Although I flirted with meditation from time to time throughout my life, it wasn’t until about 5 years ago that we really got to know each other and I began to think about a serious relationship.
There are thousands of approaches to meditation, and I had trouble finding the one for me. Some rituals really put me off – for exmple, I am simply not physically able to sit in a cross-legged lotus pose. The teachers and writers of Insight Meditaion said it was OK if you don’t do that, so I started reading their books and took some classes at the New York Insight Meditation Center. Their approach resonated with me. I made it to first base.
Slowly but surely I was able to extend my meditation sessions from 5 minutes to 45 minutes or so. Remarkably, I was also able to make time almost every day, one way or another, to meditate. I moved from a chair to sitting on a Japanese style meditation seat. The hard part was finding a regular time to do it. I had been trying to meditate on the train commuting to work without much success, when after about a year, I had the little epiphany that I wrote about in my first post. Second base.
Faking it for a photo op
I have been meditating on the train for almost 4 years now, and that’s what this blog will be about. I don’t know where it will lead, if anywhere, or if anyone will be interested. I wonder how blogging about my practice will change my practice and if that will be a good thing – already, just the other morning, I took my own photo in a meditaion pose when I normally would have been meditating. That doesn’t bode well. Jon Kabat-Zinn advised beginners in his book Wherever You Go There You Are not to talk about it, just do it. Am I far enough around the bases to be able to do this? There’s only one way to find out.
At any rate, I will be writing for you as a student, not a teacher. I hope that other students will find it useful as we try to figure out what is going on in this world and what we are doing in it. Of course, I hope it will be useful to me as well. Is it possible to have a sangha (a community of meditators) online? Will that get me to third base? Or am I about to be picked off second?
Great Thought, Surely I will follow your practice of meditaion. I am in a state of getting disturb easily, cant meditate for more than 20-25 minutes – thoughts from day past disturb me more than future. Yes, Sangha is very important to keep us on track. I too desire to write a similar blog to enlight other on the right path, but only after reaching a state of writing it like you.
Chauhan, Jasbir S.
Thank you for sharing. I look forward to hearing more from you. Every time we realize we are having a disturbing thought and bring our attention back to our breath, we are making progress. Does that help?