A man travels to live at a Buddhist monastery with the hopes of learning to become enlightened.
Upon arrival he meets the head monk and asks “How long will it take me to reach enlightenment?”
“Hmm...”, says the monk, “...perhaps 10 years.”
Feeling this was far too long to wait, the man replies: “But, what if I work twice as hard? Devote myself twice as much to the practice? How long then?”
“20 years,” replies the monk.
“What? I do not understand,” says the man. “If I’m willing to try even harder, surely that should mean I can attain enlightenment faster?”
To which the monk says, “I think for you it will probably require about 30 years.”
I heard this story during a talk from the Audio Dharma podcast. I don’t remember it exactly but this was the general gist of it. Felt relevant here.
This is the variation that I have heard and enjoy: you should always meditate 20 minute per day. Unless you don't have the time, in which case you should meditate for an hour.
This is the difficult with the ego mind, it wants to stay alive - it wants to "do" instead of to settle. Practices to letting the ego mind settle, to letting mental coping mechanisms dissipate - replacing them with healthy coping when necessary, is a major key to health.
I once met someone who was doing their doctorate on meditation - however they didn't have a meditation practice. Certainly seemed like they were being called or drawn to meditate, yet their ego mind found a way to avoid it to stay alive/active..
I first heard this quote from David Carradine in the TV series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Cain was telling this to his impatient teenage son. Both characters were monks in a Buddhist temple in California.
I'm not sure what the take away was, but I really enjoyed the article. That seems appropriate.
I've been doing unguided mediation by myself for short periods (sub 30m) for years. Never really took much instruction in terms of what type of mediation i should do.
I think this article is the first thing that really made want to seek out instruction.
Any personal recommendations for books/other material for someone that's familiar with the concept of sitting meditation and can get into daily habit of 10m sessions without a huge amount of trouble?
The Mind Illuminated by John Yates (aka Culadasa) helped me a lot on how to structure my practice and how to deal with specific issues arising during meditation. I also find it quite well-written.
Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana[1] is a classic intro. Altho the free version at the link is called "rather dated" -- really, how "dated" can meditation instructions be? Anyway, I found that edition helpful.
I think Headspace is quite a good fit for someone looking for 10 minute (or shorter or longer) sessions. Since you have meditated before, I would skip the "Basic" sessions.
The "Pain Management" facet of Headspace has been the most rewarding and I think its focus on breath movement through the body (even if you don't have pain or discomfort) is brilliant.
As far as reading goes - I've recommended Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living before and still do. I read it before starting a guided meditation program (I didn't buy his CDs) and eventually added Headspace.
For mindfulness awareness in the moment I would recommend Mindfulness:a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world by Williams (Oxford University). It takes you through a course in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy. MBCT is aimed as anti-depression. I like the standardised approach used which means that clinical trials are possible.
Another interesting angle is Mindful Self Compassion - best starting point Kristin Neff.
I've heard good things about the dhamma.org 10-day Vipassana retreats. The sessions seem to require registering months in advance for new students, though.
10 days is a big commitment, and it may be something you want to explore in future. While I do not agree with all the philosophies and can do without all the evening talks, the fact that you can do long sessions of meditations and everything is taken care of is excellent. I like to compare ten days course to a marathon - it is hard, you need to be open, and you learn a lot about your mind.
I have also found "Black Lotus App" (http://blacklotusapp.org/) to be a good source for myself. It is free, has some good guided sessions, allows you to attend global sessions and gives access to other resources.
Waking Up with Sam Harris. It's an app for iOS. Sam Harris is a very insightful philosopher and neuroscientist. He explains things in a very concise and concrete way that I value above my experience with Headspace.
I don't know how adequate the 10-minute sessions promised by apps like Headspace are in the long run. In my experience, a 20-minute session feels a lot more effective than 2 10-minute sessions, and so on for 40 minutes over 20 minutes, and so on.
I found Headspace and similar apps to be a good introduction to meditation for the first week or two, but they really are 'meditation lite' compared to reading some of the classics and sitting in unguided meditation for at least a 30-minute session everyday.
I think it depends on your individual needs if two 10 minute sessions or one 20 minute session is better. Some people gain concentration after 10 minutes, some people get impatient. Longer sessions might give you more concentration, but more frequent meditation might give you more mindfulness in your daily life.
In my mind the biggest disadvantage of headspace is that there is no community around it. It helps a lot to meet in person and practice together.
Do you have any good suggestions for "the classics"? I've read "Siddhartha", "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", and I'm just about done with "Mindfulness in Plain English".
I'm pretty new to the whole idea of meditation, and I'm still a bit skeptical about it, but I'm willing to go all in for a few weeks to see how it goes.
