How to Meditate

My new book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, is due out January, 2010. It has a chapter about meditation and this is it!

Meditation creates the conditions for transforming pain into wisdom and not to mention, it can quell the 24/7 antics of a freaked-out mind. Meditation cultivates tranquility, joy, vitality, and love and helps you work with difficult emotions such as terror, rage, and despair. By cultivation, I don’t mean gimmicks, I mean it creates inner transformation that gives rise to your own, god-given, birthright-grade qualities of inner peace and relaxation. These things are still there inside you. (They really, really are.) And sitting meditation is the foundational practice that re-awakens these qualities. Far more than a stress-reduction technique, meditation is the ground of peace and joy.

I’m going to teach you a meditation practice called “The Practice of Tranquility.” Tranquility is not something that descends on you when you’re able to get the circumstances just right: perfect job, perfect house, perfect relationship, perfect weight. Tranquility is your natural mind state—it is the state to which you were born and the mind knows how to return there if you just allow it. No matter how shaken up you are, within you is the knowledge of how, very naturally, to return to balance.

Have you ever seen a newborn baby burst into tears? It doesn’t look very tranquil. But at some point, the storm passes and the tranquil state is reestablished. There is no residue. The baby who was red-faced and squealing moments ago is now smiling and playing peacefully in his crib. This isn’t a trick. The baby isn’t rationalizing away his pain or pretending to be over it so you won’t worry about him. The upset is simply gone and his mind returns whence it came: peace. Your mind can do this too and The Practice of Tranquility can show you how.

This practice is ancient—over 2500 years old—and although it is associated with Buddhism, there is nothing particularly religious about it. It is simply the practice of resting your awareness on your breath and, every time attention strays, bringing it back.

Your mind already knows how to do this. It is always resting on something—usually it is on thoughts based in hope or fear, the past or the future. When you begin to notice your thinking, you’ll see that it is rarely focused on the present. Even if you try to stay in the present, you find that you keep slipping into some kind of worry or expectation or judgment. The mind is always commenting on something. In meditation, you practice consciously placing your attention on an object of your choosing instead of allowing it to gallop all over creation. It is not an easy practice necessarily, but it is a very simple one and there is no need to adopt any foreign point of view or belief system. I’m going to give you detailed instruction below and if you wish, you can visit my website for guided audio instruction here.

Instructions for The Practice of Tranquility
Find a comfortable place to sit. If you can sit on a meditation cushion, that’s great. If this is too uncomfortable for any reason, it’s fine to sit on a chair. It’s helpful to designate a particular spot for meditation, so, if possible, choose a particular room or corner of a room to establish your practice. Make your sitting area pleasant. If you wish, you could sit in front of a shelf or table with some cherished or beautiful objects on them, like fresh flowers, some river stones, or a picture of someone or something you love. Keep it simple. The idea is to create a spot that you feel good about returning to.

There are three aspects to pay attention to in meditation practice.

Body
The practice begins with how you take your seat. Meditation posture is actually quite specific. The main thing to remember is to sit up straight, not rigidly, but in a relaxed, upright position. You could feel that as your sit bones reach down into the earth, the crown of your head reaches slightly up, as if some kind and gentle person had put his palm a few centimeters above it and you would like to touch it. I like to use the analogy of a tree, whose roots are planted in the ground, but that also sways and moves with the wind. In this way, your posture should be firmly planted but also supple. When you sit upright like this, you are proclaiming your dignity.

If you are seated on a cushion, cross your legs loosely in front of you. Some people prefer to have their knees lower than the hips, some higher. Play around and see which one works for you. Some people feel most comfortable with only a very thin cushion to elevate their hips, others require a cushion that is one or two feet high. You may have to experiment with cushion heights to find the right setup for yourself.

If you are on a chair, scoot forward so that your back is not resting on anything and your feet are flat on the floor. For most people who meditate sitting in a chair, it’s nice to have the knees a little higher than your hips. To accomplish this, you may need to put a cushion under your feet.

When you’ve found a comfortable posture, place your hands, palms down, just above your knees or at mid-thigh. Let your shoulders and belly relax.

Tuck your chin a little bit to bring some length to the back of the neck. Your mouth should be closed with the lips slightly parted, tongue resting on the roof of the mouth. Let the jaw relax.

In this practice, the eyes remain open. The gaze is soft and cast slightly down, to a spot about six to eight feet in front of you. It’s not like you’re staring at that spot or at anything in particular, more like vision is streaming out from your eyes and mixing with space instead of targeting anything in particular. Although they are open, your eyes are relaxed with the sense that they are sitting back in their sockets, as opposed to straining forward, which is how it usually feels. It doesn’t matter what your gaze comes to rest on, just let it settle on a spot six to eight feet in front.

