Getting Started (How to Meditate / September 2010)
Shambhala Sun | September 2010 You'll find this article on page 48 of the magazine.
HOW TO MEDITATE
Getting Started
Teacher Norman Fischer proposes a two-week trial run to get your
meditation practice started and looks at how to deal with some of the obstacles you may encounter.
Thousands of people over the
years have asked me for advice about how to establish a daily
meditation practice at home. Although there are thousands of Buddhist
meditation centers around the country, most meditators do some or all
of their practice at home on their own. In many cases, this is a
practical matter. Most people don’t live close enough to a Buddhist
center to meditate there regularly. Or, for one reason or another,
they don’t feel comfortable with any of the local centers available
to them. Or they feel that for them meditation is a private and
personal matter, not a communal religious practice. Anyway, most
meditators, for a variety of reasons, meditate at home. I do myself.
It wasn’t that way when I
began Zen practice. The conventional wisdom then was that you could
never practice on your own. You needed to practice with others—that
was the way it was done. You needed instructions from a teacher. You
needed support—maintaining the disciple to sit on your own would be
too difficult. Besides, meditating alone could be dangerous.
Conventional wisdom has
changed. These days many people find that it is entirely possible to
meditate on their own. Not that lack of discipline is unknown—keeping
up with regular practice remains a struggle for some. But many go
beyond struggle to find enjoyment and ease in their daily practice.
When people ask me how to
get a home meditation practice started, here is what I tell them: the
practice begins the night before. Before you go to sleep, set the
alarm for half an hour earlier than usual, and say to yourself:
“Tomorrow morning I am going to get up to sit. I want to do this,
and it is going to be pleasant and helpful.” Hold that thought in
your mind. Then, as you are falling asleep, say this: “Am I
actually going to wake up early and meditate?” And answer yourself:
“Yes, I am.” And then question yourself again: “Really?” Take
this seriously. Think a little more and answer yourself honestly. If
the answer is, “Yes, really,” then you will get up. You are
serious about it. But if the answer is, “No, I have to admit that I
am probably going to reset the alarm and turn over to get that
delicious extra half hour of sleep,” then save yourself the
trouble. Reset the alarm now and don’t even try to get up.
This little exercise may
sound silly but it is very important. It addresses the main
difficulty we have with self discipline: we are ambivalent. We both
do and don’t want to do what we think we want to do in our own best
interests. We find it difficult to take our good intentions
seriously, especially when it comes to our spiritual lives. We have
confusion at our core about whether we are capable of confronting
ourselves at the deepest possible human level—maybe if we do we
will find ourselves to be unworthy, trivial people. Since we imagine
that meditation promises a self-confrontation at this level, we are
deeply ambivalent.
Most of this convoluted
thinking is not conscious. This is why the before-bed self-dialog is
important. It provides a simple way of confronting the issue.
“Really?” It’s a way to surface what we really feel and,
gently and honestly, deal with it. Otherwise our long habit of sneaky
self-deception will likely prevail. We will not do what we’re not
really clear we want to do, which will give us further evidence that
we can’t do it.
Assuming you do get out of
bed in the morning, splash cold water on your face, rinse out your
mouth, put on some comfortable clothes (or stay in your sleeping
clothes if you want), and immediately sit on your cushion. Do this
before you have coffee, before you turn on the computer, before you
activate your day and realize you don’t have time for this. Burn a
stick of incense to time yourself, or use a clock or one of the many
excellent meditation timers now on the market (which will prevent
clock-watching). Decide in advance to sit for twenty to thirty
minutes. A bit more is good if you can do it.
Try this for two weeks,
taking a day or so off each week. If you miss a day, that’s OK.
Don’t fall into the unconscious trap that “Since I missed a day I
guess I can’t do this, so I might as well not even try, or try less
hard tomorrow because this missed day has weakened me.” This is the
way we think! So anticipate this and don’t fall for it. Be gentle
with yourself, but firm. Imagine that you are training a child, or a
puppy—a cute little creature who means well but definitely needs
adult guidance.
Decide in advance that you
will meditate for two weeks. It is much easier to commit to
meditating almost every day for two weeks than committing yourself to
meditate every day for the rest of your life. After two weeks, stop
and ask yourself, “How was that? Was it pleasant or unpleasant?
