I only have one rule for meditation itself: Never force.

I wrote this in response to a friend who asked me about Buddhism and mentioned she was interested in learning to meditate. I hope that it may be of some assistance to others who are practicing or learning to practice!

Oh, meditation! Well, there’s so much to talk about in Buddhism, especially the Tibetan forms, but meditation practice is extremely simple to start in any of the forms of Buddhism.

It’s all about learning to be present and allow the mind to settle rather than letting it jump after every thought and feeling (I’m sure you know how an intense thought in your mind, or a sound or something you see, or a powerful feeling in your body can grab hold of your mind and pull it around mercilessly.).

I started with a Zen sitting practice – but it was too austere and rigid for me. My knees and legs were on pins and needles when I was done, and while I felt calmer than before, I just felt like I spent half my time trying to ignore the physical pain of sitting.

So the meditation practice I do most of the time now is much simpler.

I find a place of peace and calm – a sanctuary of sorts – and sit – either on a zafu (cushion) or a chair depending on how flexible I am that day. And I close my eyes – either half closed or fully. And I remember some instruction I was given by a lama (the teacher kind, with one L ;):

“Breath like the sky, body like a mountain, mind like an ocean”

Settle yourself into an open and expansive breathing pattern, filling your chest with air, but gently and without force. Find a position in which you feel strong and supported and comfortable, and see your mind as a great vast body of water. As you breathe, your thoughts are the waves on that ocean, and you’re gently, without reproach, with total acceptance and love of what does arise, allowing your thoughts to rise up, to wash through, and settle.

Meditation isn’t about resistance but about presence. You’ll feel every sensation imaginable – some painful, some astoundingly pleasurable, and you should not do anything but experience them, without pushing away or holding tight. You’ll think thoughts both great and terrible, but you simply allow them to fall away the same way they arose. The important ones will remain with you, and the rest will vanish without your help.

You’re sitting, being, experiencing, and you’ll see – slowly – with practice – and yet very quickly, that thoughts and sensations and feelings are wholly natural and passing, and that you need not do anything. It’s the grasping or the pushing away that actually blocks these energies from moving through naturally and results in pain or stagnancy or sadness.

You expect nothing except that you sit, and you breathe evenly.. watching your inhalation, your exhalation – in… out… in…. out… slowly… and for a short time at first. Your mind will state quite clearly when it is done. I started with 5 minutes, and some days that’s all I still do.

It’s not the amount of time you spend in meditation, or the depth of your stillness, but simply being there, making the effort to breathe, to be present, to take yourself out of the pattern of adhering to memories and predictions and to see what happens within.

You sit. You breathe. You feel the air in your lungs, the blood in your veins, the thoughts jumping like dolphins in the ocean of your mind. You feel the energy of your life as it circulates through you. You feel this moment. Whatever it is.

And you accept it. For 5, 10, 15 or more minutes, you sit. And if you’ve made that effort, even if your mind is as stormy as you began (it often isn’t, but seeing the changes sometimes take time), you’ve done your practice.

I only have one rule for meditation itself: Never force.