How do I meditate?
I got interested in Zen at the end of college. About 4 years later, after finish law school, I came back to LA, googled Zen Los Angeles, and found the center that I’m now a dharma teacher at and am pretty invested. My practice could be stronger. Everyone’s can.
In addition to learning about our own school of Zen (Kwan Um/Chogye, a Korean lineage), I’ve fallen in love with Alan Watts, Adyashanti, Dogen, Eckhart Tolle, and a few others. Their writings and teachings and explanation of Zen so clearly to me. Something that’s hard to explain. I’ve struggled a lot with meditation over the years, but here are some of the key lessons I’ve learned.
Meditation isn’t shutting off your mind and holding that blankness. It’s much closer to not resisting anything, which is another way of saying to just not try and get anywhere special or specific. Our minds are doing that all day, and it can take a little time to let go.
One method for letting go is to examine the place you think you’re supposed to get to when you start to meditate. Ask yourself what experience you’d be LEAVING if you reached your goal. That’s the experience you’re having right now. Meditation is merging with that experience.
The merging isn’t that STRESSFUL. Alan Watts used to call people who did this “straining.” Don’t try to hard to make it a certain way. Whatever it is, it is.
What you don’t try to do is elaborate, name, react to, and dwell on what your experience is. Find what you end up talking about in your head during meditation and see what else happens when you drop it and just relax. If you find yourself chasing a thought, come back to the silence.
Relax your shoulders, relax your belly. Sit up but not straining. What’s it like to breathe? What’s it like to be here? Just be here?
Start, practice, experiment. That’s what I do. See how meditating affects your mood and the way you think. Dogen said that this style of meditation doesn’t produce enlightenment. He said it is enlightenment.
