What is it that people actually do when they say that they “meditate?” Are they just sitting around cross-legged and staring into the empty air? Are they thinking? Or praying? Or chanting some esoteric mantras to themselves? Are they spaced out, like on psychedelic drugs? Or is it something else entirely that’s going on there?
In this first chapter, we’re giving it some serious effort to try and find that out. We’re also going to investigate why an increasing number of perfectly normal, apparently happy and healthy people in the west are bothering with something that, at first, appears to be an outdated spiritual practice out of backwater East Asia. And one that, in particular, looks super boring, takes up a lot of time, and is by far not as instagramable as Yoga or Kung-Fu.
Most importantly though, this chapter should give you a chance to assess for yourself if meditation is something that you’d want to give a try. And, if you chose to do that, how to get you started.
But I want to take the edge off of one common misconception from the get-go: Meditation does not require you to subscribe to any particular belief system or have faith in anything supernatural. In fact, quite the contrary: When we’re turning to external sources, we’ll stick exactly to the scientific evidence, drawing from research in anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience in particular. But more importantly, we’ll try to be scientists ourselves, with our mind acting as the primary subject of our investigation.
I will, however, occasionally quote Buddhist teachers, or refer to texts of Buddhist origin. But in my view, this is no contradiction at all: The philosophy of Buddhism is, at its core, one that is completely free of unconditional faith or doctrines imparted to us by divine beings. In fact, the historical Buddha himself constantly challenged his disciples to be skeptical of all these things, and, instead of clinging to unfounded beliefs, he asked them to inquire what they could learn about the human condition from directly observing the workings of their own minds for themselves—from a first-person, experiential perspective, using the method of meditation. That’s quite close to a scientific approach, for someone living in the Bronze Age, isn’t it?
In the practice sessions of this chapter, for example, we’ll run a couple of experiments: We’ll observe closely what our mind does when it’s idling, we’ll try to willfully control our attention, and we will quickly discover that that’s not easy as it sounds. In fact, we will learn that we are constantly getting distracted by our very own thoughts! But also, that appreciating and accepting this as a fact can be insightful and, also, kind of liberating.
So, if you’re up to it, let’s get started—shall we?
Bear with me, we’ll shortly dive into our first meditation session together. If you want to follow along right away, only make sure that you’ve got the time and the space to sit down quietly and undisturbed for a couple of minutes. Ideally, you’re in a spot with little external distractions, and where other people don’t immediately judge you if they see you you sitting still with your eyes closed.
But just to make that clear before we get started: There’s definitely no need for incense sticks or tea candles, there’s not going to be any chanting, and you don’t even have to fold yourself into the lotus position1—unless, of course, you’re already familiar with that and like to sit in this way, in which case, be my guest! There are, in fact, quite good reasons why some contemplative traditions, for example Zen Buddhism2, put a lot of emphasize on such minor details as how exactly you fold your legs or hold your hands. But for now, I don’t think that obsessing over these things would be helpful.
For this first practice, all you physically have to do is sit down. Just be relaxed and comfortable. You can sit either in a normal chair, or, as I said, on a cushion on the floor with your legs crossed, if you’re comfortable in that pose. If you sit in a chair, ideally you can keep your your back away from the backrest, sitting unsupported and straight, just to make sure your breath can flow easily and unobstructed.
Once you’re all set, I’ll invite you take a few deep breaths.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
That felt good, didn’t it? And now, let’s let the breath flow naturally agin. Don’t control the breathing, just let it come and go.
Next, let’s try to pinpoint a location in your body where the physical feeling of the breath is most prominent for you. That is, try to find a spot where you can get the best grasp on the sensation that’s caused by the stream of air as it enters and leaves your body.
Maybe you feel a tingling at the tip of your nose every time the air flows by? Or something a bit further down, along the throat? Or is the strongest sensation you feel the rising and falling of the chest or the abdomen?
Take a few breaths just to look for the most salient physical sensation.
Wherever it is that you feel your breathing most prominently, once you have identified that spot, commit to that and stick with it for the rest of this session. Try not to move your attention around between the nose, the chest, … just pick one spot, and stick with it. And don’t worry if it’s not the “right” spot this time.
Let the breath come and go naturally. Again, don’t force or control your breathing.
Just breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Now, I’d like you to concentrate your attention on that particular sensation you’ve identified before. What is it that this feeling… feels like? And can you just feel it, without commenting or verbalizing it?
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
We’ll give it ten seconds or so, during which I’ll shut up.
…
By the way, are you still concentrating on that sensation? Be honest! Or did, by any chance, your mind begin to drift off? Did your thoughts take “somewhere else?”
Well, if that happened: Congratulations. You’ve got a perfectly normal, human mind. And also, you’ve just completed your first meditation session!
