Real Meditation in Minutes a Day: Enhancing Your Performance, Relationships, Spirituality, and Health

THE DALAI LAMA

foreword

THROUGH MEDITATION, we can train our minds in such a way that their negative qualities are abandoned and their positive qualities are generated and enhanced. In general, we talk about two types of meditation: analytical and single-pointed. First, the object of meditation is put through a process of analysis in which we repeatedly attempt to gain acquaintance with the subject matter. When we have gained confidence about the object of meditation, the mind is made to concentrate on that without further analysis. This combination of analytical and concentrative meditation is an effective technique for properly training our minds.

The importance of this practice arises from the fundamental fact that each and every one of us innately desires happiness and does not want misery. Whether we experience happiness or sorrow in life depends largely on the state of our minds. Furthermore, the way in which the experiences we encounter affect our lives also depends on the mind. When we misuse our mental potential, we make mistakes and suffer unpleasant consequences. On the other hand, when the mind’s potential is skillfully harnessed, we derive positive and pleasant results.

The authors of this book, Joseph P. Arpaia and Lobsang Rapgay, have drawn on the Tibetan Buddhist traditions of meditation and on an understanding of Western cognitive psychology to present meditative practice in a way that readers will find is actually effective. I congratulate them for their efforts, and offer my prayers that readers who employ these techniques will indeed be successful in increasing a sense of peace and happiness in their own lives, thereby contributing to greater peace and happiness in the world at large.

His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,

Tenzin Gyatso

meditation:

what it is, and how this book will teach you to do it

meditate. verb. (1) Exercise the mental faculties in thought or contemplation. (2) a. Muse over, reflect; consider; study; ponder. Also, plan by turning over in the mind, conceive mentally. b. Fix one’s attention on; observe intently or with interest.

—Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Fifth Edition

MEDITATION is exercise for your mind. Just as exercise for your body improves your physical abilities, meditation will improve your mental abilities. Meditation enhances whatever you do with your mind: it helps you perceive more clearly, it improves your thinking and memory, and it enhances your creativity. You develop your mind into an ever more effective tool for living.

There are many myths about meditation, which can interfere with our ability to use it effectively; so let’s make clear what meditation is not.

MEDITATION: THE MYTHS

Myth 1: Meditation is Eastern.

Meditation has been practiced by Christians for almost two thousand years, and Jews, Muslims, and those of other traditions have meditative practices as well. Even if many meditation techniques come from Eastern traditions, there is nothing to prevent others from adopting those techniques to develop their minds.

Myth 2: Meditation is for religious people.

You do not have to be religious to benefit from meditation, just as you do not have to be an athlete in order to benefit from physical exercise. Meditation is exercise for the mind. You can use it for spiritual development. You can also use it to improve your health, your effectiveness at work, and your relationships with others.

Myth 3: Meditation takes hours per day.

If you have hours to spend, then you can certainly spend them meditating. But you don’t need hours to benefit from meditating. In fact, even fifteen or twenty minutes per day will help you significantly.

Myth 4: Meditation is relaxation.

Meditation can help you learn to relax. However, sometimes you need to feel more energized. There are meditations that can help you speed up when you need to speed up, and meditations that can help you slow down when you need to slow down.

Myth 5: Meditation is stopping thoughts.

Meditation teaches you how to change your usual thoughts so you can think differently, and more effectively. Meditation also develops mental activities such as perceiving or imagining, which are different from thinking.

Myth 6: Meditation is blanking out the mind.

Meditation is training the mind. You meditate in order to develop your mind, not blank it out.

Myth 7: Meditation is used by cults.

Cults use the myth that meditation involves blanking out the mind to disguise brainwashing techniques as meditation. Since meditation strengthens the mind, and the mind’s ability to inquire and analyze, meditation is, in fact, a good antidote to cult techniques.

Myth 8: I need a guru or teacher to learn meditation.

A good teacher can and certainly will help. However, one of the most important teachers is your own experience. As you continue to practice, you’ll learn to evaluate the effects of the techniques and find those that work best for you.

