Tag Archives: meditation

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Just breathe!

The call to meditation can be thought of as: “Let’s sit and breathe!”

At least that’s a very good place to begin. But the breathing practices in a yoga class are not what I mean by breathe. Much simpler.

Just breathe.

Don’t think about it, don’t work at it, don’t conceptualize it. Just breathe. It’s the most natural thing we do. The most important thing we do. The one thing we must do to make it through the next few minutes alive.

But sometimes, breathing is very hard. That’s how yoga can help. Again, you don’t really need it, but it may be helpful if you have some of the modern problems with natural breathing.

We civilized, over-wrought, over-thought, under-worked modern humans have often got ourselves into such a state that we have forgotten how to breathe naturally. We have learned some bad habits, or our tensions have created some problematic patterns in us that make us breathe in unnatural ways.

When you meditate, you want to breathe in a completely unforced, relaxed and natural way without trying to control the breath at all. If you have a lot of tensions and anxieties, you may be in the habit of shallow, high breathing that almost seems natural to you, so to overcome that bad habit you may need to work with your breath some before you even try to meditate.

That’s how a yoga class could help. Not the fancy, controlled pranayama exercises, or any of that. Just the relaxing part. The part at the end of class when you lie flat of your back and relax everything for ten minutes.

Corpse pose, they call it.

That’s the kind of breathing you want to be able to do in meditation. Not too tough… so simple a dead man could do it. Well, maybe not, but….

The great thing is, you can do that at home. You don’t need a mat, you don’t need a bolster, you don’t need incense, you don’t need weird music, you don’t need an expensive yoga teacher. You just need to lie down flat of your back and relax everything. Preferably on the floor or some relatively firm surface, not the bed or the couch. Those tend to put us into sleep mode, and sleep is not meditation.

But, for a very good example of natural breathing, just watch a sleeping baby. What moves? The child’s belly. And how does it move? When the child breathes in, her belly rises slightly; as she breathes out, the belly collapses. Notice the shoulders, the chest. They don’t move. Perhaps every now and then, a little shudder and a big breath and the chest lifts a bit on the inhale. Then it’s back to the belly breathing.

That’s how you want to be breathing as you lie on your back relaxing. But don’t force it, just watch it. If you persist, if you stay relaxed and just watch – it helps to lightly place your hand on your belly so you can feel it – your breathing will return to this relaxed natural state. At various times during the day, try to notice what’s happening with your breathing. Again, don’t try to change it or control it, just notice it. Watch it and as you watch it, it will begin to fall into this pattern of its own accord.

After enough attention in this way, your breathing will begin to just stay in this natural mode most of the time. You’ll also begin to notice that one of the first indicators of stress of any kind is that the breathing changes. A single thought can change your breathing. That change can alert you to the power of the thought, and noticing it can defuse that power.

This is one of the ways meditation can help you. When you meditate, it’s very easy to notice your breathing. Noticing it during meditation helps you to notice it in the rest of your daily activities.

Paying attention to the breath is one of the best, simplest, and most practiced ways to begin to meditate. One great thing about observing the breath is that you always have it with you! So you can meditate anywhere, anytime. No special equipment required… no candles, CDs, incense, temples… you get the idea!

Once you’ve gotten comfortable with sitting upright and found your natural, unforced breath, you are ready to begin meditation.

All that is required is to put the two together: sit and breathe!

(Well, technically, sit upright and observe your breath breathing.)

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Sit up straight

Yoga is a pretty good place to start learning meditation, actually.

Real yoga, I mean. Not the pretty models in expensive tights (or not) in ad-filled magazines that are the image of modern yoga. Not the uber-gymnastic physicality that goes along with that. Not even the ‘let’s all get healthy and feel better’ kind of yoga that permeates all the yoga classes I’ve seen. Real yoga is very different, and is all about meditation, spiritual attainment, enlightenment.

The original forms of yoga are pretty much lost, (there’s even one school of thought that attributes modern yoga postures to some Swedish exercise system) but it’s clear that whatever postures and exercises those ancient Indians were doing, the purpose was to strengthen the body externally and internally so that one could pursue a rigorous meditation practice. Even Wikipedia, our authority of last resort here on the Internet, says this: The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on the Hindu concept of divinity or Brahman. The word is associated with meditative practices in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

But don’t go running down to your local yoga studio looking for someone to teach you how to find the state of perfect spiritual insight. They’ll just roll their eyes and smile, and usher you into the shop to pick out just the perfect outfit, mat and accoutrement. Funny to me how marketers have even figured out ways to sell us things to do yoga. All you really need is little clear space and a blanket, maybe a cushion…

(To be fair, I think there are some people who still teach real yoga in the US. They just aren’t all that high profile and might prove to be very hard to find.)