Did you notice that even when there’s nothing specific you wanted to think about, like just now, when you were only trying to focus on the breath, your mind is nevertheless creating new thoughts pretty much all the time? If you pay even closer attention, you’ll notice that these thoughts don’t actually come from anywhere. They just… appear, without you really being in charge of that process. But once a thought has sprung to life, the mind immediately picks up on it and your concentration gets lured away, or dragged “into” the thought itself, isn’t it? And, all of a sudden, you’re so absorbed by your daydreaming that you’re no longer paying attention, for example to the breath.
I don’t know about you. But for me, when I first witnessed this this basic truth about how the mind works, how thinking works, during meditation, that was a pretty profound realization! Because, as it turns out, that thing happens pretty much all the time, throughout every moment of life. Thoughts come and go, dragging our attention this way or that way.
On the one side, it was kind of scary to realize that most of the time, “I” wasn’t actually in charge of my attention. Often, it just drifts around or wanders without a conscious decision or my approval. Out there, in the real world, this can of course be tremendously dangerous: When driving a car, for example, even a split second of mind wandering can turn into a deadly accident.
But on the other side, understanding these mechanics of the mind also came with a feeling of liberation: Thoughts, sensations, emotions, intentions, they all arise in the mind moment by moment by moment. All on their own. Whether I want them to or not. But, if left alone, they also dissipate or fade away, almost just as quickly. And this insight can be freeing, because it means that whenever there is something that’s bothering you at this very moment—sadness, anger, frustration, whatever it may be—that thing also has a limited lifespan. It will, inevitably, also be gone soon and make room for something else again.
Now, let’s shift gears a little bit, and examine some additional, practical benefits that people often associate with meditation. But before we do that, let’s do another practice.
Again, sit comfortably, just as before.
Take a deep breath.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
And start to locate that spot, where you can feel the raw sensation of the breath.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Zoom in on that sensation. And give it your fullest possible attention.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
This time, allow your mind to wander, if and when it wants to. (Side note: It will. Trust me.)
But, contrary to last time, try to notice when you’re attention is no longer on the sensation of the breath. It doesn’t matter if that noticing happens immediately, or one minute, or ten minutes, after you lost your concentration. Just notice that you’re no longer concentrating on the breath.
Let the thought that’s just occupied you fade away. And gently return your attention back to the breath.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
I’ll keep quiet for the next few seconds, so you can try this out for yourself.
During this practice, it’s likely that two very interesting things happened: First, at some point after you lost concentration, you should then have become consciously aware of what your attention actually was point at—particularly, that it was no longer where you had intended it to be. And second, you managed to willfully guide your attention back to that sensation of the breath. It doesn’t matter that, probably, it didn’t stay there for long. What matter is that these two skills combined, mundane as they may seem, are already a kind of mental “superpower:” If you can apply this pattern of detecting where your attention is and gently guiding it to wherever you want it to be, in situations in your daily life—say, while driving your car down the highway, to stick with our previous example—that can make that life-or-death difference between being distracted by a daydream and being fully present—and thus, able to evade that truck which just pulled out in front of you.
Back to the point about the benefits of meditation: Exactly this kind of supercharged “attention management” is one major reason why many people today find value in meditation practice. It helps to strengthen your ability to concentrate, and to detect and counteract unhelpful mind-wandering, which furthermore can help you to break through such unproductive things as negative thought spirals, habitual negative thinking, and thus foster many other positive aspects of mental wellbeing. But more on that another time.
I hope that you’ve seen for yourself, with those two simple exercises, that the human mind is a lot quirkier that we might have hoped. But also, you may walk away from this with a more solid grasp on the fact that meditation practice can be useful to deal with them a bit more skillfully.
But beyond attention and concentration management, there are quite a few other benefits to a sustained meditation practice that I don’t want to withhold from you before I let you go for today.
Let’s close this one off with another practice session.
Like before, sit down comfortably, with your back straight. Relax your shoulders.
And take a deep breath.
And another one.
Now, begin look for that location in which you can feel the raw sensation of the breath.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Zoom in on the physical feeling of the breath.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
And give it your fullest possible attention.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Notice if your attention has wandered off. And if so, gently guide it back to the breath.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
I’ll shut up now and give you some space and quiet, just to practice.
If you want to give the lotus position a try, here’s an article that explains how it is applied in Zazen practice, the formal meditation of Zen Buddhism. ↩︎
In Zen Buddhism in particular, paying attention to how you perform even small gestures is considered highly important. Here you can find a comprehensive guide to Zazen practice that covers all those aspects. ↩︎
Source: Effects of mindfulness meditation on serum cortisol of medical students ↩︎
Source: Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on Emotion Regulation in Social Anxiety Disorder ↩︎