I feel like reading will help me keep going. I've heard it's good, but I'm really not sure what the goal is, so perhaps further reading will help me "stay on the course" or whatever.
Other than Culadasa's 'The Mind Illuminated' which others have recommended here, I can recommend Michael Taft's 'The Mindful Geek'. There's also Chade-Meng Tan's 'Joy on Demand'.
If you don't actually meditate regularly, much of what even the best meditation books talk about can sound faffy and repetitive. So please, give the actual practice at least a month or two before deciding to drop it.
Even 10 minutes a day is OK if you don't skip more than a day or two over several weeks. Practicing everyday builds aptitude and sensitivity during concentration meditation a lot better than longer sessions with gaps of a few days.
A practical benefit I see for meditation is being able to move through stressful situations faster. I still feel stress but I'm able to notice it faster and recover faster. The number of stressful situations per day is probably consistent, but I'm just spending less time recovering and processing them.
For me, practicing without a guided voice has been really helpful in this pursuit as it makes it easier to quickly meditate in or after a stressful moment without having to escape the situation.
Someone - I don't remember who - made the analogy that life is like a fast moving river where you're pulled along by the currents of your thoughts, feelings & experiences. Meditation enables one to stand on the bank of the river and observe the current as opposed to being in the river and swept up by it.
I think a more accurate analogy is that you're always pulled into the river but meditation helps you get out of the river more quickly, stay on dry land a bit longer, before eventually being pulled back into the river again.
"Tell me, dear sir, how you crossed over the flood."
"I crossed over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place."
"But how, dear sir, did you cross over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place?"
"When I pushed forward, I was whirled about. When I stayed in place, I sank. And so I crossed over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place."
[The devata:]
At long last I see a brahman, totally unbound, who without pushing forward, without staying in place, has crossed over the entanglements of the world.
I'm curious to know more. But I also think it's important not to paint all meditation with the same brush. Transcendental Meditation® is it's own weird thing.
Meditation and yoga have taken the ‘Western’ world by storm. This is because they are extremely easy to instruct. Close your eyes, breathe evenly, etc.
Those who know (yah pasyati, sah pasyayi - are initiated in scripture and are able to ‘see’) understand that meditation is the end portion of a spiritual path, the last stage before enlightenment.
Every single canonical text mentioning meditation mentions how essential it is to control the mind first, before meditation. Yet most people end up using it as a way to calm down which is not the intended use. It is unsurprising that they end up hurting themselves. Most can’t continue the practise long enough to do that anyways because for a beginner your mind will be jumping within 5 seconds or less.
It doesn’t matter much anyways. Most people are not Really meditating when they attempt to do so, more just relaxing.
Source: Scholar of important ancient Indian texts.
I can't speak for the author of that comment, but here's my take:
When you meditate, you're creating in essence an open space in your mind. (A head space, if you will. I will not, because that's pretentious. But feel free.)
That empty space is an invitation to anything out there that wants to fill it. If you're spiritually minded, you might think of it as an invitation to spirits to come and fill your head with new ideas, and wouldn't you know it, evil spirits love that sort of thing.
If you're secular/rational/scientifically minded, just know that if you calm your mind, you WILL get other thoughts replacing the ones you just calmed down. If you sit down feeling guilty, your meditation will likely be dominated by thoughts of guilt. If you're angry, you'll likely obsess about that anger.
The usual advice I've been given is to let it happen. Let those "evil" thoughts come, take note of them, and then let it go. If they come back (and they always come back), note them again, let them go again.
The danger is if we get attached to these ideas. Then they grow and become the basis for depression or anxiety or any number of other ailments.
The opportunity is to be able to see that these thoughts and feelings aren't any more real than anything else; that we don't have to act on them; we don't have to identify with them; we don't have to let them control or even influence how we really feel, think, and act. They're just passing thoughts. We don't have to hop in their car and go for their ride. We can keep walking.
It's probably because they directly conflated their experience with TM with meditation in general. Many people in the meditation community have strong views on TM in particular, in my experience.
Upon arrival he meets the head monk and asks “How long will it take me to reach enlightenment?”
“Hmm...”, says the monk, “...perhaps 10 years.”
Feeling this was far too long to wait, the man replies: “But, what if I work twice as hard? Devote myself twice as much to the practice? How long then?”
“20 years,” replies the monk.
“What? I do not understand,” says the man. “If I’m willing to try even harder, surely that should mean I can attain enlightenment faster?”
To which the monk says, “I think for you it will probably require about 30 years.”
I heard this story during a talk from the Audio Dharma podcast. I don’t remember it exactly but this was the general gist of it. Felt relevant here.