What impact did it have on my morning, on the rest of my day, on my
week?” Usually positive results are apparent, and, seeing that the
practice has been beneficial, you develop a stronger intention to
return to it. So then, after a hiatus, commit again to practice,
maybe now for a month, with the same break built in for evaluation.
In this way, little by little. you can become a regular meditator.
Taking breaks from time to time doesn’t change that.
Many people ask, “Is it
necessary to do this in the morning? Is there some magic to the
morning? I am not a morning person.” Yes, I think there is magic to
the morning. Monastic schedules the world over include early morning
practice. Practice seems most beneficial at that time of day, when
your psyche is in a liminal state and the world around you has not
quite awakened. Also, you are more likely to do it in the morning,
before your day gets engaged and you remember all the things you need
to do. In the middle of the day it is harder to rein yourself in, and
at the end of the day you may be too tired or wound up. You may feel
more like a glass of wine than meditation practice, which will likely
feel pretty uncomfortable as your body notices all the aches and
strains and kinks of the day. Actually, practice at the end of the
day is very good for just this reason—while often uncomfortable, it
does help you process all your stress and feel calmer afterward. But
if you are trying to establish a fledgling practice, thinking you
will sit restfully at the end of the day is probably not going to
work as well as catching yourself at your weakest (which is to say
your strongest): in the morning, when you are both more and less
yourself, before you have fully assumed the armored, heroic
personality with which you feel you must approach the world of work
and family. (I must note here the obvious fact that all of this might
not be true for you: we differ enormously as individuals, and in
these intimate matters one size does not fit all. I am describing
what I have found to be true for myself, and for many other
meditators).
There are many approaches to
meditation. In my tradition, the Soto Zen tradition, meditation is
not considered a skill that we are supposed to master. It is a
practice that we devote ourselves to. So if you are meditating in the
morning feeling half asleep, with dream-snatches passing by, and your
mind not crispy focused precisely on the breath, the way you think it
is supposed to be... this is perfectly all right. It is considered
normal and possibly even beneficial. The biggest obstacle to
establishing a meditation practice is the erroneous idea (firmly held
by most people who want to establish a meditation practice) that
meditation should calm and focus the mind. Therefore, if your mind is
not calm and focused, you are certainly doing it wrong. Struggling
with something that you are consistently doing wrong, and in your
frustration can’t seem to get right, does not inspire you to
continue (unless you are a masochist, and there are more than a few
meditating masochists).
Better to assume the Soto
Zen attitude that meditation is what you do when you meditate. There
is no doing it wrong or right. That is not to say that there is no
effort, no calm, no focus. Of course there is. The point is to avoid
falling into the trap of defining meditation too narrowly, and then
judging yourself based on that definition, and so sabotaging
yourself. You evaluate your practice on a much wider and more
generous calculus. Not: Is my mind concentrated while I am sitting?
But: How is my attention during the day? Not: Am I peaceful and still
as I sit? But: Is my habit of flying off the handle reducing
somewhat? In other words, the test of meditation isn’t meditation.
It’s your life.
Dealing with the various
practical obstacles to regular meditation is easy compared with the
deeper self-deception issues I have been talking about. Once you get
a handle on these, the practical problems are easy. Kids get up
early? Then get up half an hour earlier than they do. But that’s
not enough sleep? Well, that half hour of sitting will be much more
important for your rest and well-being than the lost half hour of
sleep. Or you can just go to bed half an hour earlier.
No place to meditate? There
is always somewhere—all you need is the space for a cushion on the
floor. But better to have a clean and well-cared-for spot, even if
only in a corner of an otherwise busy messy room. Keeping that corner
neat and clear is a preliminary to the meditation practice itself.
Your spouse doesn’t want
to meditate and resents that you sneaking out of bed to sit?
Patiently explain to your spouse that the main reason you are
meditating is to become a more loving and helpful person. You are
sneaking out of bed not to assert your independence but for the
opposite reason: to be more loving. Have that conversation (lovingly)
with your spouse. Ask them to help you do this two-week experiment
and evaluate the results: have you been more loving, have you helped
around the house, with the kids, etc., more than usual, with more
willingness, more cheerfulness? (Of course, having had this
conversation, you now have to do these things.)
