Yesterday I came across an excellent post over at TheGrowingLife, A No-Nonsense Guide to Meditation: No Gurus and No B.S.
All of the points of the article are clearly & strongly made. I had though about writing such a introductory guide myself, but now I don’t have to! Particularly I like point 3, and the concept of easing into a practice. In the modern culture we have a strong tendency to “dive right in, head first” which leads to either rapid burnout, or sloppy and easily avoidable fumbles. For my own practice I started with 15 minutes on my BlackBerry timer. I upped the duration as I felt comfortable, and now (9 months later) I am at 27 minutes every morning. Since beginning the practice last June, I have not missed a day, and I attribute that in large part to this “easy does it” attitude. When I visit Green Gulch Zen Farm, for the Sunday dharma talks, or as a Guest Student my time goes up to 40 minutes per session with only a slight strain. When staying at Green Gulch as a guest student the morning sesion is two 40 minute sittings with a 10 minute walking meditation in between. That doesn’t present a problem after the first day. What I do not do is then decide that since I am capable of going for 40 minutes then every day should be 40 minutes. This is a carry over from the policy at my Aikido dojo that it is better to train lightly for years than to train heavy and injure yourself in one week.
My meditation style is a little bit different from the one outlined in the article. I use the Big Mind process of Genpo Roshi and sit as the embodiment of the voice of the “Non-seeking, Non-Grasping Mind” combined with John Sherman’s self-inquiry method of simply feeling what it is like to be and the certainty which never waver that I exist.
I would love to hear from anyone who has some experience meditating, and has any useful tips or anecdotes they would like to share.
Stumble it!
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