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Hello,
Star here at the foot of the big Buddha statue
at the Skeptical Buddhist Sangha in Second Life.
I am sitting here meditating because I promised
last time that this time we'd talk about
the most-used tool in the Buddhist's toolbox,
which is meditation.
The first thing you need to know
is that having your avatar in Second Life
sit in meditation – or just plain “sit”
as we affectionately call it –
having your avatar “sit” while you do other things
is about as useful as spinning
a Tibetan prayer wheel.
Not that I'm saying prayer wheels
are completely useless.
Anything can be used as a focus for practice,
but nothing saves us the work of doing the practice.
This is equally true in having an avatar sit.
If in real life you sit while it sits,
you at least have the actual experience.
That may seem silly and obvious
but it makes the point that meditation –
as in all of Buddhist practice –
is something you have to DO.
No one else can do it for you
and there are no shortcuts.
So that you are able do the sitting yourself,
I'll give some instructions for
a foundational form of meditation in a moment,
but before we get to that I want to touch
on some of what Buddhist meditation is,
and how it is integral to following
the Buddhist path.
The most common understanding of meditation
is that it is stress-relieving,
and this can be true of Buddhist meditation,
but not always, and calming us down
is definitely not the main focus.
When the Buddha taught novices to meditate,
he started them with one that would help them
develop concentration and increase
their ability to focus -- this is
the foundational meditation I mentioned.
This meditation can be quite relaxing,
but it isn't always,
and we shouldn't expect that it will be.
(Remember: expectations are “views”
and “views” cause trouble.
Please don't cling to expectations
of what your meditation is supposed to be like
or what you're supposed to accomplish
because doing that tends to add to your suffering,
not relieve it!)
Our first practice of sitting will be to learn to do
just that, sit, with an object to focus on.
The focus of our meditation will be the breath,
and the reason for that is that
it is always there with you.
At first we will count the breaths as an aid
to noticing whether or not we remain focused
or whether our minds have wandered away,
but if we settle into it enough,
we can drop the counting
and just observe the breath.
So here's the basic instructions
for breath meditation.
(1) Find a time and place where you can have
fifteen minutes of relatively uninterrupted
peace and quiet.
(2) Get yourself into a comfortable position –
best if it's one in which your shoulders
can be over your hips, and your spine upright –
whether on a chair, a cushion on the floor,
or in the lotus position,
but sustainable for those fifteen minutes.
If for any reason you are unable to use those,
any position you can sustain
while remaining awake is good.
(3) Lightly close your eyes if you're not sleepy;
if you're sleepy, softly focus your half-opened eyes
a few feet in front of you.
(4) Once you settle into your spot,
notice your breath going in and out.
Find a point in your body where you
can feel the effect of breathing –
the expansion and relaxation of your chest or belly,
or air rushing in and out of your nose.
(5) Once you have the point for your focus,
breathe in – just naturally,
not forcing your breath in any way;
pay attention to the in-breath;
when your body is ready to breathe out,
notice the out-breath.
(6) After the end of the out-breath,
before the in-breath, silently count “1”
(7) Repeat steps 5 and 6 –
following the breath in and then out
and upping your count,
“2” after the second breath,
“3” after the third, all the way up to “10”.
(8) After “10” start over with “1”.
(9) Do this for fifteen minutes.
(10) When you discover that you're no longer
paying attention to your breath –
as you are very likely to discover –
simply notice what you were thinking about
and return to the breath and counting.
(11) Don't judge your thoughts,
or yourself for having them.
Simply return to the breath and counting.
That's all there is to it, really.
It sounds simple but when we try it
we find it's not as easy as it sounds.
This practice provides first-hand insight
into what it is to be our busy, active selves.
This first insight,
that it's very difficult to have a quiet mind,
is only the first of many
that meditation gives us access to.
Despite that first, quick insight,
I call this tool
“not the sharpest in the Buddhist tool box”
because it's not fast acting and the daily practice –
yes, we should do this every day –
daily practice can be dull.
But like snow falling on mountain tops,
it will have an effect, and wear away surfaces,
often without you even noticing that it happens.
Yet sometimes it will press you down like a glacier,
you'll feel the weight;
there might be the occasional avalanche.
The main thing to understand,
is that over the course of years of meditating,
it will have such a wide variety of helpful effects
that even when it seems to be going badly –
“seems to be” because we've gotten ourselves
caught up in some belief about
how it should be going –
even when it is at its most boring,
or frustrating,
even when it's just calm sitting
and it seems nothing is happening,
it is doing its job.
This meditation teaches the very useful skill
of letting go.
You may recall that in the last episode
I talked about letting go of views.
Catching ourselves clinging to views
can be a challenge,
but letting go OF the view can be even tougher,
and meditation gives us lots and lots of practice.
You may have already noticed
from my discusion of
views about how our meditation practice
“ought to go”
that just looking at why
we might be reluctant to meditate
will give us practice in,
first, noticing that we have views and then,
with practice, letting go of them.
We also get lots and lots of tiny,
repeated bits of practice
waking up enough to notice
that our ever-so-human minds have drifted,
and we get practice noticing
what we were thinking about,
and practice not judging
what we were thinking.
“Letting go of judging” here
is the same as “letting go of views”
because “judgment” is just another word
for “views”.
Most of all we get practice
releasing those repetitive thoughts,
letting them go gently, not forcefully.
This is a practice in learning to recognize
the sorts of thoughts we have,
a practice in being kind to ourselves
for being human while at the same time
acknowledging that the cyclical thinking
that takes up most of our waking hours
is something all of us do by default,
and a lot of those thoughts aren't pretty,
but that's not wrong,
it just is the way it is.
We find don't have to cherish every thought –
if they are important,
believe me they will return
when you're not meditating.
We can learn to let thoughts go,
and in time this practice will give us
the power to choose which thoughts
we should cherish, nurture and feed,
and which thoughts we can simply
recognize as not useful, and let go.
That's quite a lot of things
being practiced
while we just sit and count breaths.
Before we all go off
and find a good place to sit for fifteen minutes
or more if we've been at it a while
and have worked our way up to longer meditations
I would like to emphasize that even when
we feel our meditation is not going well,
it is doing just what it should be doing.
Noticeable progress is not the point.
It is most often when we feel most “stuck”
that we are getting the most benefit,
but if you become too frustrated,
it might be time to try
a different form of meditation –
take a class, go on a retreat,
read up on what's out there –
step out of your normal meditation cycle
for a little while.
But don't ever give up.
Well, thanks, and we'll see you next time.
Namasté