 |
 |
| There is an advantage to using a specific posture or yoga position for meditation. It's a conditioned reflex thing - as soon as you put yourself into the posture your sub-conscious knows that you are about to start meditating and so it's already preparing itself. The same goes for all the other little "rituals" that practised meditators adopt, like burning incense, wearing specific clothes, and so forth. There's no harm in inventing a few little rituals of your own, if you find that it helps. |
| If all that you're going to learn is "Sitting
Quietly, Doing Nothing." then what it is the point of going on a
meditation course? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.
Although the only thing that you can guarentee that they will teach you is "Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing", what the course will offer you is plenty of opportunity for doing exactly that. In today's high speed, stress filled world with its telephones and television and its emphasis on time, it's often difficult to make time for "Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing." We can start off with the best will in the world to reserve an hour or so of every day for meditation, but soon the pressures of the mad world outside will intervene. Before you know it, you've missed a day, and although you might resolve to do twice as long tomorrow to make up for it, I can promise you that you never do. Before long, the hour a day has become half an hour every other day, and you're on the slippery slope back to your old unhealthy ways. So unless you have the self discipline normally associated with the saints, as a beginner you will almost certainly need either a meditation course, or something like it, just to get you "into the habit." Once you get the habit, of course, things become much easier, and then you can start to fly solo. |
| There's nothing wrong, as such, about falling asleep. If you do start to feel drowsy, then don't fight it. There's nothing to be gained from trying to stay awake if the body wants to sleep. However, you're supposed to be learning to meditate, not taking a nap, so it is better not to do anything that might specifically encourage a tendency to drop off. |
| There are many experienced meditators who can quite happily settle down to meditate in apparently inhospitable places such as airport departure lounges and hotel lobbies. They can do that because they have learned the "knack" of being able to switch to "meditation consciousness" almost at will. It sounds clever, but it's something that most people can master with a little practice. (It's always easier in a quiet environment, however, even for the real gurus.) |
| In zazen (Zen meditation) the meditator never closes her eyes, but allows the gaze to rest on a spot a few metres ahead of where she is sitting, at the natural focus of the eyes. In Transcendental Meditation® the eyes are always closed. |
You don't have to be a hippy or a new age freak or a yoga guru to practise meditation. You don't even need to be particularly spiritual. Even the most materialist atheist will find that meditation has something to offer them. You could think of it as a particularly effective way to relax, if you like. The joy is that it doesn't matter what you think about it, just as long as you do it. Actually, the whole point of it is not to think at all - just do it.
Meditation has far more to do with the working of the human mind than it has to do with religion. In fact, a term like "positive relaxation" would probably be a much better description. It is essentially a way of allowing the mind to start working in the way it was always supposed to work, as an efficient information processing machine, rather than allow it to follow the lazy patterns that it has acquired through years of habituation and inappropriate education. It involves making a conscious effort to relax, yet it is a completely effortless activity. In fact, it is probably the most effortless thing that you will ever do.
Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable. Take a deep breath. Imagine the air passing through your nostrils and into your lungs, imagine it expanding your lungs and then slowly flowing out again. Take another breath. And another. Experience breathing as a sensual thing.
Feel better?
Of course you do. You have cast aside your everyday cares and worries for a few moments in order to enjoy the pleasure of simply breathing.
It doesn't need to be breathing, but breathing is one of the easiest things to focus on. You could choose something else to focus on, if you prefer. Some people may prefer to study a religious image, others may prefer to listen to a sound. What is important is that you are "Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing." As any Zen Buddhist would be happy to tell you, that is all there is to it.
"All there is to it?" I hear you ask. "Surely there must be something more than that." Well, no actually, there isn't. Sign up for a six week meditation course and that is basically what they will teach you. Read a book on meditation, and that's basically what it will tell you. It will tell you lots of other things as well, naturally; but basically, if you boil everything down to its ultimate essence, all you actually have to do is sit quietly and breath.
Essentially, yes. It's a bit like riding a bicycle - once you've got the knack of balancing and pedalling at the same time then there's nothing more to learn. If you have ambitions to win the Tour de France, then there's a huge amount of extra effort that you will have to put in, but once you have the basic skills, then that's it.
So why not sit down and try it?
You can meditate sitting in a perfectly ordinary chair. It is perhaps better to choose a chair that isn't too comfortable, in case you drop off to sleep; but there is no need to arrange your limbs into knot-like yoga positions. You can sit in the Lotus position, if you prefer, but I find that sitting cross-legged is perfectly adequate. If your legs aren't terribly flexible, then choose something like a dining room chair. The idea is too be comfortable enough to sit quietly without fidgeting but not so comfortable that you find yourself dozing off.
The only other requirement, at least for beginners, is peace and quiet. The last thing you want is to be interrupted by a telephone or a visitor or anything that requires your immediate and full attention. Go somewhere quiet and shut the door behind you. Take the 'phone off the hook. Many meditators shut their eyes while meditating - this is not obligatory, but it does help, especially when first starting out. Most of all, allow yourself the time to complete the meditation. If there is something urgent on your mind that you know that you are shortly going to have to deal with, then you're never going to relax.
"Now what should I do?" you ask.
You can just there for a while, enjoying the novelty of it all. Then you can try breathing, or you can practice becoming more aware of your surroundings. A little later, when you're more experienced, you can start to ask yourself some very difficult questions indeed.
Everyone knows how to breathe. There is nothing magical about breathing. It is something that we all do naturally. Yet all schools of meditation place great emphasis on breathing, even to the extent of prescribing elaborate breathing exercises for their students. Why? Simple. It is because breathing is so mundane. It is one of the most fundamental activities that the body carries out. Without breath we would die. Yet of all the fundamental activities of the human body, it is the only one that we have a certain degree of conscious control over. We can slow our breathing or speed it up. We can hold our breath.
How well are you breathing at the moment? Unless you've just been indulging in strenuous exercise, then I would imagine that your breath is coming in steady, rhythmic waves, at about five or six every minute. Just think about how you are breathing for a few moments. Feel the rise and fall of your chest, the flow of air through your nose and windpipe. Peaceful, isn't it?
Unless you are a meditator or a yogi then I suspect that you've never really thought much about the way you breathe. Well, there isn't really that much to it, is there: just inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. But often it is the simplest things that are most beautiful. Just because we spend every instant of our lives breathing doesn't mean that we should take it for granted.
Why not try to breathe purely for the sake of breathing occasionally? In fact, why not do that now
|
|