In short, if you want to
meditate there is virtually no excuse not to. But human confusion is
very clever, so it is still possible to talk yourself out of it. If
so, be my guest. Sometimes that’s the way to finally begin serious
meditation practice: by not doing it for ten or twenty years, until
finally there is no choice.
As the world speeds up and
history’s trajectory becomes more drastic, more people are feeling
the need to do something to promote well-being and foster a
sustainable attitude. It is difficult to remain cheerful if you are
under stress, difficult to believe in goodness and happiness if the
world you live in doesn’t offer much support for them. Gentle and
realistic, meditation practice can provide the powerful attitudinal
boost we need. It doesn’t require pre-existing faith or excessive
effort; simply sitting in silence, returning to the present moment of
body and breath, will naturally bring you closer to gratitude, closer
to kindness. And as you commit yourself to these virtues you will
begin to notice, to your surprise, that many people in your life are
also doing this, so there is plenty of companionship along the way.
From the September 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun.
The Challenge of Other Religions (September 2010)
Shambhala Sun | September 2010 You'll find this article on page 17 of the magazine.
The Challenge of Other Religions
How do we reconcile religious pluralism, so necessary in today’s world, with deep commitment to our own faith? The Dalai Lama offers his solution.
For many religious people, accepting the legitimacy of other faith traditions poses a serious challenge. To accept that other religions are legitimate may seem to compromise the integrity of one’s own faith, since it entails the admission of different but efficacious spiritual paths. A devout Buddhist might feel that acceptance of other spiritual paths as valid suggests the existence of ways other than of the Buddha toward the attainment of enlightenment. A Muslim might feel that acceptance of other traditions as legitimate would require relinquishing the belief that God’s revelation to the Prophet, as recorded in the Qur’an, represents the final revelation of the highest truth. In the same vein, a Christian might feel that accepting the legitimacy of other religions would entail compromising the key belief that it is only through Jesus Christ that the way to God is found. So the encounter with an entirely different faith, which one can neither avoid nor explain away, poses a serious challenge to deep assumptions.
This raises these critical questions: Can a single-pointed commitment to one’s own faith coexist with acceptance of other religions as legitimate? Is religious pluralism impossible from the perspective of a devout person who is strongly and deeply committed to his or her own faith tradition?
Yet without the emergence of a genuine spirit of religious pluralism, there is no hope for the development of harmony based on true interreligious understanding.
Historically, religions have gone to great lengths, even waging wars, to impose their version of what they deem to be the one true way. Even within their own fold, religions have harshly penalized those heterodox or heretical voices that the tradition took as undermining the integrity of the inviolable truths that the specific faith represents. The entire ethos of missionary activity—that is, the focus on bringing about active conversion of people from other faiths or no faiths—is grounded in the ideal of bringing the “one true way” to those whose eyes remain unopened. In a sense, one might even say that there is an altruistic motive underlying this drive to convert others to one’s own faith.
Given this history and given the perception of conflict that many religious people feel between maintaining the integrity of their own faith and the acceptance of pluralism, is the emergence of genuine interreligious harmony based on mutual understanding possible at all? Scholars of religion speak of three different ways in which a follower of a particular faith tradition may relate to the existence of other faith traditions. One is a straightforward exclusivism, a position that one’s own religion is the only true religion and that rejects, as it were by default, the legitimacy of other faith traditions. This is the standpoint adopted most often by the adherents of the religious traditions. Another position is inclusivism, whereby one accords a kind of partial validity to other faith traditions but maintains that their teachings are somehow contained within one’s own faith tradition—a position historically characterized by some Christian responses to Judaism and Islam’s relation to both Judaism and Christianity. Though more tolerant than the first position, this second standpoint ultimately suggests the redundancy of other faith traditions. Finally, there is pluralism, which accords validity to all faith traditions.
