Questions about meditation

"What should I do with my eyes when I meditate?"

In some schools of Buddhism, you meditate with your eyes open and in others you keep them closed. If your eyes are open, what you do with them depends on the kind of meditation you are doing. Generally, you look downward and shorten your gaze when you are doing meditations to calm and concentrate the mind. You lift your eyes and expand your gaze when you are meditating on openness and the environment around you.

A good approach to calm abiding (shamatha) meditation is to look slightly downward, letting your gaze fall about six feet in front of you, keeping it in soft focus and relaxed, neither too tight nor too loose. You can also use your eyes to help with obstacles when your mind is scattered, lower and shorten the gaze: when your mind is dull, raise your gaze and take in more space.

"And how about my hands? when I see pictures in the press of people meditating, they usually have their palms up with their index fingers and thumbs making a circle. Is this the right-hand position for Buddhist meditation?"

HAND POSITIONS ARE CALLED mudras, they are meant to encourage certain states of mind. the hand position you see depicted is widely taught in yoga to promote deep diaphragm breathing and concentration. In Hinduism, it symbolizes union with the divine. We are not aware of it being used in Buddhist meditation.

There are two mudras commonly used in Buddhist meditation. In the first, called "resting the mind", you place your hands face down on your knees or thighs, with the upper arms parallel to the torso. This allows your hands to relax and promotes a straight but not stiff back.

The other common hand position is the "cosmic mudra", which is widely used in Zen. In this mudra, your right hand rests in your lap facing up and your left hand sits lightly on top of it. The thumbs gently touch each other as if holding a piece of paper, forming an oval just below the navel. Since this is considered the spiritual and energetic center of the body, the mudra is called cosmic because we gently hold the universe in your hands. More practically, the circle often starts to collapse as our attention wander or we get drowsy, which is a helpful reminder to wake up.

Your meditation foundation

Just follow along and you will be doing basic breath meditation, also known as “ calm abiding”, shamatha, or mindfulness meditation, the foundation of Buddist meditation practice across traditions.

First, you ‘ll want to find a quiet and uplifted place where you can do your meditation practice. Once you’ve done that, just follow these simple instructions. See if you can allow yourself 5 minutes. You can revisit this practice and increase this amount over time.

Step 1: Take your seat

Seat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, or if you prefer, on a straight-backed chair with your feet flat on the floor, without leaning against the back of the chair. In either case, your hips should be higher than your knees. You may wish to place a pillow or other cushioning on your chair t achieve this effect.

Step 2: Find your sitting posture.

Place your hands palms-down on your thighs and sit in an upright posture with a straight back-relaxed yet dignified. With your eyes open, let your gaze set comfortably as you look slightly downward about six feet in front of you. You’re ready to start meditating.

Step 3: Notice and follow your breath.

Place your attention lightly on your out-breath, While remaining aware of your environment. Be with each breath as the air goes out through your mouth and nostrils and dissolves into the space around you.  At the end of each out-breath, simple rest until the next in-breath naturally begins. For a more focused meditation, you can follow both the out-breaths and in-breaths.

Step 4: Note the thoughts and feelings that arise.

Whenever you notice a thought feeling or perception has taken your attention away from the breath, just say to yourself, “thinking”, and return to following the breath. No need to judge yourself when this happens; just gently note it and attend to your breath and posture. Keep going for the time allotted.

Step 5: Well done! You’ve just had your first experience of meditation.

After completing your meditation practice period, see if you can consciously allow any sense of calm, mindfulness, or openness you’ve experienced to remain present through the rest of your day.

The practice at a glance:

1. Sit comfortably, but solidly

2. Incorporate your hands and eyes, with restful awareness, into the sitting posture.

3. Notice and follow your in and out-breaths.

4. Note arising thoughts and feelings.

5. Finish the meditation after the time you’ve allowed, doing your best to retain any positive qualities it’s helped cultivate.

What is Buddhist meditation (What meditation Is - and Isn't)

"The practice of meditation is not so much based on becoming a better person, or for that matter becoming an enlightened person. It is seeing how we can relate to our already existing enlightened state." _Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche_

As meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein has quipped, "it's not what you think." So let's take a look at what it is- and what it is not.

Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard busts the myths and explains why beginning to meditate is like embarking on a great adventure.

