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| How to Meditate |
Although it is possible
to experience some benefits of meditation by practicing on
your own, to make real progress in meditation you need the
skilled guidance of a qualified meditation Teacher.
What follows are the methods for a simple
meditation which anyone can follow. These instructions
can be found in Introduction
to Buddhism by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.
The first stage of meditation is to stop
distractions and make our mind clearer and more lucid.
This can be accompanied by practising a simple breathing
meditation.
Meditation Posture
We choose a quiet place to meditate
and sit in a comfortable position. We can sit in the traditional
cross-legged posture or in any other position that is comfortable.
If we wish, we can sit in chair. The most important thing
is to keep our back straight to prevent our mind from becoming
sluggish or sleepy.
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Breathing
We sit with our eyes partially closed
and turn our attention to our breathing. We breathe naturally,
preferably through the nostrils, without attempting to control
our breath, and we try to become aware of the sensation of the
breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils. This sensation is
our object of meditation. We should try to concentrate on it to
the exclusion of everything else.
Mindfulness
At first our mind will be very busy, and we might even
feel that the meditation is making our mind busier; but in reality
we are just becoming more aware of how busy our mind actually is.
There will be a great temptation to follow the different thoughts
as they arise, but we should resist this and remain single-pointedly
on the sensation of the breath.
If we discover that our mind has wandered and is
following our thoughts we should immediately return it to the breath.
We should repeat this as many times as necessary until the mind
settles on the breath
Practise, Practise, Practise
If we practise patiently in this way, gradually
our distracting thoughts shall subside and we shall experience
a sense of inner peace and relaxation.
Our mind will feel lucid and spacious and we shall feel
refreshed. When the sea is rough, sediment is churned up
and the water becomes murky, but when the wind dies down
the mud gradually settles and the water becomes clear.
n a similar way, when the otherwise incessant
flow of our distracting thoughts is calmed through concentrating
on the breath, our mind becomes unusually lucid and clear.
We should stay with this state of mental calm
for a while. We should train in this preliminary meditation
until we gain some experience of it; but if we want to attain
permanent, unchanging inner peace, and if we want to become
completely free from problems and suffering, we will need
to advance beyond simple breathing meditation to more practical
forms of meditation, such as the cycle of twenty-one Lamrim
meditations explained in The
New Meditation Handbook.
When we do these meditations we begin by calming
the mind with breathing meditation, and then we proceed to
the stages of analytical and placement meditation according
to the specific instructions for each meditation. |
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What is Meditation
Types of Meditation
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