This is a first article on the topic of meditation and it felt like the most relevant thing do, other than explaining “What is Meditation?”, is to jump right into describing how to do it.
If you’re reading this, you have likely heard some of the typical instructions concerning meditation practice: following the breath, counting the breath, scanning the body, or placing your attention someplace in particular.
You’ve also likely heard of the myriad benefits of meditation: increased calm, improved focus, increasing the ability to “manifest”, or perhaps experiencing psychedelic-like phenomena, visions, etc.
While that is the approach that some schools of meditation take, engaging in a specific technique to produce an effect, that is not the approach that I’ll be describing in this article. Instead, I’d like you to imagine meditation to be potentially something even more miraculous and profound—complete wholeness.
Thousands of years ago, the Buddha was learning meditative and yogic practices that allowed him to experience profound experiences of bliss for prolonged periods time. When he’d emerge from his deep meditation, he noticed that the experience of bliss would disappear. He concluded that because the experience was conditional, it wasn’t real freedom, just a temporary effect of his meditation. So he continued seeking until he discovered a freedom that was without conditions. This freedom and aspect of Being, he called “the birthless” and “the deathless”. It’s not a thing in the usual sense of the word, nor subject to time, conditions, or “coming and going”. He called this realization Nirvana, which means extinction, because it was the end of his desire, suffering, and separate “self-grasping”.
Many of the great traditions have created systems and practices to lead a person to this same realization—before anything ever was and after everything will be, there is nothing missing, nothing wrong, eternally. This realization is of a dimension of reality and our Self, that is perfect unconditioned wholeness. And the way we realize it, the way we realize that our consciousness is that very nature, is to stop drawing conclusions, let go of our mind, and drop our preoccupation with getting more. The realization of God, Source, The One, Buddha Nature, or whatever you want to call it, is dependent on this singular thing: not seeking.
What would it mean for you, right now, to no longer seek something else or something different? What if you were no longer trying to avoid or change anything about yourself and your life? What if you could just let everything be as it is? Being FREE, right here and now, is what meditation is. And practicing meditation and practicing Freedom. This is taking a rebellious posture against everything you think you know.
The great secret of meditation is there is no method. This is what the great Zen masters called “The Gateless Gate”—there’s no way to walk through it, the entrance can’t be found anywhere at all. And yet, there IS a way. But it’s profound simplicity is what makes it so challenging.
So what is the way?
Relax, be still, pay attention, and draw no conclusions.
What this means is to no longer assume that there’s anything that you need to do with yourself, with your life, or with your mind. When you sit to meditate, what if you could give up all of your ideas about yourself, all of your conclusions about where you came from, where you’re at, and where you need to go. Meditation in this way is radically, profoundly, utterly simple: it’s deep resting in being no one, having nothing, needing nothing, seeking nothing. It’s a deep relief from our mind that endlessly tells us the opposite. And when this is done, we open ourselves to the grace of Pure Being, an unexpected and ever-new experience of fullness that is beyond words.
It doesn’t require us to solve all of our problems first. Meditation is an invitation to experience pure grace. That grace can only be fully experienced when we ourselves discover Faith. No matter who we think we are, what we’ve done, in this dimension of the Self, we can let go into perfect wholeness and realize THAT as our deepest nature. This bold leap takes courage and real faith, faith to trust something we can’t see or know with our mind.
Every time we sit to meditate, consider it another moment where you can take a great leap and be carried by grace, absolutely free from your past. There is nothing else left for you to do. Meditation is not the time to solve your problems—to think about your past, the future, or “fix” anything at all. It’s not the time to try and get anything. It’s the time to just BE.
That’s the paradox how to meditate. In a very real way, you don’t do anything at all. What that means internally is not moving. Not being moved by the mind or emotions, not concluding if what appears is real or not, important or not, or if it matters that it is there or not. Meditation is not waiting for anything to change, it’s not waiting to let go of anything in particular, it’s not waiting to become someone else.
So I challenge you, to not meditate. Don’t try to still your mind, don’t try and control your thoughts, or follow your breath. Instead, deeply do nothing at all. Don’t even conclude whether you’re doing it right or wrong. That’s still doing something, that’s still trying to get something. That’s how deep this goes—it’s literally endless.