Meditation… Being Here, Now

Meditation is as simple–or as difficult–as being here, now.

In this beginner’s guide to meditation, authored by Mind-Light, you’ll discover just how easy it is to begin to meditate– and to continue your practice to open yourself up to the many joys and rewards of being fully present in every moment.

While meditation is easy–we all have the ability to sit and breathe–there can be a few bumps in the road along the path to peacefulness. The author acknowledges these “bumps” and offers many practical and interesting ways around them.

You’ll begin your meditation practice by sitting and breathing. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? And maybe even a little boring?

But you may be surprised at how difficult it can be to simply sit and empty your mind of extraneous thoughts. And you will definitely be surprised at the depths of meditation you’ll explore.

This book answers common questions about meditating and offers you a bag of tricks to help you make meditation a meaningful part of your life. If you’re ready to begin a meditation practice that will bring you life-long benefits, this book is for you. There are no special prerequisites or requirements to learn how to meditate. You      can start meditating, right here, right now, where you are. The best way to begin to meditate is to simply begin to meditate–to be here, now.

• 112 pages. ISBN: 978-1-883717-08-7. Available on Amazon: $9.95

Browse the Book…

We’ve included the Introduction and the first chapter for you to read and enjoy… to see if the book is right for you.

Introduction

Meditation… Being Here, Now takes a practical, down-to-earth approach. It provides all the instructions you need to get started. In each chapter, you’ll learn refinements in the technique of meditating and additional meditation exercises. It also explains ways of dealing with any problems that may come up, shows how to apply the insights of meditation to the rest of life, and recommends other resources and further steps.

Some of the things you’ll learn are: several methods of breath meditation; posture and physical supports—how to be comfortable, relaxed, alert, and still; when and how much to meditate; how not to meditate; formless meditation in emptiness, presence, and awareness; thought and reality; walking meditation; meditating with strong emotions; and how to take the insights of meditation into everyday life.

It is important to acknowledge that meditation can be boring, frustrating, uncomfortable, and confusing. This is particularly true in the beginning. These are perhaps the reasons not everyone meditates, despite the extraordinary benefits meditation can provide.

There is a tendency in some meditation circles to gloss over these difficulties. Some advocates seem to pretend that meditation is an easy and quick path to inner peace, if not eternal bliss. We do not think this is helpful. Meditation takes some determination. If you begin with the expectation that everything will go smoothly, you are likely to give up as soon as you see a difficulty.

Within this book are frank discussions of the obstacles that all meditators encounter. None of these obstacles needs to stop you. You are provided with antidotes and ways to counter each of the problems, including boredom, restless­ness, sleepiness, physical discomfort (aches and pains), self-judgment and self-doubt, fear, confusion, and procras­tination. The best way to overcome any problems you may experience is to just simply meditate—to be here, now.

Silent sitting meditation is at the core of and is central to meditation practice; it is the foundation for all other practices. This book offers a progressive series of medita­tion techniques which allow us to perceive the fundamental nature of Mind and reality directly by working with the raw materials of existence—form, emptiness, and non-duality.

In meditation, we come face to face with our deepest feelings and conflicts. We may discover aspects of ourselves from which at first we recoil—fear, anger, loss, and shame. However, with further practice we develop a new and relaxed tolerance for the entirety of ourselves and our situations.

Habitual emotional patterns lose their grip. Accepting ourselves as we are produces clear self-under­standing and appreciative empathy with others. We become transparent to ourselves. Motivation becomes simpler. A cheerful active compassion arises which does not need to be forced or fabricated.

Here we find our first real taste of freedom—freedom from conditioning. Meditation gets us back into the driver’s seat—to live life, rather than having life live us. In the open space of clarity and compassion, we find tremendous cre­ative energy, spontaneity, wholeness, and zest for living.

There is no point in meditating—other than to discover the exquisite enjoyment of every moment.

Chapter One  ~  Actually Do It

Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each chapter provides new techniques and facilitates new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience.

Go through the techniques in this book slowly and pace yourself. If you try to learn meditation by reading this book all at once, you might rush through the early exercises in order to experiment with later ones. That is rather like leaping onto a 1000cc motorcycle and hoping to roar off into the sunset—before having learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels.

You need substantial experience with each exercise to obtain the benefit it provides and to prepare you for the next exercise. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly, no matter how advanced your practice becomes. To make the best use of this book, engage in one chapter per week.

Meditation Notebook

It is useful to keep a meditation notebook to record your goals, experiences, and reflections. Right now is the time to start. Begin with today’s date. For your first entry, record your motivations for starting to meditate. Alterna­tively, if you have already been meditating for a while, write what has motivated you to start reading this book.

If you re-read your first entry in a few weeks or months, you may discover something surprising. You may find that your motivations for continuing to meditate have shifted from your reasons for starting. As your meditation practice develops, you are likely to find that it has rewards you can­not expect at this present moment in time.