Continue reading below to see Matthieu Ricard explanations of what is mediation and what it is not.

In our modern world, we are consumed from morning till night with endless activity. We do not have much time or energy left over to consider the basic causes of our happiness or suffering. We imagine, more or less consciously, that if we undertake more activities we will have more intense experiences and therefore our sense of dissatisfaction will fade away. But the truth is that many of us continue to feel let down and frustrated by our contemporary lifestyle. But no change can occur if we just let our habitual tendencies and automatic patterns of thought perpetuate and even reinforce themselves, thought after thought, day after day, year after year. But those tendencies and patterns can be challenged. That's where meditation comes in. Its aim is to transform the mind. Every one of us has a mind and every one of us can work on it.

WHAT MEDITATION IS

Meditation is a practice that makes it possible to cultivate and develop certain basic positive human qualities in the same way as other forms of training make it possible to play a musical instrument or acquire any other skill.

Among several Asian words that translate as "meditation" in English are bhavana from Sanskrit, which means "to cultivate", and its Tibetan equivalent, gom, meaning  "to become familiar with." Meditation helps us to familiarize ourselves with a clear and accurate way of seeing things and to cultivate wholesome qualities that remain dormant within us unless we make an effort to draw them out.

The traditional Buddhist texts say that every being has the potential for enlightenment just as surely as every sesame seed contains oil. Despite this, to use another traditional comparison, we wander about in confusion like a beggar who is simultaneously rich and poor because he does not know he has a treasure buried under the floor of his hut. The goal of the Buddhist path is to come into possession of this overlooked wealth of ours, which can imbue our lives with the most profound meaning. The goal of meditation, specifically, is not to shut down the mind or anesthetize it, but to make it free, lucid and balanced. 

WHAT MEDITATION IS NOT

Sometimes practitioners of meditation are accused of being too focused on themselves, of wallowing in egocentric introspection and failing to be concerned with others. But we cannot regard as selfish a process whose goal is to root out the obsession with self and to cultivate altruism. This would be like blaming an aspiring doctor for spending years studying medicine before beginning to practice.

There are a fair number of cliches in circulation about meditation. Let me point out again that meditation is not an attempt to create a blank mind by blocking our thoughts - which is impossible anyway. Nor is it engaging the mind in endless cogitation in an attempt to analyze the past or anticipate the future. Neither is it a simple process of relaxation in which inner conflicts are temporarily suspended in a vague, amorphous state of consciousness. there is not much point in resting in a state of inner bewilderment, There is indeed an element of relaxation in meditation, but it is connected with the relief that comes from letting go of hopes and fears, of attachments and the whims of the ego that never stop feeding our inner conflicts.

Meditation is not, as some people think, a means of escaping reality. On the contrary, its object is to make us see reality as it is, right in the midst of our experience, to unmask the deep causes of our suffering, and to dispel mental confusion. We develop a kind of understanding that comes from a clearer view of reality. To reach this understanding, we meditate, for example, on the interdependence of all phenomena, on their transitory character, and on the nonexistence of the ego perceived as a solid and independent entity.

Meditations on these themes are based on the experience of generations of meditators who have devoted their lives to observing the automatic, mechanical patterns of thought and the nature of consciousness. Then they taught empirical methods for developing mental clarity, alertness, inner freedom, altruistic love, compassion. However, we cannot merely rely on their words to free ourselves from suffering. We must discover for ourselves the value of the methods these wise people taught and confirm for ourselves the conclusions they reached. this process requires determination, enthusiasm, perseverance, and what the 8th-century monk and scholar Shantideva called "joy in virtuous ways."

Thus we begin by observing and understanding how thoughts multiply by association with each other and create a whole world of emotions, of joy and suffering. then we penetrate the screen of thoughts and glimpse the fundamental component of consciousness: the primal cognitive faculty from which all thoughts arise.

ADVENTURE TOWARD HAPPINESS

If we consider that the potential benefit of meditation is to give us a new experience of the world each moment of our lives, then it does not seem excessive to spend at least twenty minutes a day getting to know our mind better and training it toward this kind of openness. The fruition of meditation could be described as an optimal way of being, or as genuine happiness. This true and lasting happiness is a profound sense of having realized to the utmost the potential we have within us for wisdom and accomplishment. working toward this kind of fulfillment is an adventure worth embarking on.