These notes are excerpted from many of our books and writings on contemplative practice and are intended to offer a very simple and quintessential introduction to the myriad of methods of meditation that we teach. You are welcome to use these to inspire your personal practice, link to this site, or to print copies of pages here for friends, students, or clients (as long as you include reference to the source along with our names and url.) If you are interested in publishing any of this material in any format, please contact us to arrange for the necessary permissions.
May these offerings inspire you to ever deepen the wisdom, wonder, and compassion that you bring to life!
Introduction
At the heart of each of the world’s great religions is a profound wisdom tradition with inner transformational teachings and meditation practices. While the outer, exoteric religious traditions offer ethical and moral guidelines necessary for harmonizing and aligning our lives with a universal nature and sacred reality, it is the inner transformational teachings of the meditative traditions that reveal the spiritual essence of these great traditions. Within the world’s diverse & ancient wisdom traditions, there are millions of profound and practical methods of meditation. The diversity of techniques range from single pointed concentration or chanting OM or a single note, to awesomely complex contemplative sadhanas that weave together sequences of simpler meditation practices into extensive “symphonies” of contemplative practice. In this brief introduction we offer a brief orientation of a variety of methods and guidelines for meditation practice.
Meditation: A Working Definition
The vast array of disciplines/practices drawn from the world’s great wisdom traditions that refine the quality of attention and intention in order to increase the practitioner’s capacity for self-awareness, self-mastery, self-transformation, and self-transcendence & the realization of one’s truest nature and highest potentials.
The wide variety of inner psychophysical, psychoenergetic, and psychospiritual disciplines that promote greater awareness of the many dimensions, problems, and potentials of human experience while promoting greater freedom from limiting patterns of mind, psychophysical reactivity, and associated habitual & limiting patterns of behavior.
Foundation: Right Relationship
Making peace, building harmony, and cultivating “right relationships” lays the foundation for success in meditation. As you reduce the turbulence in your relationships, your mind will naturally become more peaceful, present, and undistracted. This ethical/relational foundation is essential to your success in meditation.
Meditate “On Purpose”
Your attitude and intention sets the direction for your meditation. At the beginning of each session clarify and state your intention for meditating. Is it to relax and ease your stress? Is it to cultivate greater clarity or peacefulness? Is it to awaken more fully to your True Nature & Highest Potentials? Is it to increase your capacity to inspire and help others? Be clear on your intention: meditate “on purpose!”
Frequency & Duration
Frequent short (1 to 5 minutes) meditation sessions are generally better than longer sessions. When you are able to keep your attention present in a meditation practice for 3 minutes with minimal distraction, then, gradually add more time, Emphasize the quality of your attention over the quantity of time you practice and don’t indulge in sloppy meditation habits.
Distractions
Don’t hold on to any experiences…and don’t push any experiences away. Simply allow thoughts or “distractions” to come and flow without getting involved with them. If your practice int his way gradually the mind will become more clear and calm. If you let the mind naturally settle then thoughts and other “distractions” will cease to be a bother. Han Shan says, “Oh how freely come and go the myriad forms of things!”
Sleepiness
Meditation is about awakening and cultivating lucid clear presence of mind. If you are drowsy when you are meditating, open your eyes, do standing, walking, or moving meditation, or stop meditating and take a nap. Avoid cultivating sloppy habits of lapsing into drowsiness of sleeping during your meditation practice. This said, there are advanced practices of meditative dream yogas which cultivate a lucid clarity of mind even during sleep and dreaming. The foundation for these practices is to cultivate a lucid clarity of mind in waking life.
Physical posture
The Buddha taught that the practice of meditation has four postures: sitting, walking, standing, and lying down. Taking this advice to heart, virtually ever activity can be transformed from mindless habit into a practice for awakening more fully to your true nature and highest potentials. As your practice meditation keep the following physical guidelines in mind:
-Body in a balanced position (Sitting in a chair is just fine!)
-Spine straight
-Body comfortable and relaxed
-Eyes softly open, closed, or half open
Five Categories of Meditation Practice
There are five general categories of meditation each of which cultivates different qualities of mind:
- • Concentration Meditation (Peace-Power-Coherence-Focus)
- • Mindfulness Meditation (Presence-Insight-Intuition)
- • Reflective/Analytical Meditation (Insight-Logic-Intuition)
- • Creative Meditation (Creative Imagination-Intuition)
- • Heart-Centered Meditation (Empathy-Equanimity-Lovingkindness-Compassion-Joy)
As you train your mind in these ways, you change the structure, form, and connectivity of your brain.
