Posts in the “zen” category

When I first started meditating in the 1990s, I often had a hard time getting into the proper meditative state when I sat down on the meditation cushion. My “monkey mind” would be jumping all over the place, and it would take me a long time to get it to settle down. Many times I couldn’t even get it to settle down before my 30-minute timer went off.

Because of that, and because I really wanted to become better at meditating, I began experimenting with different ways to get into the meditative state faster — as fast as possible.

As a result, this page is a summary of the best ways I know to help you get into a good meditation state when you take time to sit on the meditation cushion (or wherever else you sit). If you’re interested in getting into a deep state fast, these are the “best practices” I know, especially when you’re short on time.

One note

I start off with several tips that I have labeled “All Day.” The intent of those tips is that you can use them all day to keep your mind in a great state all day. If you follow these tips, you’ll be in a great state even before you start with your formal meditation session.

After those initial tips, I get into other techniques that you can use just as you sit down on your cushion (or however else you meditate).

In general I try to avoid swearing these days, but sometimes you just need to get your point across. Meditate, let it go ... forgiveness is good for your heart, and good for your soul.^*

^* Forgiveness doesn’t mean you should be a carpet for others to walk on.

(Sorry, I don’t know the original source of this image.)

When I first started learning Zen I didn’t understand the quote shown in this image, and I truly was a carpet to walk on. Then I woke up and thought, “You need to run your business. You need to find the middle way between accepting ‘just this’ and what you need to do to be successful at work.”

It would have been helpful if I had seen this quote then, but the book, Making Zen Your Own, wasn’t available then.

“As a general principle, any positive state that you experience within the context of silent sitting practice (when you reach the state of samadhi), you must try to attain in the midst of ordinary life.”

~ Shinzen Young’s teacher

In my experience, some “judgy” people will make up their own opinion about you — about what you should do or shouldn’t do — when they don’t know all the facts. I use the word judgy, because if you’re a Christian, Jesus was very clear on this point:

“Judge not, that ye not be judged.”

To wit, sometimes you just have to let people be wrong about you. (From this tweet by TinyBuddha.)

For many years I struggled with how to combine two of my main interests, Zen and work. I had read that the Zen mind is the mind before thinking, so it seems like Zen and work must be totally unrelated, because you need your mind to work. And then over time I came to understand phrases like, when working, just work; in computer parlance, become single-threaded.

This article contains a collection of quotes that have been helpful to me in understanding the relationship between Zen and work. Please note that I don’t wrap each quote in double quotes, and I also try to attribute each quote to the correct author/speaker. If you’re interested in how to combine Zen and work, I hope you’ll find them helpful.

My meditation tip of the day: If you really, really, really can’t take time out to meditate, the best thing you can do is pay ruthless attention to the present moment during your daily activities. And the best way to do that is through mantras or noting practices.

“Noting Gone may lead to a spontaneous spirit of love and service (bodhicitta). As I’ve said, where sensory events go to is where sensory events arise from. Gone points to the source of your own consciousness ... so Noting Gone can lead to a spontaneous sense of oneness with — and commitment to — all beings.”

From the book, The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works by Shinzen Young.

(I don’t remember where he stated it, but I also remember that Shinzen Young said that if he could only teach one meditation technique, it would be noting gone.)

These “metta meditation” instructions come from this story on LionsRoar.com.

FWIW, when I practice metta meditation I always start by thinking about the best dog ever. :)

“Meditation practice brings our neuroses to the surface rather than hiding them at the bottom of our minds. It enables us to related to our lives as something workable.”

~ Chogyam Trungpa

The CliffsNotes of my favorite meditation instruction for beginners is:

Sit as usual, and then approximately every 4 seconds say either “hear” or “calm,” depending on whether you hear thoughts in your mind, or not. Just keep doing this for as long as you meditate, whether that’s one minute, two minutes, five minutes, etc.

IMHO, it’s a terrific technique for people who are just getting started with meditation. I still use it a few times a year if I can’t calm down or something like that.

That comes from Core 1, Lesson 8 of the Brightmind app.

On a drive back to Colorado in 2017 I listened to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In the book, The Lady Chablis talked about how much the estrogen shots affected her, mentally and physically — her thoughts, such as who she was attracted to, as well as her physical attributes.

I’ve often thought about how our thoughts and behavior are affected by our hormones (estrogen, testosterone, etc.). That’s one reason I like meditation: The farther you get away from the physical body and chemically-influenced brain, the more you can figure out who you are.