This book teaches a system of precise meditation instructions that enables you to achieve personal growth and transformation in our fast-paced world. You will be able to maintain all your responsibilities and even feel more on top of them. You will discover how to live amid chaos without becoming chaotic. You will learn to heal faster and work more efficiently. You will also learn to be more peaceful with others, and have a more fulfilling spiritual life.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first part we explain some general principles and teach four basic meditation practices that develop five core mental qualities. In the second part you’ll learn how to apply these basic techniques to improve your health, performance, relationships, and spirituality.

WHO IS THIS FOR AND WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT?

We have taught these techniques successfully to young and old, to those with and without advanced degrees, and to people with and without a spiritual background. The only requirement is a willingness to practice the techniques and learn from your experiences.

People who meditate report the following kinds of benefits:

•   Reduced stress, even when under pressure

•   Improved sleep

•   More energy

•   Clearer thinking

•   Improved memory

•   Enhanced creativity

•   More peaceful relationships

•   A greater sense of meaning

•   A deeper experience of spirituality

You will learn about your core mental qualities and how those can be balanced and strengthened. The principles and techniques we will be teaching are common to many traditions.

You do not need to flee to a monastery or scale the Himalayas to learn to meditate. Nor do you need to fast or punish yourself in order to benefit from meditation. True, people in monasteries may fast for days at a time, or they might sit still for long periods while being bitten by mosquitoes. But they can afford to challenge themselves with those discomforts because they don’t have bills or children. It can be far easier to fast for a week than to go to work and care for your family day after day while you are exhausted or sick, much less trying to find time to sit still and meditate, too!

MEET BRIAN AND MARIA

Much of the activity in meditation is internal. It is interesting work, sometimes exciting, and even humorous. The inner activity of personal growth is not captured by lists of meditation instructions. It can only be observed by following the inner experiences of someone who is working on, sometimes struggling with, and eventually succeeding at the meditation practices.

In order to give you this perspective, we will introduce you to Brian and Maria, whose stories appear throughout the book. Brian and Maria are amalgams of the hundreds of people we have taught. You will watch them as they practice the basic techniques and the applications. You will observe the intimate details of their struggles and successes. Brian’s and Maria’s internal monologues offer an intimate look at the inner experience of someone engaged in personal growth through the practice of meditation.

As you read Brian’s and Maria’s experiences, you will find them remembering comments from their teacher, which appear in bold text. This teacher is meant to be either of us, the authors. The teacher’s comments contain tips that you will find helpful as you work with the techniques yourself.

BRIAN’S STORY

Brian is middle-aged, married, and has three children, ages seven to fourteen. He works full-time in a middle-management position. He finds his job stressful, and his doctor thinks the stress is contributing to his neck tension and high blood pressure. Brian has difficulties with angry verbal outbursts that have a negative effect on his home life, especially with his teenage son. He feels an ongoing sense of conflict with the world, and sometimes carries himself with a tense, irritable attitude. He is not happy with himself, and feels stuck, like his life is becoming a dead end. Brian has found himself asking the question Is this all there is? He would like to be different but he has no idea what to do. Everything seems to be out of his control. At times he feels sad and even hopeless. In addition to raising concerns about Brian’s blood pressure, his doctor has suggested that Brian could be depressed.

Brian has at times expressed his frustration in conversations with his sister, Karen, a nurse. At one point she responded by looking at him very seriously and asking, Are you willing to put some time and effort into changing, and do you have patience?

Brian was surprised by her intensity, but replied, I need to do something. There is no crisis now, but if things keep going this way, they will get worse.

Well, then, she replied, I suggest you start meditating.

What!? Brian exclaimed. How is sitting around staring at my navel going to help me? I’ve tried relaxation and stress reduction, and they don’t work for me.

Look, Brian, she said, "you said you wanted a change. I’m telling you about something that will change you, more than you can imagine. Meditation is a lot more than relaxation or staring at your navel."

I don’t have time to meditate, he complained.

Athletes and executives have used meditative techniques to become more effective. If they can make the time, so can you. Or, his sister bluntly stated, if you don’t want to do that maybe you can try antidepressants.