Breath
Once you have established your posture (which is the most complicated part!), begin to notice the rise and fall of your breath, in and out through the nose. Each breath is different. Can you tell how? There is no need to breathe in any particular way, just allow attention to ride the breath like waves in the ocean.

Placing awareness on the breath is different from thinking about the breath. Here is a simple demonstration of what is meant by placement of attention. Without moving or looking, right now allow your awareness to settle around your right big toe. Allow yourself simply to become conscious of that little piggy. Notice if it feels squished or snug in your sock, or if you can feel the air around it. Now, also without moving or looking, move your awareness to your left ear lobe. Again, just notice it hanging out there in space. Maybe it’s adorned with an earring, perhaps it’s covered by your hair. Now move awareness back to the right big toe. Up to the left ear lobe.

Whatever just moved is your attention and that is what you place on your breath. So go ahead and do that, with a light touch.

Mind
At some point, you may notice that your attention has drifted away from the breath and become absorbed in thought. That is absolutely no problem, none whatsoever. Often, I hear people say things like, “I tried to meditate but I couldn’t stop thinking! There’s no way I can do it.” Well of course you can’t. Trying to stop thinking is like telling your nose not to smell anything. It can’t help it, that’s just what a nose does. This is what trying not to think is like. So instead of trying not to think, in meditation you develop a different relationship to your thoughts. When thoughts arise, you simply notice them and allow them to float by. Keep your attention on your breath. When a particular thought absconds with your attention, as soon as you notice this, just return to it. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been “gone.” The important thing is to come back. Gently let the thought ease away like a wave eases back into the ocean. It doesn’t matter how wonderful, horrendous, boring, creative, or critically insightful your thought has been. Just let go.

When it comes to thoughts, instead of becoming absorbed in them, notice them as you would clouds in the sky. Just like clouds, some thoughts are cheerful and bright while some seem to bear ominous portent. Some are fat and fluffy and beautiful and others are barely perceptible beyond a far-off streak of white. Sometimes clouds block the sky altogether, but you know that just beyond them, the sun is always shining, clear and bright. The meditation researcher and practitioner Jon Kabat-Zinn says that in meditation practice, instead of identifying with the clouds, we identify ourselves as the sky. The sky doesn’t care what kind of clouds pass through or how long they stay. And, just like the sky, we can hold it all and know that no matter what direction we happen to be facing, somewhere it always east and somewhere the sun is always rising.

When you have established your body, breath, and mind in the practice of meditation, try to sit for around 10 minutes per day. It’s better to sit for a short period every day than a longer period on some days. Consistency is more important than duration.

Most people like to sit in the morning, but you may be a night owl and prefer to sit when you get home in the evening. The best time to practice is the time that you will stick with, so choose a particular time slot and try to make it a routine.

At some point, you may feel like increasing your meditation time and, please, go ahead and do so. Just don’t make it a race or try to prove anything to yourself. Take it very slowly. A good plan is to try ten minutes a day for a month. At the end of that month, decide whether you want to continue with ten-minute sessions, stop altogether, or increase the time. If you want to increase, do so by small increments, say, five minutes. Then, after a month of sitting for fifteen minutes, you can make a decision about where to go from there.

I want to mention something extremely important at this point, so listen up. If you find that you want to make meditation an ongoing part of your life, please find a meditation instructor. Working with your own mind can seem like trying to get your eyeball to look at itself and it can get very odd and confusing. It’s vital to find someone who has been practicing for longer than you and who can offer you practical guidance. In the Shambhala tradition, people are trained to be meditation instructors just as I have been and the service is free; all you have to do is show up at a local center and request one. You could also visit your local Zen or Vipassana center and find support there. The only important thing is to go somewhere credible, meaning a place that is affiliated with a lineage that has been around for, say, several thousand years. Stay away from new age nonsense. (See the appendix for a list of meditation resources, including meditation centers.)

***
When suffering a loss, the contents of your heart are like the sparkles inside a snow globe. All day long, your thoughts shake the globe furiously and the little flakes swirl and swirl. The only way to settle the situation is not by willing the flakes to settle or looking away and hoping that when you look back, things will have changed—but to simply put the globe down. Meditation creates the stable surface on which it can rest. It will then settle on its own. Watch while one by one, each flake slowly drifts to the surface and melts away until all that is left is clarity and stillness and you can now see exactly where you are.

The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti said, “when you begin to notice what you are without trying to change it, what you are begins to undergo transformation.” Through the simple act of noticing, you will transform heartbreak into wisdom.