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Please cast your mind back . .
While not new to "Buddhist teachings" and theory I have just started my own meditation practice. If you can cast your minds back I am interested to learn what your thoughts were when starting out (your first few meditation sessions) did you nearly give up? did you feel like you were doing it right? when in the day did you do it, how long for and where?
eg in my case I just have not got the diserplin to meditate first thing in the morning (need to have breakfast, sort out the kids and get out to work) the extra 10 minutes in bed is spent just gearing my self up. I have been having short 15minute sessions every other day when the kids have gone to bed and the wife in the shower and the house is peaceful. I count 4 breaths at a time. I feel a little silly at times, my back achs and legs fidgit, my mind wanders but then I feel some reward and refreshed.
I will keep it up and make progress when I stop trying (ironically) but would love to hear your experiences if willing to share please.
eg in my case I just have not got the diserplin to meditate first thing in the morning (need to have breakfast, sort out the kids and get out to work) the extra 10 minutes in bed is spent just gearing my self up. I have been having short 15minute sessions every other day when the kids have gone to bed and the wife in the shower and the house is peaceful. I count 4 breaths at a time. I feel a little silly at times, my back achs and legs fidgit, my mind wanders but then I feel some reward and refreshed.
I will keep it up and make progress when I stop trying (ironically) but would love to hear your experiences if willing to share please.
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Once I had gotten used to my own arrogance a little, it occurred to me that, for all the pages I had read, I really didn't know what to do. Literally, what should I do? How do you actually go about the meditating I had read so much about? I had to go back and scrape up bits and pieces of information I had previously skipped over in my reader's search for "wisdom" or "peace" or whatever I was after.
I went out to the garbage cans outside the apartment building I was living in and found an old wooden milk crate. This I covered with an orange cloth. I put a picture and a little water and an incense burner on top. And then, each day when I came home from work, I would sit cross-legged on the end of the bed facing the altar. Mind you, I was making this up as I went along ... I really wasn't sure what I was doing. At the beginning of each period, I read aloud a small randomly chosen prayer from a book called "Universal Prayers." It was pretty embarrassing, reading out loud, but for some reason I insisted on it despite my worries that the neighbors might hear and think that I had gone around the bend.
For 10 or 15 minutes I would sit there, legs crossed. My biggest complaint (I was on a Hindu kick at the time and still found some usefulness in the word "god") was this: How come if I was doing this (meditation effort) for god, god was making my legs hurt so goddamned bad?! I mean, wasn't god supposed to be nice and supportive and kindly and not at all mean? My aching knees felt distinctly like mean with a capital M. Still, I kept doing it, knock-knees and all.
There was no one to tell me if I was doing it wrong. There was no one to tell me if I was doing it right. In a world where no one tells you it's right or wrong, right and wrong lose their savor ... which is pretty informative ... but also scary. Still I kept after it. My central question or determination at the time was this: I wanted to know -- not for anyone else and not according to anyone else -- whether spiritual life was bullshit or not. If it was bullshit, that was OK. If it wasn't, that was OK. I just wanted to know on my own terms and in my own experience.
A couple of years passed and I finally ended up at a Zen center where everyone sat still and cross-legged and facing the wall. It scared the crap out of me entering that hall for the first time ... all those people sitting together, not talking, not moving ... it scared me and somehow I felt I was in the right place to find out what I wanted to know.
Looking back at my uncertain first steps I am literally in awe. Looking back after 40 years, it is clear to me that doing anything, making any concrete effort (including, if necessary, cussing god out), is P-R-E-C-I-S-E-L-Y the right way to begin. You C-A-N N-O-T be wrong, as much as you might want to be.
You want to dream about mystical realms in which everything is better than all right? Go ahead! You want to wax wise about enlightenment and compassion and emptiness and whatever other magical mystery tour? Go ahead! You want to improve and be gooder than good and never be naughty again? Go ahead!
Just keep practicing! Pay attention. Take responsibility. Correct mistakes. But practice.
That way you can never be wrong.
My meditation I was restless. I read about emptiness in Katherine McDonalds meditation book and then when I meditated I just noticed the antsiness in my body. Each time right when I stood up at the end I felt a relief. And that relief was like a dot of dye. It spread to the rest of the day giving me something to feel a good feeling. It made me feel reassured about my life.
Count your blessings
My most memorable thoughts during my first sit at a Zen center were instigated by my older sister sitting beside me who whispered "how are we going to get home if our shoes are gone when this finishes" & "Didn't Mom and Dad used to make us sit like this when we were bad?"
It improved somewhat once she stopped helping me with impromptu koan suggestions.
For some reason they had a book of yoga poses when I was very young. By pointing to a pose and saying 'see how long you can do this one', they managed to snatch a bit of silence from their gullible offspring . . .
Then there was sitting still in church . . .
Parents are evil.