If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This

By "years of sincere effort" I mean practicing daily. 20-30 mins is probably enough to start. I would compare it to playing an instrument. Daily practice is pretty essential.

To get started I recommend finding a group and going a few times at first to understand good posture and breathing techniques. There is no right way to meditate so which group you join probably doesn't matter. I personally like the methods of Zen or Shambhala.

I have actually managed to meditate for 20-30 minutes first thing every morning for the last 26 days in a row, although over the years I've been practicing on and off. The trick I've found to do it everyday for nearly a month now has been to use some findings in behavioral economics.

The idea is this: come up with a challenge for a month and a small but immediate punishment for yourself if you don't meet it. For example, donating $50 to an organization you hate if you don't meditate when you knew you should've (obviously any real crises are exempt from any skipping). It is amazing how well this works. Suddenly I have 20 minutes at home to just sit down so the Westboro Church doesn't get any of my money.

But to more correctly answer your question, just keeping a routine is enough. We cannot all become monks, but if you can ever get to a place where 20-40 minutes is a daily routine, it will change your life. Feel free to message me if you have any specific questions on books to start with, etc.

For the mental aspect, a good starting point is the audio session Alan Watts Teaches Mediation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tYENNBA0cA

1. The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh

2. Mindfulness in Plain English, Bhante Gunaratana. This one is free online, though the paid copy is a bit more edited for clarity.

My primary guide is 1. It's concise and provides just the right amount of breathing exercises to help me focus while I "sit." 2 is more comprehensive but I've found it a bit too scattered, with too many tools to help with breathing that I go in circles attempting different ones. Most people I think employ a couple and ignore the rest. 1 is much better written and just a more cohesive book than 2 IMO, but they're both great books and either one alone works well as a guide to meditating.

Allocate a certain room and time religiously where you will sit down every day. Reduce distractions to nil zealously.

Sit on the floor, cross your legs and close your eyes.

Now focus on taking deep slow breaths. Every time a thought comes, and you get focused on it, relax and let it go. Refocus on your breath.

Its more practice than technique.

The aim is pretty simple - be able to witness your thoughts and let them go. Finally you reach no thought.

As for sincere effort, it isn't full time job style, but, it isn't "just" keeping a routine. It is keeping a routine, and actively trying to improve your meditation technique. Much like going golfing every week isn't the same as intentionally practicing your swing or putting with a coach every week.

Do this and you will no longer have doubts about meditation. You will like it or hate it but you will know what it is.

Something to consider, is that there seems to be some confusion on this thread between meditative practices and meditative states etc. This would be like comparing the act of drinking a lot of alcohol with the drunkenness that results. There are many different types of alcohol and varying means of consuming it but that state that results from its consumption is somewhat common to most people.

In my comment above, I was referring to Meditation as a state of consciousness where the sense organs and mind become highly introverted. In that state the mind slows way down and comes to a stop.

Of course there is. It's the only rational reason to do something: for present or future benefit. Otherwise you quit the realm of reason and enter the domain of religion.

Thanks for the comment, I can definitely concur that stopping the mind is not easy.

When I started running, I would have told you that for me, running a 5 minute mile was probably impossible. After training a bit, I was able to achieve it consistently. But a key thing to keep in mind, is that I had a coach and other teammates to train with. This helped me believe I could reach goal and gave me the tools to do so.

I think you can probably get the analogy here.

On a more practical note, I just find that I make more mistakes when I'm not paying attention to what I'm doing. And as for planning for the future, how much extra time would it really take if you saved it for after the dishes? A couple minutes?

All that said, I still listen to podcasts while doing chores...

I don't want you to think that I am suggesting that you shift your "focus" from one activity to another, because that is ultimately is as same as a typical meditation routine. You are shifting your focus from whatever you were doing, to your focus on sitting idle and doing typical meditation.

That's not what I am suggesting with the dishwashing example. The meditation I am describing does not ask for you to focus .... instead, it asks for you to be "aware" and "be in present".

Here's the difference and here's what you can potentially gain:

When you are in the present washing dishes, you are training your mind to not be in the past and/or future. So now, if your mind is in present, than it does not matter if you are washing dishes or singing or dancing. The point is, that in present, you are closer to your true self and in present, you are more alert to the reality.

The mind constantly makes you wander either in the past or in the future and we generally don't and cannot stay in the present.

The example of doing your favorite activity (like running, exercising, singing, dancing etc) is important here because it is in these activities where you derive a whole lot of satisfaction and contentment for yourself. It has also been established that athletes usually find loosing themselves in their games at the moment of transcendence and we (the audience) have seen above-human or super natural acts come out of those moments (there is another subject of what audience derives out of watching such events, be that sports games, a movie, a concert etc, etc).

Hope you're following.

EDIT: Perhaps more to the point, many of the useful decisions or notions that might have arisen from thinking about the future or the past while washing dishes tend in my experience to arise more or less of their own accord, in their own time. Much of the mind tends to think itself once you let it.

You'll do both things more efficiently if you give them your all rather than having your attention constantly flit between them. Imagine if, while programming, you had to switch between projects every five minutes. You'd never get anything done! Yet we expect our brains to perform well under the same harsh circumstances.

Of course, if you don't care about what you're doing, it doesn't really hurt to let your mind wander. You'll probably do a sloppy job, but you don't care anyway. But the real payoff to concentrating on something like washing dishes is that your mind gets better at concentrating, so you'll instinctively do it when it really matters. It's like muscle training — you don't want to wait until you need to heft a couch to start doing it.