So, with these considerations as background, how does a follower of a particular religious tradition deal with the question of the legitimacy of other religions? On the doctrinal level, this is a question of how to reconcile two seemingly conflicting perspectives that pertain to the world’s religious traditions. I often characterize these two perspectives as “one truth, one religion” versus “many truths, many religions.” How does a devout person reconcile the perspective of “one truth, one religion” that one’s own teachings appear to proclaim with the perspective of “many truths, many religions” that the reality of the human world undeniably demands?
As many religious believers feel, I would agree that some version of exclusivism—the principle of “one truth, one religion”—lies at the heart of most of the world’s great religions. Furthermore, a single-pointed commitment to one’s own faith tradition demands the recognition that one’s chosen faith represents the highest religious teaching. For example, for me Buddhism is the best, but this does not mean that Buddhism is the best for all. Certainly not. For millions of my fellow human beings, theistic forms of teaching represent the best path. Therefore, in the context of an individual religious practitioner, the concept of “one truth, one religion” remains most relevant. It is this that gives the power and single-pointed focus of one’s religious path. At the same time, it is critical that the religious practitioner harbors no egocentric attachment to his faith.
See the
September 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun for more of
this article.
Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is the spiritual and
temporal leader of the Tibetan people and a recipient of the Nobel Peace
Prize and the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal.
Shambhala Sun | September 2010 You'll find this article on page 23 of the magazine.
This Is Getting Old
Old age forces you to let go of one damn thing after another! But as Susan Moon learns from her mother, it can also be a golden opportunity for poetry, friendship, and moderate amounts of wine.
I was having Cheerios and milk with my mother at the little table beside the window, in her retirement building in Chicago. Her sixth-floor apartment overlooked Lake Michigan, and one of my mother’s greatest pleasures was to sit in her favorite chair and watch the passing of ore boats and clouds.
This was the first morning of my visit, and my mother turned her attention from her lake to her daughter, saying, “Your hair is so wild! Can’t you do something to get it out of your face?”
“Why don’t you ever tell me when you like my hair?” I asked.
She tried to redeem herself that evening, lavishing compliments upon me when I put barrettes in my hair before we went downstairs to dinner. But again the next morning she looked at me over her bowl of cereal with her head cocked, and I felt it coming.
“You looked so beautiful last night,” she said, trying to be diplomatic. “I could hardly take my eyes off you.” I knew that was just the prelude. “But this morning…can’t you just brush it back?”
“Mom,” I said, “I’m sixty-three years old. I’m too old for you to be telling me how to wear my hair.” Apparently I wasn’t too old to mind.
“I just want you to know how nice it looks when you brush it back.”
“I know how you like it, Mom.”
“No, you don’t! That’s why I’m telling you.”
I thought: You’ve been talking to me about my hair for sixty years. Do you think I don’t know what pleases you? But I didn’t say it out loud. Anyway, I wasn’t in an entirely blameless position.
See the
September 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun for more of
this article.
Shambhala Sun | September 2010 You'll find this editorial on page 11 of the magazine.
EDITORIAL
Beginner’s Mind
By Liam Lindsay, Associate Editor
I don’t have time to meditate. When my clock radio clicks on with the morning news, so do I, and into my mind swarm a thousand worries and wants. Unbidden, the day’s schedule unrolls before me like a red carpet that impels me to rush headlong into the tasks at hand. And like every other day, it seems, there’s way too much to do. Not to mention the stuff I had meant to do yesterday that simply must be done today.
And that’s before I’ve checked my email, the local newspaper, New York Times online, Facebook, horoscopes… With two cups of black coffee, the day shifts into instant overdrive.
In other words, I start my day the same way millions of others do. We roll out of bed straight onto Western society’s autobahn—no speed limit and surrounded by people wrapped up in themselves, driving like maniacs. How fast is fast enough? We no longer have a clue, and it is increasingly clear that we can’t count on our society—this breathless lifestyle we’ve collectively created—to come to its senses and tell us it might be good medicine to slow down. That doesn’t happen because it goes against the very grain of this culture of ours—a culture of doing that has lost touch with simply being.
I barreled along like that for decades: raising a family while working as a journalist, letting career speed me up until the multitasking maelstrom of hyperkinetic newsrooms in New York and Los Angeles became second nature, years whirling by so wildly I seem to have missed some of them.