Brian drew a deep breath. So what do I do? Where do I learn meditation?

There is an introductory session being held by a teacher I know, his sister replied. I suggest you attend it. When you go, make sure you ask any questions you have. If meditation is going to work for you, it will need to make sense. So if something doesn’t sound logical, ask about it.

MARIA’S STORY

Maria is a young and married with two small children. She also has a full-time job outside the home. She is being given more responsibilities at work and wants to move ahead there, but her family requires a lot of energy too. She is starting to feel the strain: having headaches, feeling tired a lot, and frequently feeling short-tempered.

Over the past couple of months, it’s felt as if she’s running on a treadmill, and that someone is continually increasing the speed. Her headaches have gotten worse and her doctor has prescribed medication for them. The medication decreases the pain, but it also sedates her. The sedation makes her feeling of being unable to keep up even worse.

One day she had lunch with an older friend and admitted, Well, Susan, I just don’t know. There is so much to do: the kids, my job, the household, my husband. It keeps piling up. I feel more and more scattered and stressed-out. I wish I could keep up and stay organized like you do.

Susan looked at her thoughtfully and said, My secret to keeping up with everything is that I meditate. It’s something you might try.

But I don’t have the time to meditate every day, Maria replied.

I don’t meditate every day. I meditate three times per week.

But I don’t even have time for that, Maria complained.

If you meditate and become more efficient, you will gain more time than you spend, Susan replied. For example, if you were able to reduce the amount of headache medicine you needed, you wouldn’t experience the sedation that slows you down so much.

Meditation can help my headaches?

People who practice meditation often have improvements in their physical condition, Susan stated.

But I’m a Christian, and meditation is a Buddhist thing, Maria argued.

Christians have been meditating for two thousand years. Meditation is a mental thing, Susan responded. It’s about learning to use your mind. Meditation has helped me a lot and I think it will be very helpful for you. I suggest you go to an introductory session. You can ask all the questions you want there.

Maria was skeptical, but since she saw Susan as a stable, practical person, she decided to attend the introductory session and see how she felt about it afterward.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

We’ve constructed this book to be your guide to this way of experiencing personal growth and inner peace. Even though we advise you to practice the techniques in the order we present them, we also encourage you to read ahead and find sections that interest you. You may wish to read the sections about Brian and Maria in each chapter, and share in their difficulties and successes. You may also wish to look at the comments and tips from their teacher that appear in bold text. Brian’s and Maria’s stories will give you a feeling for the process that occurs when ordinary people train their minds and achieve extraordinary results.

PART I

four practices for developing the five mental qualities

1   introduction

MEDITATION IS TRAINING FOR YOUR MIND

You can let your mind run automatically, or you can train your mind so it serves you more effectively. In this book, when we mention meditation, we are referring to mental exercises that improve the mind.

The four meditative exercises you will learn develop five primary mental qualities. These five mental qualities are steadiness, flexibility, warmth, clarity, and spaciousness. As you develop these mental qualities, you will find that your mind automatically performs tasks with greater ease. You become more adept at staying calm under pressure, adapting to new situations, working through conflicts, and finding creative insights. You become better at living, not just at meditating.

Learning meditation is like learning how to ride a bicycle. When you start learning to ride the bicycle, you feel awkward and fall frequently. So you practice, accepting the fact that you may fall. As you practice, your skill improves, you fall less often, and you can ride on busier streets. As you keep practicing, you are able to ride anywhere while feeling safe, and are able to handle emergencies as they arise. But in order to learn, you have to be willing to make some mistakes, and you have to try various techniques in order to find those that are effective.

In the same way, when you start practicing meditation, it is natural to feel awkward. You will have varying degrees of success. Sometimes you will have enjoyable experiences, and other times you will feel like you are practicing and getting nowhere. Continue to learn from your experience and you will improve.

WE TEACH BRIEF meditation techniques as well as extended techniques. The brief techniques require as little as ten seconds and no more than two minutes, and they are done throughout the day. Their purpose is to give you the experience of honing your mental skills in real-life situations.