Simplicity

Meditation is deceptively simple. In a sense, the com­plete instructions are: Be here—now! That may seem non­sensical. You could reply: “I am here, now. How could I be otherwise?” This book is devoted to explaining how you may not be fully here, now—and ways of coming back to here and now.

There is much to say about meditation—enough to fill many books. Meditation can seem complex, but that is only because the concepts we use to understand our minds are complex. As you read this book, you will learn how to strip away those concepts and look at your mind directly. You will learn to experience the simplicity, clarity, and power of your own un-conceptualized mind.

With each chapter, you will learn more about what it means to be here—now. This first meditation technique is an experiential explanation of that phrase.

Meditation

Sit somewhere quiet. Total silence is not necessary, but music, television noise, or people talking will be distracting. Some types of meditation can be undertaken while listening to music, but not this method.

Sit comfortably. Sitting in a chair is fine. If you are used to sitting on a cushion on the floor—and can do so easily—that is another possibility. Sit reasonably upright, but do not strain to achieve any particular posture.

Wear loose, comfortable clothes. Loosen your belt if it is tight. Close your eyes almost all the way, so that a little light enters but you cannot see anything clearly.

When thoughts come, let them come. When thoughts go, let them go. If you find yourself involved in a stream of thoughts, let go of your involvement with them. Keep letting go of involvement. Remain uninvolved. Just let go. What­ever happens, let it be as it is.

If you feel good, do not hold on to those positive thoughts. If you feel bad, do not reject those negative thoughts.

Especially important: if you feel nothing in particular, do not drift into numbness and lack of presence. Remain alert.

Try this for five minutes. If you feel ambitious, try ten minutes. See how it goes.

When you have finished, write as much as you can remember about what your experience was like.

Follow-up

If you have not yet engaged in the meditation exercise, please stop reading now. Come back here when you have tried the exercise. Reading what follows will color your experience, and you will miss the opportunity to arrive at it with the freshness that is necessary.

~           ~           ~           ~

You have made a good start. Whatever happened during your meditation, what­ever you felt, was your experience. You started to be here now. These are some of the things you may have thought after the exercise:

• That was easier than I expected.
• That was a complete and utter waste of time.
• I enjoyed that.
• I felt stupid.
• I felt relaxed.
• I did not really understand what I was supposed to be doing.
• It was quite pleasant.
• I did not see the point of it; it seemed a useless thing to be doing.
• I fell asleep.
• I felt quite agitated.
• What am I supposed to make of this?

Whatever you thought or felt, it was useful. It provides you with valuable insights into how you see the world. For example, if the exercise was more or less difficult than you thought, you can ask yourself, “What exactly did I expect, and on what did I base my expectations?”

If you thought it was a waste of time, ask your­self, “What are my criteria for whether time is wasted?” If just being seems a waste of time, that idea devalues the most fundamental aspect of what you are. You might con­sider seriously whether you want to accept that idea.

If you enjoyed the exercise, what was it that you enjoyed? How do you define or recognize the sensation of enjoyment? One thing you will discover—in time—is that meditation radically broadens what you are capable of enjoying. It changes your understanding of what enjoy-ment is, so this is important to investigate, here and now.

If you felt self-conscious, you could ask yourself, “What does that say about me? What image do I have of myself that jars with simply sitting and being?”

If you did not understand what you were supposed to be doing, then you probably expected to be engaged in an exercise that accorded with certain guidelines. Those guidelines might be your personal criteria with respect to the exercise making sense. You could question those guide­lines, and ask yourself where they came from and when you accepted them as authoritative.

Meditate Daily

This first exercise is the simplest meditation technique. It is also—in some ways—the most difficult, because of its lack of structure. It is not problematic if you find it frustrating; you will be in good company. Many millions of people have found this practice difficult at first. See if you can maintain it for a week. In each of the following chap­ters, you will learn additional techniques which address the various difficulties that arise.

For meditation to be effective, you have to meditate every day—or at least, most days. Learning to meditate is in many ways similar to learning a musical instrument or becoming physically fit through an exercise program. You would not succeed with either if your commitment were no more than three hours every Sunday afternoon and nothing during the week.

If you exercise, practice guitar, or engage in meditation a little every day, you will see gradual improvement. Try this exercise for five or ten minutes a day. Only meditate longer if you are confident you can maintain longer sessions for the entire week.

The Tibetan meditation tradition is full of colorful stories of meditation masters of the past and their pithy summaries of the essence of the meditative path. One was given by the great yogi Milarépa to his beloved student Gampopa. When they parted for the last time, Milarépa told Gampopa that he had taught him everything there was to learn about meditation—except one final secret that was too precious to just give away.

There was a tearful goodbye before Gampopa set off. When he had gone a little way down a hill—over a stream—and had started up the hill on the other side, he heard his teacher’s voice again. Milarépa yelled that last, most profound teaching to Gampopa across the valley: The important thing is to actually do it.

So—actually do it.

Copyright 2010 by Mind-Light