Sometimes
when I am teaching, I tell people that I have never met someone who
has meditated, even for a little while, who has said they can fully
express their experience to someone who has never done it. (I
started regularly teaching meditation in 2002, after having already
practised it for twelve years). Since then I have probably taught
over 1500 classes. And no one has ever contradicted me, saying they
have been able to. But even if we can not fully express our
experience of meditation, can we at least say something about it?
What is
meditation?
Even this is
a difficult question, since there is no one thing which we can call
meditation. We only have a large number of meditation practices,
coming from different religions, countries and cultures, that have
been developed and practised over many centuries. Perhaps in Russia
the best known of them involves meditating on the “Chakras” or
energy centres. It comes from the Hindu tradition. Or at least that
is what most people ask about when a conversation starts on
meditation.
So what are
the meditation practices I teach?
They are the
“Mindfulness of Breathing” and the “Development of Loving
Kindness”, and both are widespread in the teachings of Buddhism.
However, they can both practised on their own, so you don't have to
be a Buddhist to practice them and they are accessible to people from
any religion.
The
“Mindfulness of Breathing”.
In the
“Mindfulness of Breathing”, while sitting upright and alert yet
comfortable, and with our eyes closed, we simply pay attention to the
breathing as it naturally enters and leaves our body. The practice
has four stages, and with each new stage we are asked to be more
alert and focussed with our awareness. With our eyes closed, we
withdraw from our usual sensual experience so as to become more aware
of the riches and complexities of our inner world, including that
which psychologists would call the “unconscious”.
So what has
been the effect of having regularly practiced this meditation for the
last quarter century? Again, it is difficult to answer, partly
because during that time I have done various meditation practices,
and ethical observances, with each having their effect. However,
certainly two qualities immediately come to mind.
Firstly
is the ability to simply sit, to quietly and happily sit with a
relaxed and aware state of mind, and to be interested in and very
alive to what is going on around me and within me. When I do this in
public, people often tell me, “don't be bored” не
скучай. Maybe
they only feel fully engaged and interested in fleeting moments of
high pitch excitement? If only they knew the riot of feeling and
impressions that I might be experiencing while quietly sitting there.
Secondly is
the ability to think deeply. This might surprise some. After all
don't many who come to meditation classes say they want to stop
thinking, having heard that meditative states are states without
thought. It is true, higher meditative states are states where the
rational mind has ceased to function, but we can't simply force
ourselves to stop thinking to get there. There are meditative states
where thinking and reflection are present, and concentrating on our
thoughts is one way by which we can attain them. What I sense most
people really want to stop, when they talk about stopping thinking,
is the underlying negative mental states that accompany their
thoughts, like like restless and anxiety, and of which the thoughts
are mere expressions.
The
“Development of Loving Kindness”.
In the
“Development of Loving Kindness”, we again sit upright and alert
yet comfortable, with our eyes closed, but this time we turn our
attention to other people, selectively turn out attention to them.
Selectively here doesn't mean to select certain people at the expense
of others, because in the last stage of the practice we develop
loving kindness to all living beings without exception, rather
selectively to certain aspects of our experience and focus on them.
The practice is based on the principle that 'what we give our
attention to grows', so we consciously decide to focus it on the
positive aspects, for example, peoples positive qualities and our
good memories of them, rather than the bad. This doesn't mean being
naïve and simply ignoring the bad qualities, rather letting what is
positive be more prominent and have a stronger effect on us, which in
turns helps us feel happier and be more positive in our relations
with others.
As well as
being more aware of their positive qualities, I found the practice
helped me simply become more aware of other people, in all their
depth and complexity. In this regards there is something I have to
admit ... All my life I have been rather convinced of my own
specialness and uniqueness, even if others never saw it. What I
learned through doing this meditation was that everyone else, yes
everyone, deep down was the same. They all saw themselves as special
and unique and were looking for others to recognise it in them, just
like I was.
There are
many other things this practice has taught me. One of them was to be
interested in uninteresting people, and like unlikeable people.
Another was that if I wanted to be able to be genuinely kind to other
people, I had to learn also to be kind to myself. The meditation
practice starts with the development of loving kindness to ourselves.
Out of the
two meditation practices, the “Development of Loving Kindness”
was the one I never wanted to do, so perhaps it is not surprising
that persevering with it was more beneficial.
So after all
these years, what advice would I give to those wanting to start
meditating? Keeping going and don't be in a hurry to change
practices.
Keep going!
Maybe you
will have good meditations when you start, and maybe you won't. But
what is certain is if you really try to meditate, you will have many
days when it will be hard going, where you will feel nothing is
happening, you have returned to square one, or got even worse than
when you started. Don't be despair! That is part of the process, it
happens to everyone. While doing the “Mindfulness of Breathing”
maybe you begin to see just how distracted you really are, and while
doing the “Development of Loving Kindness” maybe you see how much
you are irritated, hate and avoid people. You never noticed it before
because you were not aware enough to do so.
Don't be in a
hurry to change practices!
Many who come
to my classes learn the two meditations and then say, 'ok I got that,
what's next?'. It is all too easy to go round collecting practises
from different teachers. Soon you'll be able to impress all your
friends by talking about all the interesting things you know … But
if you want to find water underground, you will need dig a deep hole
in one place, not a series of shallow holes in different places, and
the same goes for finding the treasures which meditation can reveal,
even if there is water in many, many places.
Happy
digging!
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