Fortunately, something happened along the way that gave me a glimpse of another approach to living. In 1977 a Calgary newspaper sent me to cover His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa, the head of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, who was on his second North American tour. It was a transformative experience that culminated in my taking Buddhist vows with him and then going to Vancouver for meditation instruction from students of Shambhala founder Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
I embraced the teachings, appointed myself drill sergeant of my own meditation practice, and had high hopes of being hitched to some sort of Enlightenment Express. (It took a long time for me to realize that, even when meditating, I was largely focused on speed and achievement.) Then along came a baby and a new job in a new city, and I was caught again in the riptide of our madding Western culture. Sit by sit, my meditation practice gradually slipped away.
However, a couple of years ago I got lucky, three times over: I had a major health crisis; my second marriage fell apart; and I got laid off. That’s when I stopped to think. That’s when I came full circle to the realization that it was time to take the leap—to borrow a phrase from Buddhist luminary Pema Chödrön—back into mindfulness and meditation.
So, even though I still think I don’t have the time, I am meditating. I am a beginner again. Through practice, I am slowing down, and, in the gaps that arise, opening my heart to what is. I am learning a new way to live, one moment at a time. There is tenderness toward myself and others, a feeling of basic goodness.
The clock radio still goes off. The day’s schedule is still ready, but I am no longer so driven to be an expert. Instead, I find being a beginner a big relief, and the world a vivid, magical experience in which there is time enough for everything—even meditation.
This special issue of the Sun is a wonderful opportunity to explore the many aspects of meditation and mindfulness practices, regardless of the extent of your experience. These teachings offer an easy-to-grasp introduction for newcomers as well as a comprehensive refresher for experienced meditators. After all, it’s never too late to be a beginner.
From the September 2010 "How to Meditate" issue of the Shambhala Sun.
The Mindful Society: Showtime! (September 2010)
Shambhala Sun | September 2010 You'll find this article on page 71 of the magazine.
THE MINDFUL SOCIETY
Showtime!
By Barry Boyce
We are creatures built for listening, not only with our ears, but with every part of our being. In studies of empathy, neuroscience is now showing us just how attuned we are to picking up signals from others around us and from our environment generally. We swim in a sea of sensations and we are apparently well equipped to take it all in. Nevertheless, it seems hard for us to scale back the part of us that generates output, that is overeager to contribute its two cents. So often, when we could be listening, we are strategizing about the next thing to say, or otherwise dwelling in the internal chatter so familiar to anyone who has tried to still the mind for more than two minutes.
Improvisational music relies on our innate ability to listen fully and to let something emerge out of that, in a spontaneous, almost magical way. Perching on the edge of our seat while someone else is playing, trying to figure out how to have our moment on the stage, doesn’t lead to good improvising. To truly listen is one of the hardest skills to cultivate, but it is central to jazz improvisation. Adam Bernstein—a bass guitar player, music educator, and meditator in Brooklyn, New York—has discovered that mindfulness practice is an excellent means to help music students quiet the chatter a bit and learn how to listen for real. More than that, Bernstein realized, jazz-playing itself has a quality of mindfulness and awareness—and having a regular meditation practice could help players extend that quality into their daily lives.
“There are so many great things about jazz,” he told me. “It’s a democratic art form. It builds community because players need to learn to function together. It requires them to listen to each other or it all breaks down—just like things do in the rest of the world. When you’re not playing, though, how do you find that still place, how do you learn to make space to have silence in the chaos? That’s what meditation can do.”
Bernstein started the Jazz Mindfulness Program in 2009, when the Brooklyn Zen Center (started by students in the tradition of Suzuki Roshi) was just getting set up. He served as the jazz director at the Berkeley Carroll School for eleven years and also was on the faculty of jazz at Lincoln Center. He plays with the Laurie Berkner Band, which performs and records music for children.
Jazz Mindfulness is for instrumentalists and singers from ages twelve to eighteen. Bernstein leads two fourteen-week seasons: winter, from October to February; and spring, from February to May. The students meet each Monday, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., at the Brooklyn Zen Center for a short meditation followed by instruction and improvisational practice. Each season ends with a concert.
