it won't sit still. Any advice?

I feel I have been most successful with the mindfulness technique. Like when I am walking, or riding a bike. The movement of my body gives me somthing to focus on, or when I listen to certain kinds of music. I know that listen to music is not meditating but it does calm my mind.

Thanks for all the advice, any more please let me know.

It's very difficult to quiet the mind. Very very few are able to do so for more than a minute or so at a time. At any rate, in Buddhism, a quiet mind or concentrated state is not a requisite for achieving the fruit of the path.

That unquiet mind you experience when you sit presents a perfect world of objects with which to practice mindfulness. The thoughts, sensations, sounds, feelings, etc are all important grist for the mill since they represent paramattha dhamma (that which is true in the ultimate sense).

In fact eveything else in our lives - sense of self, sense of others, sense of the world - are mental contructs. The reality is what appears to be going on upstairs, that unquiet mind. The unquiet mind keeps the show running, and all the 'clear-headed' decisions we think we are making throughout our waking lives come out of this confusion.

You can't stop the confusion but you can understand it, and when that understanding ripens, the mind will quiet on its own.

No use trying to force the mind to be quiet, it won't happen for more than a few seconds, at which point some distraction - often pride or ego (I did it!) - usually steps in to 'spoil' the quiet.

It would probably help if you had a definite method to follow, one taught by someone who has mastered that method. Assuming you don't live in The Gambia, there's probably a meditation centre and/or Buddhist temple somewhere nearby where you could either join a sitting group or a retreat.

Ajahn Buddhadasa once gave a lecture that explains how insight will make the mind naturally calm, and how deep concentration can actually hinder insight:

Insight by the Nature Method

[camerata]

I have tried to sit and meditate but I can never do it for very long, I have a busy mind, it won't sit still. Any advice?

For a wandering mind during meditation, Ajahn Chah recommends taking three deep breaths. Or you can simply hold your breath as long as you can. That will definitely bring your attention back to the breath.

It's also recommended to meditate early in the morning when you feel fresh and have no problems running through your mind. I never feel fresh in the morning, but I find that right after watching a light movie on TV is a good time.

According to Gunaratana (he has an excellent book on meditation called Mindfulness in Plain English), you don't have to start with samatha. You can start with vipassana, observing your thoughts as they come and go, and return to the breath in between. In this way, concentration will build up slowly.

There are a lot of conflicting opinions about whether you should try to control your mind. Some people say don't try to force concentration. Others say the mind is like a monkey - if you can't persuade it to do what you want, sometimes you have to get a stick and beat it. Personally, I'd say don't try to force it, otherwise you can start getting frustrated and anxious, and everything goes downhill.

And don't think of all the hard work without obvious results as a waste of time. Ajahn Chah said the hard work and failures is like the work you do at school - you don't feel happy when you're doing it, but you feel happy and see the result when you pass your exams at the end of the year.

[Darknight]

I have tried to sit and meditate but I can never do it for very long, I have a busy mind, it won't sit still. Any advice?

Look at the thoughts as passing clouds. see yourself through the eyes of others. become a witness to your actions like watching a movie on yourself.

mindfullness will arise after a while.

Don't take the whole thing to seriously

[thaibebop]

I have tried to sit and meditate but I can never do it for very long, I have a busy mind, it won't sit still. Any advice?

For a wandering mind during meditation, Ajahn Chah recommends taking three deep breaths. Or you can simply hold your breath as long as you can. That will definitely bring your attention back to the breath.

It's also recommended to meditate early in the morning when you feel fresh and have no problems running through your mind. I never feel fresh in the morning, but I find that right after watching a light movie on TV is a good time.

According to Gunaratana (he has an excellent book on meditation called Mindfulness in Plain English), you don't have to start with samatha. You can start with vipassana, observing your thoughts as they come and go, and return to the breath in between. In this way, concentration will build up slowly.

There are a lot of conflicting opinions about whether you should try to control your mind. Some people say don't try to force concentration. Others say the mind is like a monkey - if you can't persuade it to do what you want, sometimes you have to get a stick and beat it. Personally, I'd say don't try to force it, otherwise you can start getting frustrated and anxious, and everything goes downhill.

And don't think of all the hard work without obvious results as a waste of time. Ajahn Chah said the hard work and failures is like the work you do at school - you don't feel happy when you're doing it, but you feel happy and see the result when you pass your exams at the end of the year.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I do usually let my mind go and try to focus on whatever interests it. Sometimes my mind lets me focus on a flower or tree or a picture and I can, what, feel myself thinking, or rather being. I like that. The problem is that, one: when I am done I don't feel like I've done anything, two: sometimes my mind wants to focus on something that doesn't make for good meditation as a matter of fact it's the opposite.

Have any of you guys experienced bad meditation? I know this might sound silly but, have you every meditated on say, your anger, or sadness and the feeling becomes so strong it's like your breeding bad things in your mind. Once again I know this might be cheesy, but I will use the fictional relationship between Jedi and Sith as an exmaple and ask, what do you think would happen to one person who meditated to find peace of mind everyday and another who just focused and their rage? I guess you could say all I thought about when I was younger was my rage. Now when I meditate I feel like I trying to make up for lost time, yet meditation and learning the eight fold path is more important to me since that time.

The point of me bring that up is that I find if my mind wonders too much or too long, it's counter productive. Because of what everyone here has posted it has given some new info to play around with. I will try what you have suggested. I am ever gateful as where I am at there are no retreats or people I can talk to, so, all my info has come from a book, I hope now to feel a little more susscessful when I meditate. I am measuring my susscess by how good, or calm, I feel at the end of my meditattion.

[camerata]

Have any of you guys experienced bad meditation? I know this might sound silly but, have you every meditated on say, your anger, or sadness and the feeling becomes so strong it's like your breeding bad things in your mind.

There are examples of this in A Path with Heart. Some of Kornfield's students had experienced major problems such as an abused childhood or painful divorce, and through meditation they uncovered the root causes of their unhappiness, sometimes in a sudden realization. In some ways the process seems similar to psychiatry.

Perhaps you aren't using the right technique to meditate on your emotions. Basically, I think you are supposed to look for the qualities of impermanence, unsatisfactoryness and non-self in them, and note what causes them to arise.

[thaibebop]

Have any of you guys experienced bad meditation? I know this might sound silly but, have you every meditated on say, your anger, or sadness and the feeling becomes so strong it's like your breeding bad things in your mind.

There are examples of this in A Path with Heart. Some of Kornfield's students had experienced major problems such as an abused childhood or painful divorce, and through meditation they uncovered the root causes of their unhappiness, sometimes in a sudden realization. In some ways the process seems similar to psychiatry.

Perhaps you aren't using the right technique to meditate on your emotions. Basically, I think you are supposed to look for the qualities of impermanence, unsatisfactoryness and non-self in them, and note what causes them to arise.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I wondered if any one had every dealt with such a thing. A Path with Heart, do you know who the author is?

[camerata]

I wondered if any one had every dealt with such a thing. A Path with Heart, do you know who the author is?

Jack Kornfield.

[thaibebop]

I wondered if any one had every dealt with such a thing. A Path with Heart, do you know who the author is?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Jack Kornfield.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry, man. I just read your post again and saw the Kornfield comment.

Thanks again.

[sabaijai]

Jack's Living Dharma, about 12 Thai and Burmese mediation masters, is another classic. After finishing a Peace Corps post in Thailand, Jack ordained as a monk named Phra Suñño and studied with various famous Thai, Burmese and Indian monks in the late 60s/early 70s. I've done a few retreats with Jack in California - one as a translator for Ajahn Jumnien - and he's an excellent teacher.