Sit Like a Buddha: A Pocket Guide to Meditation
is the ultimate go-to guide for learning how to meditate. It contains all the instructions you’ll need to get started in a remarkably short space, but it also shows you how to make meditation practice a permanent part of your life, infusing it with wisdom and compassion as you go about your day.
Meditation is tough
It isn’t just tough for you; it’s tough for everyone. That is why I mention cultivating the quality of gentleness eary on in this process.
Within a traditional framework there are three main obstacles we can reflect on. This of these as somewhat large umbrellas under which we group anything that comes up that distracts you from maintaining a regular meditation practice.
These three obstacles are: laziness, speedy-busyness, and disheartenment.
1. LAZINESS
Laziness from a meditation point of view often shows up as feeling an aversion to the practice itself. It often takes the form of convincing yourself you don’t have to do it.
It can be as simple as waking up in the morning, hearing the rain hitting your window, feeling the warmth of your comforter, and looking over at the meditation cushion in the corner of your room with disdain. Or perhaps when you sit down to meditate you sit there and space out. Other times it can be a pain in the neck to stay with the meditation instruction.
If you find yourself struggling to get to your meditation seat, just remember to take it easy on yourself, drop judgment, and exert yourself just a little more than you are comfortable with.
The second part of this advice involves swinging your feet over the edge of the bed and hopping down. Exert yourself this small amount beyond your comfort level and you will find that you feel good about it.
2. SPEEDY-BUSYNESS
It’s the idea that you know you want to meditate. It’s definitely something you want to do. But when you get up in the morning you check your e-mail and then you realize you’re late for work so you scramble to get there on time, swearing you’ll meditate when you get home. Then you get home and you smell so you decide to shower. Then your dad calls and you haven’t talked to him for a while so you catch up. Then you check your e-mail again. Then it’s 10 pm. and you have to get up early so you climb into bed, turn on the television, and realize you have made it so you don’t have time for that ten minutes of meditation that day.
Frankly, you do have those ten minutes for meditation. We all do. It’s just that you have spent an entire day convincing yourself that you don’t, making everything other than your meditation practice a priority.
If you consistently meditate for ten minutes and pace yourself to do it daily for a period of time, then it starts to become a new habit that you build into your life alongside your other habits, such as showering or getting dressed. Getting specific with these commitments is important in overcoming speedy-busyness. Consistency is one of the best antidotes to this difficult obstacle.
3. DISHEARTENMENT
Because meditation is such a gradual path, where it may take weeks or months before you start to notice you become more present or calmer, people often get disheartened.
The main antidote to the obstacle of disheartenment is based in the following: we need to have a strong intention for our practice. Whatever it is, that simple reminder of ‘why’ is going to get us off our butts and onto the meditation seat when we feel disheartened.
Complement Sit Like a Buddha: A Pocket Guide to Meditation with Turning the Mind into an Ally. Strengthening, calming, and stabilizing the mind is the essential first step in accomplishing nearly any goal.