Integration into Daily Life
A meditation session ideally has three phases;
Phase 1: Preparation and clarification intention
Phase 2: Actual meditation practice
Phase 3: Integration carry ever. Once you conclude your formal meditation session make a conscious intention to then over the qualities of presence and being into the next activities of your life.
Refuge ~ Affirming Our Connectedness
Sense yourself sitting at the center of your universe, surrounded by all living beings. Reach out with your hands-heart-mind and invoke the inspiring presence of all the great beings who support you in your awakening to your True Nature & Highest Potentials. Resting in the natural flow of your breathing, Receive inspiration from the sources of inspiration in your life, and as you exhale Radiate inspiration, love, energy out to all beings.
Take Refuge in the Teachers, Teachings, & Community Who Inspire Your Meditation Practice:
Sitting at this center of the universe, reach out from your heart-mind-hands to all the Sources of Inspiration in your life that you hold most dear. As you inhale allow yourself to Receive waves of inspiration, energy, love, blessing energy from these Sources…and from the Sources of inspiration who nourish them. As you exhale, open your heart, mind, hands to Radiate this inspiration, love, blessing energy to your loved ones and friends, your patients and students, and through them to all whose lives they will touch, and through them to all whose lives they will touch…ad infinitum. Receiving and Radiating with each precious breath. Ahhhh)))
Imagine that the Sun of Wisdom & True Joy is shining from the deepest center of your heart. Carry this light with you wherever you go bless all beings with the Clear, Lucid, Loving, Radiant, Presence of your deepest truest being.
A Reflective Meditation:
Sit with the question: Who am I? Where do I end and the rest of the universe begin? Go deeply enough into this question that the illusion of your solid separate self dissolves into the Mystery and you begin to discover how “you” are interwoven into the fabric of all creation.
Focus & Flow: Finding The Flow )))
To bring clarity and calm , balance and focus to your mind, synchronize the easy, natural wave of your inhalations and exhalations with one of the following sets words which serve as mantras (literally “mind protection” from random mind chatter).
Here (in)…Now (out)…. Or Focus (in)….Flow (out)….
Or Arriving (in)….home (out)…. or Om Mani (in)… Pedme Hum (out)…
Awakening Wisdom ~ Mindful Presence ~ The Practice of Deep Listening
“The more and more you listen, the more and more you will hear.
The more you hear, the more and more deeply you will understand.”
Jamyang Kyentse Rinpoche
Mindfully observe and rest in the easy natural flow of your breath with effortless awareness. Blend your mindful presence with a gentle smile (which will protect yourself from trying too hard, or being too self critical.) Be mindful of how the waves of the breath naturally come and flow. Rest in this natural flow of your breath flow without any effort. Let this mindfulness of breathing be your resting place of awareness.
Then, as perceptions, sensations, thoughts or images, emotions, desires, or intentions arise, simply notice how they come and flow.
As your mindfulness deepens discover how everything in your life is in flow, and that within this flow, everything is connected, and within this inter-connectedness, the true nature and identity of anything is found in it’s interrelationship with everything. Sitting, walking, even talking, weave this mindful presence into every moment and circumstance of your life. Live with ever deepening wisdom, wonder, and compassion.
Lovingkindness (Metta) meditation
As a focus for your meditation repeat the following phrases quietly to your self over and over again:
May I be happy and peaceful…
May I be free from fear & suffering…
May I live with love & compassion…
May I fully awaken and be free…
Experiment with also expanding this meditation by holding others in your heart-mind saying,
“May you be…”, and “May all beings….”
Go for the feeling behind the words and discover the true radiance of your heart.
For more details on these and other essential meditation practice, we invite you to explore the other pages of this website. See the links at the top of the page.
Resources:
We have posted a list of recommended readings, recordings, web-sites, and resources related to meditation at http://www.WisdomAtWork.com/meditation
(Note – this list needs to be updated, but books listed there are excellent)
We have also written many books on meditation which are available via the link above info on books posted at http://Wisdomatwork.com and lead meditation retreats which are posted at the link above.
To explore the possibility of inviting us to offer a workshop or retreat for your community, contact us at:
Joel & Michelle Levey
levey@wisdomatwork.com
Seattle: 206.632.3551
Hawaii: 808.889.0056
“A human being is part of the whole called by us ‘universe’,
a part limited in time and space.
We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings
as something separate from the rest.
A kind of optical delusion of consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison
by widening our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Albert Einstein