“You can meditate while talking to someone, while washing the dishes, while driving. As your experience grows, you eventually come to a point where you are so present that there is a kind of merging of inside and outside. When that happens, ‘focus’ becomes more than an extremely interesting and pleasant experience; it becomes a transformative experience.”

“Eventually a delicious figure-ground reversal takes place. In the beginning, meditation is something that happens within your day. Eventually, the day becomes something that happens within your meditation.”

~ From “The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works”

I haven’t decided yet if I like the book, Demystifying Awakening: A Buddhist Path of Realization, Embodiment, and Freedom, by Stephen Snyder, but one thing I do like is the concept of an “80/20 rule” that he learned about for when we are interacting with other people.

The idea is that even when you’re talking and interacting with other people, 80% of your concentration should still be on yourself and your inner processes, and 20% should be on who you are interacting with.

This is consistent with my own thoughts on the subject, and what Ram Dass said about Maharaji, that Maharaji could always be seen mouthing “Ram ... Ram ... Ram,” even when he was listening to others. Ram Dass himself also spoke of this in his own practice, and is almost always seen working a mala in public speeches.

In my post on Ram Dass’s best books and other places, I use terms related to the work of Ram Dass, including terms on yoga, Hinduism, Maharaj-ji, Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, mantras, and the different names of the man he called Maharaj-ji (aka, Maharaji, Neem Karoli Baba, Neeb Karori Baba).

Sources of the terms and definitions

To help understand that article, and the speeches, books, and other writings of Ram Dass, I have put together the following “Ram Dass glossary of terms.” Note that the definitions below come from internet research and the following books:

• Be Love Now, Ram Dass
• The Bhagavad Gita, Eknath Easwaran
• The Divine Reality of Sri Baba Neeb Karori
   
• Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, B.K.S. Iyengar
• Love Everyone: The Transcendent Wisdom of Neem Karoli Baba, Parvati Markus
• Kundalini Tantra, Swami Satyananda Saraswati
   
• Kundalini Yoga: The Flow of Eternal Power, Shakti Parwha Kaur Khalsa
• Miracle of Love: Stories About Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass
• Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita, Ram Dass
   
• The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Sri Swami Satchidananda

Sanskrit terms

In The Bhagavad Gita, by Eknath Easwaran, he states in his glossary that these are Sanskrit terms. Wikipedia describes Sanskrit as, “a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages.”

Glossary

Here’s the glossary of terms:

I just took a little time to update some old notes from my meditation practice about “The purpose of mindfulness.” Or, stated another way, instead of asking about the purposes of being mindful you might ask, “Why bother being mindful?”, or “What is the motivation for practicing mindfulness and meditation?”

The purposes of mindfulness

In the following sections I describe the reasons/motivations for practicing both mindfulness and meditation.

I don’t know how many people know Ram Dass or have read his writings, but I updated the first motivation here based on his work, because if you really get into mindfulness and meditation, what he states is the end goal.

“Bring your mind to one point and wait for grace.”

~ from one of my favorite Ram Dass books, Polishing the Mirror, this is something that Maharaji told Ram Dass

IMHO, this is a wonderful definition of the word “namaste”:

I honor the place in you
Where the entire universe resides.
I honor the place in you
Of love, of light, of truth, of peace.

I honor the place in you
Where if you are in that place in you and
I am in that place in me,
There is only one of us.

This namaste definition comes from the excellent Ram Dass book, Polishing the Mirror.

Namaste. :)

Maybe because of my Back To Now app, I really like this quote about remembering from Ram Dass:

“I think that remembering is the strategy that most religions are designed to do. It’s remembering there are other planes of consciousness, it’s remembering the illusory nature. It’s remembering Maya, it’s remembering Dukkha. It’s remembering the karma, the sangha, the Buddha, it’s remembering that you’re not caught on one plane of consciousness. It’s reminding you to wake up. The device is to wake you up.”

That quote comes from this ramdass.org page.

[This is a story from a book that I have, but unfortunately at the moment I can’t remember the name of the book. I just typed this by hand from some images I have of the original story.]

One day during a speech Hakuin said, “They say there’s a pure land where everything is only mind, and that there’s a Buddha of light in your own body. Once that Buddha of light appears, mountains, rivers, earth, grass, trees, and forests suddenly glow with a great light. To see this, you have to look inside your own heart.”

An old innkeeper who had meditated for many years was sitting in the audience, and when she heard this, she felt a strange understanding of his words. She later told her family, “I feel that happiness is as near as my skin.” When she was awake and asleep she kept his words alive:

“Inside your own heart, trees shine with a great light.”