First Steps in Meditation

John Middleton
October 3, 2013

The "how of meditation is straightforward.
1. Sit comfortably, keeping your spine straight.
2. Become aware of God's loving presence with you.
3. Pay attention to your breath - the inbreath, the outbreath.
4. When your attention wanders from your breath, gently bring it back.
5. After 20 minutes, pray the Lord's Prayer, then resume your other activities.

There can be variations and elaborations, but this starting point works well for most people.

There are, however, a variety of images which can shape your practice, clarify your motives, and help you keep a healthy, transforming perspective. They can also help you to translate contemplative practice into contemplative living,

The images are largely derived from the work of Jean-Yves Leloup, an Orthodox theologian.

1. First, meditate like a mountain.
Meditation is embodied prayer. It requires attention to your spine, your breath, and the stability of your knees. To sit like a mountain means to feel your weight, to know another rhythm, and simply to sit without aim or purpose. Learn how to greet the seasons, to keep silent and calm like the earth. The Lord needs a rock upon  which to build your life as he needed one to build the Church.

2. Meditate like a poppy.
The poppy teaches a certain orientation: to turn toward the sun, to turn from the depths of oneself toward the light. It teaches the need to have a straight stem, "a reminder to straighten your spine. If you watch the poppy closely, it will also teach you to bend with the wind, a lesson in humility. Finally, the blossom fades. It is necessary not only to blossom but to wither.

3. Meditate like the ocean.
When meditating we "float on our backs," carried along by the breath's ebb and flow. We also learn that "though there may be waves on the surface, the ocean bed is calm." Most people perceive only the waves, forgetting that deep down the ocean is still.

4. Meditate like a bird.
In the Old Testament the word for meditation sometimes designates the cry of an animal: the roar of a lion, the chirping of swallows, the song of a dove. Let the song rise within you, return gently to your breath, sit straight and still, and you will begin to know the peace that God gives.

A  young man left a monastery and returned home, but he did not forget the teachings of the older monks. Whenever he was feeling agitated or pressed for time, he would sit like a mountain. Whenever he felt pride or conceit, he would remember the poppy, that "every flower withers." When sadness, anger or disgust overtook him, he would breathe deeply like the ocean and rediscover his own breath in the breath of God, invoking God's name and crying softly, "Lord, have mercy." He didn't try to be a saint. He simply tried to love God from moment to moment and to walk in God's Presence.

The Man Who Taught the World to Meditate

You may not know the name of S.N. Goenka, who died Saturday at the age of 90. But if you've counted your breaths to relax in a hospital, or if you've ever tried to eat, walk, or speak "mindfully," you've felt his influence. He might even have changed your life.

Satya Narayan Goenka did not set out to be a meditation guru. He was an Indian businessman who happened to come across the teachings of a then-radical Burmese Buddhist tradition which had adapted Buddhist meditation practices and taught them to laypeople, like me and (probably) you. That may not seem so radical today, but one hundred years ago, it absolutely was. These techniques had been monastic traditions only - imagine what it would have been like had medieval monks suddenly taught peasants to read the Bible.

Goenka was one of many laypeople whose lives were changed by meditation - but he had the widest influence. He was a core teacher for the first generation of "insight" meditation teachers to have an impact in the United States, and through them, to popularizers like Jon Kabat-Zinn, whose Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) is now taught across the country in hospitals, schools, even prisons.

Indeed, the very notion that meditation may be practiced in a non-religious, non-sectarian way owes much to Goenka himself. Basically a rationalist and a pragmatist, Goenka emphasized that meditation was not spirituality and not religion, but more like a technology - a set of tools for upgrading and optimizing the mind. These are my terms, not his (I discuss this fascinating story of secularization and popularization in my book Evolving Dharma), but the gist is the same. You don't have to believe anything, wear special clothes, or chant special words in order to calm the mind, improve memory, and attain the various other benefits of meditation.

At the same time, Goenka did work within a specific Buddhist tradition, and created a very rigorous format designed to attain certain levels of mental understanding on ten and twenty day silent retreats. To Westerners, he can indeed seem like the very image of the Indian sage, talking about enlightenment while insisting on a very demanding (and inflexible) set of contemplative exercises. Goenka retreats are austere - not only no speaking, but also no reading or writing, and with arduous schedules of concentration and meditation.

Huffington Post blog, The Third Metric, Jay Michaelson, September 30, 2013

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