But that’s a bit off the subject. If you are in reasonably good health, reasonably flexible and strong, you have all the physicality you need to learn to meditate anyway. Yoga’s primary contribution to my meditation practice is that it re-taught me how to sit cross-legged on the floor in good posture. Which is nice to be able to do, but not essential. You can meditate sitting in a chair, or even on a couch or bed or other furniture.

The critical element of posture in meditation is really your back.

It doesn’t really matter what position your legs are in, but it does matter how your back is aligned. To meditate effectively, even for a few minutes, your back should be as straight and as perpendicular as you can get it. This seems to facilitate the energy flow in the body as well as make it possible to sit in relative comfort for longer periods of time without moving.

One way to think of this is to imagine that you are lifting everything upward, reaching for the ceiling with the top of your head. A little gentle rocking side to side and front to back will help your body find the vertical – and come back to vertical when you drift off during the process of meditation.

So the first step in the process is simply to find a good, fairly firm seat. Then sit with straight back, your neck and head straight above the shoulders, head reaching upward. The preferred way is on the floor, on a mat, with a cushion under your butt and your knees on the mat, or on some other firm supportive surface. Or prop up your knees with small pillows, blankets or whatever it takes to get yourself into a solid seated position. If this doesn’t work for you, sit on the front half of a chair with feet flat on the floor, keeping your back straight, not leaning back on the chair.

Then, just relax.

Yes, that may seem impossible, but with practice the body learns to do this. Reductionists would say, what I really mean is, relax all the muscles that are not essential to maintaining this position. Yes. But let’s not get technical. It’s simple. Just sit up straight but don’t tense up.

It’s a process. The wonderful thing – one of the many wonderful things, I should say – about meditation is that meditating teaches you how to meditate. That’s why Zen teachers always say, “YOU are the teacher!” And, too, that’s just how Zen teachers like to talk. More of that later.

For now. let’s just say, if you want to take a yoga class, great. It will help. It won’t likely teach you much about meditation, but it may help you learn to sit up straight and relax.

And, it will teach you how to breathe. Just don’t take all that yoga breathing too seriously. It can mess you up.

 

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Friday, March 16

Again, I feel the need to clarify.

In the last post in the Guide to Meditation series, – Just enough – I described my entry into the world of Buddhism and the teachings of Buddha.

That doesn’t mean you should be a Buddhist to meditate.

In the Practice Note last Sunday, I emphasized that one’s theism or non-theism is not important to meditation. The same is true of one’s Buddhism or non-Buddhism. In fact, there are many Christians, Jews, and other religious folk who practice Buddhism specifically in the way Buddha described it, yet these people maintain their own religious beliefs and practices. There’s no conflict there. Buddha’s teachings are universal and can be followed by anyone. Anywhere. Any time. Any religion. No religion.

I will continue the story of my own Buddhist path in the series, and I hope the nature of that will all become clear, but at this point I feel it is important to be clear that meditation in general and meditation as I explicate it here, are not the exclusive province of Buddhist practitioners. I am not telling this story to get you to become a Buddhist. I don’t even think I’m “a Buddhist” – I’m not even sure what a Buddhist is – except in the simple fact that I follow the teachings of Buddha, who taught me to meditate.

And it seems to me that though there are clearly differences in the forms of meditation taught by different people of different religions and traditions, there are enough commonalities that we can discuss them as a body of practice. Just as there are different ways to teach the violin, the idea is to learn to play the instrument, and once one learns, many ways to actually play it. So with meditation, there are different ways  to teach it, different ways to play it.

Clearly too, there are ways that are better, ways more suited to individual idiosyncrasies and needs for teaching anything. There are forms of meditation that are more helpful and forms that lead you down a primrose path to perdition. As I said in the beginning of this blog, my intent is to help folks find a way into meditation that suits them, as well as give assistance in avoiding some of the hazards along the way.

If you have questions, comments, or scathing indictments, please leave a note! I’d love to hear from you!

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Just enough

Luckily, or karmic-ly, I got an assignment with a recon squadron as my SEA deployment inevitably came up, and after a few more months of training, an emergency leave due to my father’s first heart attack, and a trip to survival school, I was on my way to Danang.

Surrounded by Vietnamese refugees who didn’t like Americans very much, Danang was an armed camp (popularly known as Rocket Alley) and there were no trips into the surrounding countryside, save a very scary bus ride to China Beach, no stops along the way. Under these conditions, I didn’t meet many locals. There were many indigenous workers on the base, and I got to know a few of them, but not well. But after a few months, I got transferred to our detachment in Thailand.

