Ten questions about meditation

03-01-24 00 / episode: 352

I’ll bet you are curious about meditation and you have lots of questions.

Here are several questions that I had and I’ll bet you’d like to hear the answers, too.

Hi, and welcome to the Les Perras podcast episode 352, about meditation.

1. How do I make my mind quiet?

The harder you try to make your mind quiet, the less successful you will be. 

Instead of trying to make your mind quiet,

try to put all your attention on one of your senses:

your sight,

or your hearing,

or some of your internal feelings -physical feelings.

Try to focus your attention on your blood as it goes through your veins or perhaps your breathing.

2. How Long?

Anything is ok. If someone tells you there is a specific time span to meditate for 

then you know they are more concerned with their ideas than meditation.

People have been meditating for thousands of years,

starting long before we could easily measure time.

There is no rule to how long to meditate for.

If you find it hard, meditate for a short time like three minutes for a few months,

until you get used to it.

3. Is it difficult?

Notice your breathing. 

Is that difficult?

Probably you will say not particularly.

Same thing for meditation. It is not so difficult.

It becomes difficult when we try to force it for long periods of time.

This means meditation is as difficult or easy as you make it.

The choice is yours.

4. What if Your Mind Wanders?

That is fine. 

You can come back to here and now anytime,

as the here and now is always here and now. If you wander away to some other thinking,

you can always come back.

In fact, the coming back part is the most important.

In this sense, it is useful to wander away inadvertently.

This gives you the chance to practice coming back.

5. Do you have to have great mental discipline?

Anyone can do it. Even those with no discipline. 

Just adjust the time accordingly.

Meditation ends up building discipline, so you don’t need it at the start.

The more you come back and do meditation the more your discipline will grow.

So there is no need to worry about having discipline at the start.

In fact, if you already have discipline then perhaps there is no need for you to practice meditation.

6. How do you have to sit?

You don’t. 

Any position is ok.

You can meditate lying down, although that makes it easy to fall asleep.

You can meditate standing on your head.

That is called hatha yoga.

7. Where do you have to do it?

You can do it anywhere. 

You can meditate in the doctor’s office, or on the bus;

in an elevator or on an escalator.

At your desk or sitting under a tree.

You can even do a moving meditation like a walking meditation so you are not in only one place.

8. What if I can’t notice any ‘feelings’

when I pay attention to my body?

Pay attention to the aliveness… 

or even just imagine it.

IN fact, imagining feelings is a great entrance into meditation.

You might imagine a fire in your belly or a wind moving up and down your backbone.

Meditation is the direction of your attention onto your feelings.

9. What is the right way?

This is no right way. 

Just put your attention on something beside your thoughts. Of course many scholars have invented different ‘ways’ of meditation. They are fine. Use these ‘ways’ to help you. Ultimately you develop your own style or technique. That is the natural progression to mastery.
Don’t worry about the ‘right’ way; rather concern yourself with actually doing the meditation.