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Comments are welcome
The first time I experimented with meditation was over 30 years ago. I was never really successful at developing a consistent and effective practice until my most recent attempt, which began about three years ago. I would like to share some of my observations regarding these last three years. First, the idea that a meditation practice is a series of experiments seems to align well with my experience. I have heard that the Buddha suggested that direct experience is the best teacher. Any reference to the Buddha should probably be prefixed with a warning that this is my version of the Buddha. I doubt very much whether anybody can really say for certain this is what the Buddha said or thought. You try an approach and if it seems to work you incorporate it into your practice. It may be practical to have a teacher direct you around failed paths based on his experience, but someone has had to have an experience in order to see what will and will not work. A problem might arise if the experience of a teacher, based on his or her direct experience is so specific to his or her experiential context that it fails to generalize to his students. In that case, the students are taught a failed path which they will eventually have to be overcome. Over the 30 years that I have been exploring meditation, Buddhism and other meditative traditions I have read an immense amount of material pertaining to the theoretical philosophy and psychology of meditation. You might say I had a very good blueprint of the house I want to build. I poured over catalogues of materials. I looked at parcels of land with just about every view imaginable. I even invested in the tools of carpentry and masonry. Yet, I have not until recently driven a single nail into a single board. It has always been an imaginative practice with no real work involved. I wish I had made a plan to finally cut the first board, but the truth is that my current practice just happened. It began about three years ago when I found myself having to teach groups of addicts in a treatment center how to use relaxation techniques. After making several failed attempts with these groups I happened upon Dr. Thompson’s Brainwave Suite. I started to use the Alpha tape with very tense addicts. While it helped them some, I ended up gaining from the exercise as a sort of collateral affect. I began, for the first time, to really be able to hold still for periods of about 15 minutes. This was something of a minor miracle since I have never managed this feat in any of my past attempts at meditation. I used the tape for about a year in relaxation groups. Repeated exposure to this tape helped me to start becoming relaxed enough to consider trying to meditate in a more traditional manner. All my previous attempts at meditation had floundered because I was too restless to sit still. This would mark the beginning of my meditation practice. I decided to try to sit still at home on my own. After I established that I could sit quietly listening to BWS for between five and fifteen minutes, I decided to go to work, to hit the nail with a hammer for the first time. I created a place in my upstairs bedroom that would be set-aside specifically as a meditation spot. This place is a pleasant space with an altar on which I have placed a variety of ambience creating items. There is a pleasant looking Buddha, an image of Jesus for my wife, candles and incense. I created a scene for meditation.
To Be Continued |
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