A teacher will be able to offer you guidance in how to apply the technique and how to deal with difficulties. Perhaps most importantly, a teacher can offer the encouragement and inspiration of their own example. At Triratna Centres , meditation is taught by members of the Triratna Buddhist Order , who are experienced meditators.
Classes and courses are open to everyone: you need not be interested in Buddhism. Motives for learning meditation vary. Some people want to improve their concentration for work, study, or even sports; others are looking for relief from stress and peace of mind. Then there are people trying to answer fundamental questions about life. With regular practice, meditation can help all of us to find what we are looking for. Meditation Courses are excellent contexts for learning.
Meditation Retreats offer ideal conditions to take things further. When you sit down to meditate you need to set up your meditation posture in a way that is relaxed but upright, usually sitting on a cushion and probably cross-legged.
If this is not easy you can sit kneeling or else in a chair. Then you close your eyes, relax, and tune in to how you are feeling. What was the experience like at that retreat, and how was it transformative for you? My first retreat was back in , and I had never had any success in meditating. I have like a really limited attention span.
I'm fidgety. It had never really clicked. Somebody suggested I go to a retreat. I went to a one week silent meditation retreat, which is very closely associated with mindfulness meditation, although they're not the same thing, and it was amazing. The first two days were hell. So by the end of the week, I felt like I was a different person. I remember I called my wife after the retreat and before I had even said anything, when she just heard the tone of my voice, she said she liked the new me.
Before I elaborate, I should issue the warning that these effects may not last forever if you go on a meditation retreat. I was much less judgmental of people.
He looks okay. I do that. I have gotten enough of a taste of it that I can see the logic of how it works, how a daily practice can make you a little happier, a little better, and how in principle really intensive meditation could be transformative.
Now, whether that could bring true full-fledged enlightenment is another question, where you are completely liberated from suffering and you have a completely clear view of the world and so on. I just cannot do it with any regularity. This disjunction results in a lot of neuroses and pathologies and psychological disorders.
So how does meditation ameliorate that or make our day-to-day mental life better? Let me first say that the problem is actually even worse than that. That is a problem, that we're not living in the environment that we were designed for. Natural selection just wants to get genes into the next generation. If illusions will help them do that, then illusions there will be.
If suffering will help them do that, then suffering there will be. All that is natural, but then you put us in a modern environment and things get even worse. So how does Buddhism, or I guess more particularly, how does the practice of meditation make that better? Well, one implicit assumption of mindfulness meditation is that it makes sense to be suspicious of our feelings. Again, evolutionary psychology I think drives that point home and explains why a lot of these feelings are not to be trusted.
Meditation is a discipline that helps you not take them seriously and that liberates you from the tyranny of feelings. I think we labor under the illusion that there is a thinker behind our thoughts or a doer behind our deeds when, in fact, I think we're just a field of consciousness responding to things in the world. One of the reasons why a lot of people like meditating, and one of the reasons why a lot of people are attracted to Buddhism, is because they think it's a path to the dissolution of the self or to cutting through that illusion, and the idea that that will make you somehow a better person and more engaged with other people and with the world around you.
Is that what you believe? Well, Buddhism claims that we are subject to illusions and one of the main illusions Buddhism emphasizes is what they call the illusion of self. According to Buddhism, the proper view is to not project essences onto things.
You are really in charge consciously. It was an illusion. Things still work fine. I just watch it happen. I've had these experiences. I am not completely liberated from anxiety by any means, but I've had the experiences and this is another path to a form of not-self in Buddhism, which is a kind of incremental approach. You identify less and less with emotions and with thoughts. If you start doing that with all of the elements of your interior experience, then pretty soon the sense of self is not anything like what it used to be if you're not identifying with any of that stuff.
A lot of what you write has to do with morality and how we can become better people. Does one lead to the other? I think so. A useful way of understanding the diversity of meditation practices is to think of the different types of meditation. This isn't a traditional list - it comes from modern meditation teachers who draw on more than one Asian Buddhist tradition.
Neither are there hard and fast distinctions. A particular meditation practice usually includes elements of all four approaches but with the emphasis on one particular aspect. Connected with meditation, but not quite the same as it, is the practice of mindfulness.
This, too, is an essential part of Buddhist practice and means becoming more fully aware of what one is experiencing in all aspects of one's life. Mindfulness always plays a part in meditation, but meditation, in the sense of setting out to become more and more concentrated, is not necessarily a part of mindfulness. In principle, any object will do - a sound, a visual image such as a candle flame, or a physical sensation.
In the tantric Buddhism of Tibet and elsewhere, meditators visualise complex images of Buddha forms and recite sacred sounds or mantras in fact these images and sounds have significance beyond simply being objects of concentration. But the most common and basic object of concentrative meditation is to focus on the naturally calming physical process of the breath.
