Beginning Meditation Practice: Guidelines

by Philip L. Jones

It is important to understand that these are guidelines for your practice, not rules.

Attitude:

• Don't expect anything: Just sit back and see what happens.

• Don't strain: Don't force anything .... Just let your effort be relaxed and steady.

• Don't rush.

• Don't cling to anything or reject anything: ... Don't fight with what you experience, just observe it all mindfully.

• Let go: Learn to flow with all the changes that come up.

• Accept everything that arises: ... Don't condemn yourself for having human flaws and failings. ... Try to exercise a disinterested acceptance at all times and with respect to everything you experience.

• Be gentle with yourself: ... The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

• Investigate yourself: Question everything. Take nothing for granted. ... It means you should be empirical. Subject all statements to the test of your own experience and let the results be your guide to the truth.

• View all problems as challenges: Look upon negatives that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow.

• Don't ponder: You don't need to figure everything out. ... In meditation, the mind is purified naturally by mindfulness, by wordless bare attention. ... Don't think. See.

• Don't dwell upon contrasts: Differences do exist between people, but dwelling upon them is a dangerous process. ... comparison is a mental habit, and it leads directly to ill feeling of one sort or another: greed, envy, pride, jealousy, hatred. ... The meditators job is to cancel this unskillful habit by examining it thoroughly, and then replacing it with another. Rather than noticing differences between self and others, the meditator trains himself to notice similarities.

-- Ven. Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English, Wisdom

Publications, 1991, pp. 46-48.

Meditation Space:

• Find a location in your home where you can sit quietly and undisturbed. This should be a place where you feel safe and comfortable.

• Sitting in the same location each time will help establish some regularity in your practice.

• Decide on a specific amount of time that you plan to sit. Use a clock or a timer, which is preferable, to keep track of the time. Initially 10-20 minutes should be long enough.

Posture & Position:

• Sit in a relaxed manner but with an erect spine.

• Choose a sitting position that promotes stability, physical immobility and the ability to sit without moving.

• Wear loose, comfortable clothing.