Isn't Meditation Fun?

Is meditation fun? Well honestly, no. Meditation is no fun at all. It’s difficult, sometimes tedious, often frustratingly hard work. If you are having fun meditating, it’s highly probable that it’s just your mind trying to distract you from the hard work. Sorry.

Many people today have some serious misconceptions about what meditation is and what its purpose is. So let’s first look at what meditation is not.

Meditation is not a religion. While meditation is an important practice within many religions, it is not a religion itself. Also, you don’t need to belong to a specific religion or any religion at all to practice meditation. It is just as effective within a secular setting as a spiritual one.

Meditation is not synonymous with relaxation. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with relaxing. It’s important to take time to relax, especially in today’s fast-paced, stressful world. And while meditation helps us relax, it is not relaxing while you are doing it. Going to your “happy place” is a wonderful way to relax. Listening to calm, unobtrusive music is very relaxing. But these things are not meditation.

Meditation is not zoning out. One of the biggest misunderstandings about meditation is that you want your mind to be completely still. It’s amazing how many people have told me they can’t meditate because they can’t quiet their minds. Your mind will never be completely still. It is the nature of the mind to have thoughts, and that’s what it will always do. If the mind didn’t think, it wouldn’t be a mind.

So what is meditation, then? Meditation is training the mind to stay present in this moment. It is being fully awake and aware of our thoughts, emotions, and our physical sensations while at the same time being fully aware of the noises and activities going on around us. While we are aware of everything we are calmly existing. We are making no judgments about whether a thought, a noise, or a sensation is good or bad. We just sit and exist. The Sanskrit word for this type of meditation is Shamatha which means “calm abiding”. In Japanese Zen Buddhism it is called Zazen, “just sitting”. And in Chinese Daoism it is Rujing, “sit still”.

So here we are, just sitting. The instruction is to put a portion of our attention on our breath. We use the breath as a starting point and a place to always come back to because it is always with us. When our attention is on our breath, it brings our mind and our body into sync. It brings us more fully into our body, more fully into the present. When we breathe in, we are aware that we are breathing in. When we breathe out, we are aware that we are breathing out. Then when we have a thought, which will happen usually about half a second after we have started, we label it a thought. We might say to ourselves, “Thought”, or , “Thinking”. Then we bring our attention back to the breath.

The rest of our attention is on everything else. We are not trying to go into some kind of trance-like state where we lose touch with the world around us. On the contrary, we are learning to be fully present. When the phone rings we might call that a noise. Or, since the noise and a thought (The phone is ringing!) happen so closely together, we could just call that a thought as well. Whatever happens, we label it a thought, a sensation, a noise. Then we let it go and return to the breath. It is a very simple process. And it’s very difficult. It’s so much easier to just put on some nice, calm music and relax. But we want to meditate.

When, how long, and where should you meditate? You can set up a specific room, or even just a corner of a room, to meditate if you would like to but it isn't necessary. With practice you will be able to meditate on a crowded bus if you want. You can meditate in your car during your lunch break if that is the only time you have. I suggest starting with ten or fifteen minutes a day and then just allow your practice to lengthen naturally over time. It is more important to meditate every day than it is to meditate for long periods of time. Meditation has an accumulative affect so it is much more beneficial to meditate for fifteen minutes every day than it is to meditate for an hour and a half once a week.

Do you need incense and candles to make it work? Again, these things are a nice addition to your practice but they are not necessary. The only things you need are a place to sit and your breath.

One thing that is important to pay attention to is your posture. You can sit cross-legged on the floor or sit in a chair. Just be sure you are sitting up straight and not slouched over. For this type of meditation you can set your hands on your knees or in your lap. Whatever is comfortable. Work to remain still and be relaxed but at the same time awake and aware. It may take some time to become comfortable sitting still but it will come with practice.

There are so many benefits to this basic meditation practice, it’s difficult to list them all. Physically, meditation can lower blood pressure and build the immune system. It can help us sleep better and wake up more easily. Emotionally, it can help with depression and anger issues. We find we can focus our attention on what we want to focus on without being so easily distracted, and retain what we learn more efficiently.

One of the most life-changing benefits to having a daily meditation practice is the ability to hear our thoughts and to feel our emotions, and then to realize we can choose to react to those thoughts and emotions or choose not to. We identify so closely with our thoughts we don’t even hear them. We just react to them. The same with our emotions. We don’t actually register feeling them until after we have already reacted. And it is the reaction to these things that causes the problems in our lives, not the thoughts and emotions themselves. This is one factor in how addictions are formed. An irrational thought becomes an irrational emotion and before we know it, we’ve smoked a cigarette, eaten an entire pie, or done something else that we regret. Meditation gives us the opportunity to recognize the thought or the emotion and then decide whether to react to it or not. And if we decide to react, we have the chance to decide how to react.

In some Eastern traditions, they understand that we are not our thoughts or our emotions. We are the Watcher, the Witness. The one who decides. With a regular, consistent meditation practice, we regain the ability to decide. We regain control of our lives.