Sometimes it's best to use your time to actually practice your football skills, go out on the field and play; or else spend that time planning the next game, doing strategy and stuff like that.

But other times it's best to go to the gym and lift weights. That may seem like a waste of time for a football player, but it actually makes him stronger, so he gets better results in the game - because he engaged in a seemingly unrelated activity. Strangely enough. ;)

Same with washing dishes. Sometimes you use that time to draw plans for the future, advance the theoretical side for the projects you're working on ("play actual football with your team mates in the field"). Other times it's best to use those moments to meditate ("lift weights at the gym"). Both are useful, and in fact it's best if you practice both, at different times.

one of the most difficult principles of zen to understand and follow is "no gaining mind". this is an extension of the notion that attachment is the root of all suffering.

If you are into watching movies and when you watch an exceptionally good movie, you are most likely staying in present in that moment where the mind is not there to distract. It could be a great scene or it could be the whole movie, the experience one gets out of watching good movie, is as same as the experience one gets out of being-in-present. But obviously the moment passes leaving the taste in your mouth, but the point is ... that one can find and cultivate those moments further in life in other situations.

Thanks for the great idea.

Only if your goal is to make your biceps bigger. If your goal is to gain strength, isolation is less effective, as strength involves more than just one muscle, it also involves stabilizing muscles, tendons, ligaments, etc. Who says training your conciousness isn't similar?

> But how does one raise awareness of being in the zone? It is that consciousness that I believe is paramount.

I believe first, we have to realize that people in general are not aware that they could be aware. What I mean by this is that at first, you have to realize that you can be better, or you can achieve better if you bring the rules, or guides, or signs, into your consciousness. For example, without being aware that your daily activities could be an activity towards self-improvement, you cannot really avail the opportunities to be conscious.

Secondly, and once you realize the above, you can further raise your consciousness level for the betterment of not only yourself, but for the humanity at large (starting from your immediate close-by people in your circle).

So all in all, with the combination as you suggest, people can become more conscious, more ethical, more compassionate....all because they are making an effort to staying in here-now.

Saying this does not make it true thought. Is that actually what people do during meditation? The only experience I have with meditation is sitting in seiza position after 2 hours of Ki Aikido, slowly feeling my muscles cramp, listening to someone hit a drum periodically, and not feeling anything good at all.

Eventually I just learned to devote that time to reviewing things I had learned that day. I found this self-reflective practice far more refreshing and pleasant than any search for metaphorical emptiness.

I think meditation may have benefits, but the idea that it helps you "build up willpower" has always been one I thought we could actually measure, and yet I've never seen a good study of it.

Are we defining it this way? Because this does not jive with my experience of meditation, focusing, or resisting distraction.

> Have you ever tried sitting still for 15-30 minutes, doing nothing but breathing?

Yes. As a matter of fact, meditation was part of a martial arts practice I participated in for 2 years. In all that time I tried very hard to do this, but never found much value in it. Eventually I settled on quietly and methodically reflecting on the day, which is something that seemed to have a lot more value than chasing a vague notion of emptiness.

And honestly I'm not convinced this is _any different_ from the "benefits" of meditation.

I'm not saying that's true, but I think GP's point is that we should really have some kind of evidence that meditation helps with this, rather than simply assuming that it helps because it makes you practice it.

So is actually practicing resisting distraction in vivo, except that it's directly applicable. You're argument is exactly the “of course it does!” argument that your parent was referring to.

Without studies, we don't actually know whether the skills in resisting distraction during meditation actually transfer to other situations.

To quote your parent:

One cannot just say things over and over to make them true.

Download speed is a muscle. By downloading more files you're building up your download speed.

Do you realize how unsupportable this line of thought is? Do I even need to go into this?

How do you know meditation does not actually make this worse? If "willpower" is finite and predicated on physical endurance (as studies suggest), then perhaps sitting here trying to hold your mind "empty" is actually making you less capable of carrying on with the rest of your day!

Why wouldn't 8 hours of sleep, famously known for its ability to inspire ideas, be even more effective?

My strength of will comes from adversity, not passivity.

I've spent hundreds of hours meditating over the last 40 years, and it is far from apparent to me that it strengthened my will.

Personally I find that the reasoning behind these rules is very practical. You see, the course is all about understanding what sensations are and the effects that they have in our psyche. So one of the goals is to limit as much as possible all sources of sensations so that you can easily focus on a few and see how the mind reacts to them.

For example, after a few days my internal monologue petered out and for the first time I realized that a good portion of my mental activity was normally devoted to thinking about things I was going to say later on. Once I was out of the habit of talking all the time, I stopped cooking up little quips and observations about everything and really felt an expansion of non-verbal thinking.

So, although I had my doubts about the place going in, I left feeling that 10 days of intense internal focus was the only possible way to reach the insights I'd had, and that I was glad I'd done it. The months afterwards (while I kept up the practice, before I got "too busy"), were the most contented of my life.

If you want to know more about the Goenka approach, there are a couple of really good podcasts from Buddhist Geeks:

http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2007/07/bg-028-entrepregurus-an...

http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2007/07/bg-029-mass-producing-m...

I think they're pretty much dead on in their analysis.

While no one knows the triggers to these things I would _not_ recommend just jumping in because you thought it'd be cool! Read up, do your research, and do lots of smaller practice before trying.

That'd be my recommendation anyway ;)