“One of the hardest things for musicians, and probably jazz musicians in particular,” Bernstein says, “is coming down off the high of playing. That’s led to a lot of self-abuse. I’ve had to work with that myself, how to just be with myself. Music has always been a release for young people, but I’d love my students to learn mindfulness at a young age, so that they can have the joy of the music and also get beneath the chatter and the judgment that can suppress the creative, open mind.”
The program emphasizes a range of mindfulness practices beyond sitting meditation—walking, eating, being aware of sensory input—so that the students can see how to connect what they’re learning to everyday life. “My youngest student, Olivia, was telling us the other day how she was tearing herself apart with judgments about her school work, and stressing out. Then she said she noticed her breath and was able to calm herself. That’s what we’re trying to do for these young people.”
Acting. Meditation. They’re a good fit, since awareness of your body, speech, and mind, and of the surrounding space, is a key element in theater. Indeed, contemplative theater groups have existed for a long time. Many theater and dance exercises—such as body scans and spatial awareness drills—are meditative to a great degree, and many acting teachers believe the craft demands a process of self-discovery.
Parlan McGaw, who leads Meditation for Actors in New York City, has been acting since he was a child. When he started practicing meditation in 1988, he began to see how complementary the two practices were. “I had an instinctual feeling,” he told me,” that meditation and acting fed each other—that meditation could enhance acting, and any artistic pursuit for that matter.”
See the
September 2010 "How to Meditate" issue of the Shambhala Sun for more of
this article.
Barry Boyce is senior editor of the Shambhala Sun and the editor of the forthcoming book, The Mindfulness Revolution: Leading Psychologists, Scientists, Artists, and Spiritual Teachers on the Power of Mindfulness in Daily Life. (Shambhala Publications, 2011.)
The September
2010 "How to Meditate" issue of the Shambhala Sun is at newsstands now. Our annual all-teachings
issue, it answers your questions about Buddhist meditation practices for
mind, body, and heart.
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Shambhala Sun | September 2010
Thousands of people over the
years have asked me for advice about how to establish a daily
meditation practice at home. Although there are thousands of Buddhist
meditation centers around the country, most meditators do some or all
of their practice at home on their own. In many cases, this is a
practical matter. Most people don’t live close enough to a Buddhist
center to meditate there regularly. Or, for one reason or another,
they don’t feel comfortable with any of the local centers available
to them. Or they feel that for them meditation is a private and
personal matter, not a communal religious practice. Anyway, most
meditators, for a variety of reasons, meditate at home. I do myself.
.
For many religious people, accepting the legitimacy of other faith traditions poses a serious challenge. To accept that other religions are legitimate may seem to compromise the integrity of one’s own faith, since it entails the admission of different but efficacious spiritual paths. A devout Buddhist might feel that acceptance of other spiritual paths as valid suggests the existence of ways other than of the Buddha toward the attainment of enlightenment. A Muslim might feel that acceptance of other traditions as legitimate would require relinquishing the belief that God’s revelation to the Prophet, as recorded in the Qur’an, represents the final revelation of the highest truth. In the same vein, a Christian might feel that accepting the legitimacy of other religions would entail compromising the key belief that it is only through Jesus Christ that the way to God is found. So the encounter with an entirely different faith, which one can neither avoid nor explain away, poses a serious challenge to deep assumptions. 
, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. © 2010 by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Reprinted with permission from Doubleday Religion
I was having Cheerios and milk with my mother at the little table beside the window, in her retirement building in Chicago. Her sixth-floor apartment overlooked Lake Michigan, and one of my mother’s greatest pleasures was to sit in her favorite chair and watch the passing of ore boats and clouds. 
I don’t have time to meditate. When my clock radio clicks on with the morning news, so do I, and into my mind swarm a thousand worries and wants. Unbidden, the day’s schedule unrolls before me like a red carpet that impels me to rush headlong into the tasks at hand. And like every other day, it seems, there’s way too much to do. Not to mention the stuff I had meant to do yesterday that simply must be done today. 
By Barry Boyce
The
Mindful
Society
The September
2010 "How to Meditate" issue of the Shambhala Sun is at newsstands now. Our annual all-teachings
issue, it answers your questions about Buddhist meditation practices for
mind, body, and heart.