Meditation: How to do it

Chaos is a friend of mine

-Bob Dylan

Before traveling to Thailand to learn meditation, I had no idea that my friends and family would be interested in ever practicing it. Since that trip however, I've had the pleasure of showing it to loved ones in various cities, including new friends here at Harvard and MIT. We are all motivated to learn meditation by something, perhaps curiosity at first, perhaps because we feel there is something missing from the way in which we experience daily life, perhaps we've come across a significant life event that becomes unmanageable, or perhaps it's due to something else. Whatever your motivation, below are a set of simple instructions (as simple as I could make them) that will show meditation to anyone willing to spare 5 minutes of their day.

I hope you find it useful.


A final FYI: There are two broad categories of meditation. One is Samatha (or focused attention) and the other is Vipassana (open-monitoring). The purpose of Samatha is to calm the mind, the purpose of Vipassana is to gain insight into reality. Vipassana also calms the mind, but that's not its primary purpose. All the types of meditation you may have heard of - Transcendental, Zen, Mindfulness, Insight, Siddha Yoga, Silva Method, etc. - fall in to one of the two categories. You do not need to become familiar with any of them, but for your own understanding, the type I describe below is Vipassana, or "open-monitoring", meditation. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassana

Get in Position

1. Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed - turn off the TV, silence your cellphone, etc.
2. Sit on the floor in a comfortable cross-legged position - doesn't matter which.
3. Put your right hand on top of your left, with the tips of your thumbs touching each other, then rest your arms on your legs (see image above). There are various ways to do this, find a comfortable one for you.
4. Your back can be straight and erect or slightly slouched and relaxed, whichever is more comfortable.
5. Your head straight, facing forward.
6. Set a timer for 5 minutes.
7. Close your eyes.

Begin to Meditate

Step 1: Acknowledge Rising and Falling

• As you breathe in, your belly rises as it fills with air. Everytime it happens, and as it happens, acknowledge it by silently saying to yourself, "rising".
• As you breathe out, your belly falls as it releases the air. Everytime this happens, acknowledge it by silently saying to yourself, "falling".

Step 2: Acknowledge and Gently Return

• Eventually, you will find that your attention has naturally drifted to something else. Perhaps a thought, perhaps a sound, perhaps an emotion, etc. Your attention is therefore no longer on your belly. This is a normal part of meditation.
• If your attention drifts to a thought or an idea, acknowledge it by silently saying 3 times "thinking, thinking, thinking." 
• If it drifts to a sound, say a bird chirping or a car driving by, acknowledge it by silently saying "hearing, hearing, hearing."
• If it drifts to an emotion, observe the emotion by silently saying what you feel 3 times. If you feel angry, then say "angry, angry, angry"; if you're bored, say, "bored, bored, bored"; if you feel happy say "happy, happy, happy," and so on.
• If your attention drifts to a sensation in the body, observe that too, like "feeling, feeling, feeling," or more specifically, "itchy, itchy, itchy," or "pain, pain, pain," or "sleepy, sleepy, sleepy," and so on.
• After acknowledging whatever you experienced 3 times, gently bring your attention back to the breath - and acknowledge rising/falling again, as your belly rises, say "rising," and as it falls, say "falling."

Step 3: Continue

• Repeat this process of acknowledging and bringing your attention back to the belly.
• You are now meditating.
• Open your eyes gently when the timer goes off.  

That's all there is to it - sit, close your eyes, meditate. It's simply an exercise, very much like doing a set of math problems, practicing piano, going to the gym, doing a set of squats, or running a few minutes on the treadmill. Do 5 minutes once or twice a day. When you'd like to move up from the 5 minutes and into deeper levels of meditation, you will need an instructor to guide you. Find a meditation course or retreat to attend, even if just for 1 day.

Good luck! Feel free to comment or email me with questions. And remember, no one said it was easy :)