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Comment by cmer | Hacker News Reader

I'm getting increasingly interested in meditation, mainly because it seems like it could make me use my brain better.

I have no clue where to start though. Anyone has info to share? I'm a total noob to this. Thanks!

Sit in a comfortable position, if possible on a cushion, on the floor, with three solid points of contact (your butt and your knees). Relax. Pay special attention to your shoulders, neck and throat. Straighten your back, let your stomach and butt hang out. Close your eyes 3/4 and let them go out of focus. Take a deep breath in and let it go. Then breath in again, counting 'one' to yourself, breath out and count 'two'. Keep doing this until you get to ten, then start again. When you get distracted by thoughts, start again at one. If you go past ten, start again at one. If you notice a conversation in your head underneath or behind or above the counting, start again at one. If there is anything other than the counting, start again at one. Just one. Just two. Just three.

Start sitting for five minutes twice a day and build up from there. Longer is better, but only if you stick to it. Don't get annoyed at yourself when you get distracted. Don't get proud if you don't. Don't think you are doing anything special. Just count your breath.

If you would like to learn more, search for 'Taking the path of Zen' where the late Robert Aitken goes into detail about Zen meditation and talks about positions and stretches to help you to comfortably sit in them.

If you are serious about this, find a teacher and a group to sit with. Not only will it make you more likely to sit, a good teacher can offer you advice you'll never find on a message board. Specific advice that is specific to you.

Wow thanks so much for the information! This als0 goes to everybody who responded to this thread.

My pleasure :)

This is harder than it seems! I couldn't go past 7 and barely lasted a minute. I got hyper and missed Hacker News :)

I'm ready to go to bed now, but I'll try again tomorrow. I never thought trying to relax would feed so odd! Thanks again for the information.

Indeed :) I do orientations for friends and occasionally newcomers to the Zendo. I tell them if they can honestly get past five in the first few months they are doing well :)

Also, relaxing is good, but the practice is an attentive awareness of the breath and count. Too relaxed and you'll get sleepy and lose the count, trying too hard makes you tense physically and tires you out mentally. It's about finding that balance again and again and again. Just one. Just two. Just three.

I thought this excerpt from a Krishnamurti talk (found in a link from this thread: http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-tex...) sums up meditation perfectly:

"To learn about meditation, you have to see how your mind is working. You have to watch, as you watch a lizard going by, walking across the wall. You see all its four feet, how it sticks to the wall, and as you watch, you see all the movements. In the same way, watch your thinking. Do not correct it. Do not suppress it. Do not say, ``All this is too difficult''. Just watch; now, this morning.

First of all sit absolutely still. Sit comfortably, cross your legs, sit absolutely still, close your eyes, and see if you can keep your eyes from moving. You understand? Your eye balls are apt to move, keep them completely quiet, for fun. Then, as you sit very quietly, find out what your thought is doing. Watch it as you watched the lizard. Watch thought, the way it runs, one thought after another. So you begin to learn, to observe.

Are you watching your thoughts - how one thought pursues another thought, thought saying, ``This is a good thought, this is a bad thought''? When you go to bed at night, and when you walk, watch your thought. Just watch thought, do not correct it, and then you will learn the beginning of meditation. Now sit very quietly. Shut your eyes and see that the eyeballs do not move at all. Then watch your thoughts so that you learn. Once you begin to learn there is no end to learning."

Sit at end of a chair, your lower back straight (so your whole back forms the natural, self-supporting "S"). Make your palms rest on your thighs or knees, in a way where your arms don't place strain on your sitting position. The rest doesn't matter, over time you will experiment and find what suits you best - opened eyes vs closed eyes, etc. etc. I prefer opened eyes as closed eyes make me sleepy/dreamy. Briefly realize, that for a few minutes starting now, nothing in the whole world matters to you, except of what you are going to do right now. Look inside. Initially, your random thoughts are a great help because you can observe them. By observing them, you can be sure that you are indeed looking inside. Their natural reaction upon their observation is their dissipation and vanishing. Whenever you read a thought, hear a sound, or see an image, only focus your attention on it, which makes it dissipate. At one point your mind will be cleared. That is OK, just be. Don't "try" to stay in that state. Don't "try" anything. Just when a new thought pops up, focus your attention to it until it dissipates - this is usually a very quick process. Rinse and repeat. :) (edit: by focusing attention I don't mean entertaining the thought, entering it, but rather only observing it from the outside, just knowing that it's there, this is a very subtle effort.) (edit2: one more thing - eventually you're going to be finding yourself thinking about something, building air castles, day dreaming, etc. - always just bring yourself back into the practice, right upon realizing that your have strayed.)

I recommend Patanjali's Yoga Sutras:

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/patanjal/patanyog.htm

A simpler approach:

http://www.movingintostillness.com/meditation.html

Keywords: Raja Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Laya Yoga, Mantra Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jhana, Samadhi

I liked Daniel Ingram's Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, online at http://www.interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml .

Sorry if this sounds clueless, but is that religious at all? I'm looking for something not religious since I am an atheist. Thanks!

While I cannot speak to that link, I can say that Buddhism is an atheistic religion.

