An important point is that when we are in a conscious state, there is still intelligence. It’s not that we’re completely empty. Sometimes people think that someone in deep meditation doesn’t know what’s going on – that it’s like sleeping. In fact, there are meditative states in which you deny the function of sense perceptions, but this is not the realization of shamatha practice.
Creating a favorable environment for mindfulness meditation
There are certain conditions that are helpful for practicing mindfulness. If we create the right environment, it will be easier to practice.
It’s good if the place where you meditate, even if it’s just a small space in your apartment, has a sense of sublimity and sacredness. It is also said that you should meditate in a place where it is not too loud or disruptive, and that you should not be in a situation where your mind is easily provoked into anger, jealousy or other emotions. If you are disturbed or irritated, it will affect your practice.
Start with the mindfulness practice
I encourage people to meditate often, but for short periods of time: ten, fifteen or twenty minutes. If you force it too much, the practice can take on too much personality, and training the mind should be very, very simple. So you can meditate for ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening, and during that time you are really engaging the mind. Then you just stop, get up and go.
Often we plop ourselves down to meditate and just let the mind take us wherever it wants. We must create a personal sense of discipline. When we sit down, we can remind ourselves, “I’m here to work on my mind. I am here to train my mind.” It’s okay to literally say that to yourself when you sit down. We need that kind of inspiration when we start practicing.
Attitude
The Buddhist approach is that body and mind are connected. The energy flows better when the body is upright, and when it is bent, the flow is changed and that directly affects your thought process. So there is a yoga on how to work with this. We don’t sit up because we’re trying to be good schoolchildren; our attitude actually affects the mind.
Often we plop ourselves down to meditate and just let the mind take us wherever it wants. We must create a personal sense of discipline.
People who require a chair for meditation should sit upright with their feet touching the ground. Those using a meditation cushion such as a zafu or gomden should find a comfortable position with legs crossed and hands palms down on your thighs. The hips are not rotated too much forward, causing tension, nor tilted backward, causing you to slouch. You must have a sense of stability and strength.
When we sit down, the first thing we need to do is really inhabit our body – really get a feel for our body. Often we support ourselves and pretend that we are exercising, but we cannot even feel our body; we can’t even feel where it is. Instead, we need to be here. So when you start a meditation session, you can spend some time getting used to your posture. You may feel your spine being pulled up from the top of your head, elongating your posture, and then settling.
The basic principle is to maintain an upright, upright posture. You’re in a solid situation: your shoulders are level, your hips are level, your spine is stacked. You can visualize placing your bones in the correct order and letting your meat hang from that structure. We use this position to stay relaxed and awake. The exercise we do is very precise: you have to be very awake, even if you are calm. If you find yourself feeling dull or woozy or falling asleep, check your posture.
Look
For strict mindfulness practices, the gaze should be directed downward, a few inches in front of your nose. The eyes are open but not staring; your gaze is soft. We try to limit sensory input as much as possible. People say, “Shouldn’t we have a sense of the environment?” but that is not our concern in this practice. We are just trying to work with the mind and the more we lift our gaze, the more distracted we will be. It’s like shining a ceiling light over the entire room and suddenly pointing it right in front of you. You purposefully ignore what is happening around you. You place your spirit horse in a smaller corral.
Breath
When we practice shamatha, we become increasingly familiar with our mind, and in particular we learn to recognize the movement of the mind, which we experience as thoughts. We do this by using a meditation object to provide a contrast or counterpoint to what is happening in our minds. Once we start thinking about something, the awareness of the object of meditation will bring us back. We could place a stone in front of us and use it to focus our mind, but using the breath as an object of meditation is especially useful because it relaxes us.
As you begin the exercise, you get a sense of your body and a sense of where you are, and then you begin to notice the breathing. The whole feeling of breathing is very important. Of course, breathing should not be forced; you breathe naturally. The breath goes in and out, in and out. You become relaxed with every breath.
See more about Breathing Mindfulness meditation HERE
Whatever kind of thought arises, you have to say to yourself: “That could be a very important issue in my life, but right now is not the time to think about it. Now I practice meditation.” It comes down to how honest we are, how true we can be to ourselves, during each session.
Everyone gets lost in thoughts sometimes. You might think, “I can’t believe I’m so wrapped up in something like this,” but try not to make it too personal. Just try to be as impartial as possible. The mind will be wild and we must recognize that. We cannot force ourselves. If we want to be completely concept-free, without any discursivity, that simply won’t happen.
So through the labeling process we simply see our discursivity. We find ourselves lost in thought, we call it mental ‘thinking’ – softly and without judgment – and we come back to the breath. When we have a thought – no matter how wild or bizarre it may be – we simply let it go and we come back to the breathing, we come back to the situation here.
Whatever kind of thought arises, you must say to yourself:
“That could be a very important issue in my life, but right now is not the time to think about it. Now I practice meditation.”
Each meditation session is a journey of discovery to understand the fundamental truth of who we are. In the beginning, the most important lesson of meditation is to see the speed of the mind. But the meditation tradition says that the mind doesn’t have to be that way: it just hasn’t been worked with.
What we are talking about is very practical. Mindfulness meditation is simple and completely feasible. And because we work with the mind that experiences life directly, just by sitting and doing nothing, we do a tremendous amount.