In Thailand, we could go into town whenever our schedule allowed, and there was much greater contact with the local, Buddhist, population. I was in love with the Thai people immediately. One of the workers in our ‘hooch bar’ – a small recreational facility our group shared with the hooch, or barracks, next to us – whose name (I think) was Ba, became my friend, and it is to him that I attribute my conversion to Buddhism. He was a very calm and kind man, and he patiently explained the ways of Thai culture to any of us who would listen.

I was particularly interested, and he liked me because of that, I suppose, so he talked to me a lot. In one conversation, he was relating to me the story of the Buddha watching a musician tune a stringed instrument. I don’t remember the details of the story, but I remember very clearly the beatific look on his face, the great compassion of his smile, and the softness of his tone of voice as he said to me, “Buddha say, not too much…” holding one hand up above his head “…not too little,” hand down at waist level, “…juuust enough!” …hand floating through at chest level, big smile and kind eyes looking into mine.

In that moment, it was all clear to me. I knew that this was my own miracle, my own glimpse into the mystery, my own religious truth. These words set me on the path of the Buddha’s teachings that I still follow today. And of course, if you study Buddha’s teachings, you learn that meditation is very important. To say the least.

Although, in the same way that many “Christians” don’t follow the teachings of Christ very closely, most Buddhists don’t practice meditation, – they expect the priests and the monks to do that, and they give alms so they share in the merits of the ones who do meditate – it is clearly what the Buddha himself and all of his primary followers over the 25 centuries hence teach as the thing you must do if you want to come to know Truth. Meditation is “the way” to be able to live in that realm of “just enough” all the time.

I began then, using the very limited resources of the base library at Nakon Phanom, to study Buddha’s teachings. I took every opportunity to hang out on the street near the house in town where novice monks could often be seen on the porch, or outside the gate of the local Wat Shri Thep monastery to watch the monks sitting around the huge well in the courtyard.

Without going into the whole story, I will say that being in the Air Force, especially in the American war on southeast Asia, was very hard for me. Seeing the monks gave me a sense of peace and happiness that was otherwise very hard to find in that setting.

Little by little, I began to think of myself as Buddhist, or at least wishing I could be Buddhist. It seemed unattainable. I didn’t realize then that many authors I had read in college, people like Kerouac and Ginsburg, were actually Buddhist. It seemed to me that only Asians could be Buddhist. Standing outside that monastery gate looking in, I felt relegated to the position of permanent outsider.

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Sunday, March 11 – an aside re: theism

During morning meditation, it occurred to me that I had just thrown in some rather deep, perhaps controversial stuff in that last post, moving swiftly through the progress of my early life, and that it could be a problem for some people who came looking for meditation help, but with a Christian or other theistic background.

So just a word to clarify and maybe avoid putting too many people off with those comments.

The whole question of whether of not there is something like the Judeo-Christian God that actually exists in some way other than as a concept for us humans is not really germane to our discussion here, not really even important in the context of beginning and pursuing a meditation practice. Not that it’s not an important question – it clearly is in many ways – but it’s just not terribly important to decide what you think or believe about it before beginning a meditation practice. And whichever side you are on or come to be on regarding the question is not that important for your practice.

To me, practice is the most important thing, and it will help in answering all the other questions you confront. And you can develop a meditation practice with or without the concept of God in it, with or without having a belief in God or anything else. Because meditation is not about belief or about connection with some supernatural power. Meditation is about connection with reality as you experience it.

The words and thoughts and concepts used to think and talk about your meditation practice can vary widely from one person to another. Those words and ideas are not the practice. The practice is solely the process, the experiences that you have in your own body-mind, in your own silence, in your own space. When you think of it or speak of it, or hear others speak of it, you should be aware that the word is not the thing. Everything that anyone has ever said about meditation – including all the saints and sages and Buddhas – is just an approximation of the experience, a finger pointing to the moon, they say in Zen. It’s not really it. Nothing is it but it. So the only way to know what meditation is about, what it consists of, what it is, is to meditate.

There are, of course, forms of meditation that are predicated on God and aimed at making contact with God. But it’s not clear that what those people are actually doing is any different than what people who don’t have that idea about it are doing. I’ve read widely in the literature of various kinds of meditation including the early Christian monks and it sounds to me like they are all essentially relating the same interior states. And it is clearly possible to follow any form of meditation with or without a belief in God.

I have learned Centering Prayer, which is a form of meditation or contemplation (those words are used differently by different people) based on ancient Christian teachings and practice, and discovered that the very same principles are followed in the actual practice as in some of the explicitly Buddhist forms of meditation I’ve practiced. I also found that despite my own personal lack of a belief system that supports the theistic concepts, I was able to follow the Centering Prayer practice and experience deep meditative states.

All of which is to say, don’t sweat it. For most of what I will discuss here, your belief or lack of belief will not be a serious concern. As you look deeper into these questions, meditation, however you choose to practice it, will be very helpful in making wise decisions.