If I understand the Buddhist teachings correctly (and I may not) there is no ‘religion’ here in the sense of a theology, afterlife, deity, etc. I guess we can define religion in a number of ways but those characteristics seem to me to be essential elements.

Buddhism is still a non-rational belief system entailing ritual, community, and moral teachings.

The book is written by a Western MD and focuses heavily on results. It leans on the classical maps of the path of meditation from Burmese Theravada, a tradition that is about as stripped down and non-theistic as it gets. That said, the maps and some of the terms used may appear somewhat archaic to a modern reader.

It's not. There's a brief strange bit where he thinks advanced meditation skills can lead to psychic powers, without really distinguishing them from people's perceptions of reality changing. Other than that it's pretty much "do these exercises with your head and look for this stuff to happen", and some ranting about general meditation instruction not being enough of that.

Most resources you find will have origins in Buddhism. Ignore it. I'm an atheist too, and while I can't speak to the link above, look up Mindfulness in Plain English for another source that, while written by a Buddhist, is pretty much an "instruction manual" where you can just ignore every mention of spirituality and Buddhism (there aren't many of them beyond giving some context in the introduction). While I groaned once or twice (a mention of levitation...), the spiritual/religious content in that one is light enough that it should be easily tolerable for all but the most rabid hardline atheists.

It's available for free at urbandharma.org (there's a direct link elsewhere in this thread, that I'm too lazy to look up) or you can get a hardcopy from Amazon.

There's an excellent introductory talk that was delivered by Jon Kabat-Zinn for Google. It's available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc

Grab some Alan Watts tapes and read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0834800799)!

Alan Watts is great, but he talks too much. It's interesting, and encouraging for those with an already established practice, but people who are new to meditation need to just sit. It's _very_ tempting to read about Zen and think it is nothing but an interesting philosophy.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is one of my favorite books, but there's very little actual instruction there and, once again, without an established practice, it would be easy to write it off as beautifully poetic but essentially baseless philosophy. (hehe, essentially baseless. Sorry, that's a bad Zen pun)

I'd like to piggy back on this comment and ask if anyone knows a good introduction to meditation from a western/scientific/rational point of view. I'm open to the idea that meditation could help me use my brain more effectively, but I'm extremely wary of the religious/spiritual angle (even if the origins of meditiation are religious/spiritual.)

Western Zen is very western/scientific/rational. Most of the teachers in the lineage I belong to are also psychologists, psychotherapists or counselors (but your teacher is NOT your therapist). Stephen Bachelor has been a Tibetan AND a Zen monk, but is now neither. He wrote a book called "Buddhism Without Beliefs" which might suit you.

Note though that it is almost impossible to separate meditation as it relates to your mind, and meditation as it relates to your bodily actions. When you start to understand the way your mind works, and how everything fits together, you would have to be pretty ignorant to not alter your actions accordingly. Indeed, using your brain 'more effectively' can only happen by applying what you learn.

(IE, there is no state that you 'attain' and from then on you are 'more effective'. Meditation is a 'practice' and so you must practice it, you don't attain anything at all)

edit: correcting misspelled book title. Should be "Buddhism Without Beliefs" not "Buddhist Without Beliefs".

Thanks very much. "Buddhist Without Beliefs" is going in the Amazon basket.

I was also about to purchase the book as well only to find out it is not available on the Kindle. I realized that I never actually read the paperbooks I buy so I figured I'd stop buying them altogether.

Are you aware of great alternative book that might be available in digital format?

Unfortunately (I'm a kindle lover too!) the best books on Zen are either out of print completely or not available digitally :( Here's a couple of good lists thought:

http://www.sfzc.org/zc/display.asp?catid=1,5,168&pageid=... http://szc.org.au/reading.html

Given the context of this discussion, I would recommend reading Charlotte Joko Beck's books. Specifically Nothing Special, which is available digitally on Amazon :)

I caved and ended up buying BOTH Buddhism Without Beliefs and Nothing Special. I got Nothing Special for $4 (used/paperback) so I figured I'll just throw it in.

Looking forward to some reading!

Please read my other comment on this thread with some links to articles that might interest you. - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264078

Krishnamurti has a lot to say about meditation, I also recommend the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita (Jack Hawley translation is very thorough, it's subtitled A Walkthrough for Westerners) and lastly The Upanishads (the one with commentary by Eknath Easwaran is excellent.)

Great information in that other comment of yours. When you say "yoga", is it what ladies do following a DVD or is it some other form of meditation I am not aware of?

traditionally, yoga referred to both preliminary physical practice ("what ladies do" or hatha yoga) as well as mental practice ("meditation" or raja yoga). The two were inextricably linked, where the former was practiced for the sole purpose of preparing the body for long, seated meditation.

Yoga is just the sanskrit word for religion. It's slightly more nuanced than the english word though, because it's recognized that there are many different forms of yoga. For example, all of christianity is essentially one type of yoga.

One last note - if you decide to explore these books or if you already have and you're using your new golden rules - BEWARE "Nondualism" as described here -

http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j34/stacey-intro.asp

Rationalizing everything down to "this is all an illusion" is harmful. There's way more to it than that, so keep questioning and observing your thoughts.

This other comment was meant for you as well - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3266443

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