In the 'mindfulness of breathing', one settles the mind through attending to the sensations of breathing. An example of a 'generative' practice is the 'development of loving kindness' meditation metta bhavana. This helps the person meditating to develop an attitude of loving kindness using memory, imagination and awareness of bodily sensations. In the first stage you feel metta for yourself with the help of an image like golden light or phrases such as 'may I be well and happy, may I progress.
In the second stage you think of a good friend and, using an image, a phrase, or simply the feeling of love, you develop metta towards them. In the last stage, you feel metta for all four people at once - yourself, the friend, the neutral person and the enemy. Then you extend the feeling of love from your heart to everyone in the world, to all beings everywhere. Scripture on this practice says: 'As a mother would risk her life to protect her child, her only child, even so should one cultivate a limitless heart with regard to all beings.
With goodwill for the entire cosmos cultivate a limitless heart. Other generative practices in Buddhism include tonglen - the Tibetan practice of breathing in the suffering of others and breathing out a purifying white light. This practice is aimed at cultivating compassion. In the mindfulness of breathing or the metta bhavana meditation practice, a balance needs to be struck between consciously guiding attention and being receptive to whatever experience is arising. This attitude of open receptive attention is the emphasis of the receptive type of meditation practice.
Sometimes such practices are simply concerned with being mindful. In zazen or 'just sitting' practice from the Japanese Zen tradition, one sits calmly, aware of what is happening in one's experience without judging, fantasising or trying to change things.
A similar practice in Tibetan tradition is dzogchen. In both cases, the meditator sits with their eyes open. Usually people close their eyes to meditate. Zazen and dzogchen practices gain depth from the underlying belief in the significance of being in the present moment. Reflective meditation involves repeatedly turning your attention to a theme but being open to whatever arises from the experience.
Reflective practices in Buddhism include meditations on impermanence and interconnectedness as well as faith enhancing practices such as meditation on the qualities of the Buddha.
The classical meditation position is 'the lotus position'. This involves sitting cross-legged with the left foot on top of the right thigh and the right foot on top of the left thigh. If you can't manage that it is still good to sit on the floor either kneeling or cross-legged with enough support to have both knees on the ground and the back erect without having to strain. But it is possible to meditate in any stable posture that keeps the spine straight.
Sitting quietly in a chair is perfectly acceptable. While it helps for the body to be alert, relaxed and stable, meditation is really about the mind and the inner experience. Posture is a support to that but most Buddhist traditions do not regard it as an end in itself. It is useful to take time before and after you meditate to settle into and emerge from the practice. It is always a good idea to have some space to let thoughts die down and tune into your feelings and bodily sensations.
Just as many people practice hatha yoga which is Hindu in origin or T'ai Chi which is Taoist for their health benefits, so many people practice Buddhist meditation without being a Buddhist. It is a valuable tool for developing self-knowledge, learning to concentrate and dealing with stress.
In recent years there has been growing interest in using meditation and mindfulness in palliative care, particularly learning to cope with chronic pain and preventing relapse into depression. In the UK, as in many other western countries, there are many Buddhist centres and independent teachers offering meditation classes and courses.
But the general advice from Buddhists is that it helps to meditate with others and to have teachers who can help you with issues that arise along the way. It also helps to go on retreat with other meditators, when you can focus on meditation more fully. Practitioners turn off the automatic pilot that most of us operate from throughout the day -- we don't really notice all the things that are going on around us or within our own minds.
They try to experience each moment directly. They don't let thoughts, memories, fears or hopes get in the way. Another way of looking at this is to say that a Zen practitioner tries to be completely aware in the activity of any particular moment -- to the extent that they are one with what they are doing. So, for example:.
Zen practice is to realise that thoughts are a natural faculty of mind and should not be stopped, ignored, or rejected. Instead, thinking, especially discursive thinking, is to be acknowledged but then put to one side so that the mind is not carried away by worries, anxieties, and endless hopes and fears.
This is liberation from the defilements of the mind, the suffering of the mind, leaving the truth of this vast, unidentifiable moment plain to see. In Zen Buddhism the purpose of meditation is to stop the mind rushing about in an aimless or even a purposeful stream of thoughts.
People often say that the aim of meditation is "to still the mind". Zen Buddhism offers a number of methods of meditation to people - methods which have been used for a long time, and which have been shown to work. The key Zen practice is zazen. This involves sitting in one of several available positions and meditating so that you become fully in touch with the true nature of reality.
Different schools of Zen do zazen in different ways: Soto meditators face a wall, Rinzai meditators sit in a circle facing each other. Meditation is possible in any stable posture that keeps the spine fairly straight.
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