These brief techniques are critically important. They allow you to make progress without spending large amounts of time sitting in meditation, to exercise your mind throughout the day. They also train you to apply meditation spontaneously and quickly in the real world.

GETTING STARTED: TIPS

Here are some tips that will help you learn meditation more easily. If you follow them, you will feel more comfortable practicing meditation and you will see results more quickly:

The Brief Techniques

Brief sessions last for about one minute. Unlike the extended sessions detailed below, they are to be done while you are engaged in your daily activities. The more often you practice the brief techniques, the faster you will make progress. You should practice the brief techniques during the between times: the periods of time when you are not doing anything that requires your full attention. The following is a list of some of the between-times we or our students have found useful for practicing the brief techniques:

•   Before and after meals

•   Just after waking up, unless you are going to do an extended session then

•   Just before falling asleep, unless you have just finished an extended session

•   While walking from one room to another

•   While walking out to the car

•   Before driving or after driving

•   While someone else is driving

•   While going to the bathroom (yes, really)

•   While washing up after going to the bathroom

•   In the shower

•   While waiting on hold during a phone call

•   Before picking up a newspaper or magazine

•   Instead of watching an advertisement on TV

•   Before or after reading a book on meditation

If you use your creativity, you will find numerous times in which to fit a brief technique. The more often you do that, the faster you will progress.

Extended Meditation Sessions

Extended meditation sessions are to last fifteen minutes or longer. You will need to spend a total of at least ninety minutes per week in extended sessions to make consistent progress. You could practice fifteen minutes per day, six days per week. Or you could practice thirty minutes per day every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Just try not to let more than two days pass between sessions.

If you spend more time in the extended meditation sessions, you will progress faster—but only up to a point. We do not recommend spending more than sixty minutes per day in extended meditation sessions.

As much as possible, try to practice the extended meditation sessions in the same place and at the same time of day. Doing so helps the extended sessions become a habit. On the other hand, it is better to practice at a different time or place than to skip a practice session. Pick a place that has a comfortable temperature and few disturbing noises. Good times to practice are early morning after waking, before lunch, just after work, or late evening before going to sleep. Sit in a posture that keeps your back fairly straight and allows you to feel comfortable without falling asleep. One popular posture is to sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. A second is to sit on a cushion on the floor with your legs crossed. A third is to kneel on a rug or carpet with your buttocks resting on your heels. Any posture is acceptable as long as it allows you to stay upright and comfortable for at least fifteen minutes.

IN EACH OF the brief and extended meditation techniques, there are three phases: intention, execution, and reflection. When most people think about meditation, they think only of the execution phase. But the intention and reflection phases are what improve your progress.

The first phase, intention, takes only an instant: you remind yourself of what you want to accomplish by practicing meditation. Your goals may be long-range, or more immediate. For example, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition a common intention is enlightenment for all beings. That is a long-range goal. You may be meditating to feel more at peace. That is a more immediate goal. Both are OK. The point is that by remembering your intention at the beginning of each practice session you learn much faster.

Once you have remembered your intention, you begin to practice the technique for that session. This is the execution phase of the session. The execution phase takes the most time and is what people think of as meditating. It is the phase in which most of the work of meditation occurs.

The last phase is that of reflection. Its purpose is to give your mind time to integrate the experiences from the execution phase with your daily life. It is analogous to the follow-through described in athletic events. To do the reflection phase, remain quiet and remember any experiences from the session that stand out in your mind. Think about how those might relate to the goals that you focused on during the intention phase of the session. This will take a couple of seconds after a brief meditation technique, and may take up to a minute after an extended session. Reflecting on your experience reinforces the mental processes related to your goals, and makes the benefits of the meditation session easier to experience during the rest of the day.

TIME PRESSURE

Most people already feel too busy to meditate, and the thought of adding another activity to the day seems overwhelming.

One way to deal with the feeling of time pressure is to remind ourselves of the importance of meditating. One student described how she was lying in bed, feeling reluctant to get up and practice when the thought hit her, You have a date with God and you’re blowing him off! We meditate to develop our mind, and thus improve our physical, mental,